Here's the scenario every online tutor knows: You have 12 students split into 4 breakout rooms. You want to check how Group A is doing, so you join their room. The moment you click "Join", you lose all visibility of Groups B, C, and D.
You can no longer see what they're doing. You can't hear them. You don't know if they're working, chatting about football, or sitting in awkward silence. You're in the dark.
This is the fundamental problem with using Zoom and Microsoft Teams for online tutoring.
The Core Problem: One Room at a Time
Zoom and Teams were built for business meetings. In a typical business context, breakout rooms are a brief activity. You split the team into groups for a 10-minute discussion, then everyone comes back together. The host doesn't need to monitor because participants are adults who can manage themselves.
Education is completely different. In a tutoring session, breakout rooms aren't a brief detour — they're the core activity. Small group work is where the real learning happens. And students, especially younger ones, need guidance and oversight.
But the platforms don't support this. When you join a breakout room on Zoom or Teams:
- You can only see and hear the students in that specific room
- All other breakout rooms become invisible to you
- You have no idea what's happening elsewhere in your class
- To check another room, you have to leave your current room entirely
It's like being forced to teach with blinders on.
Why This Matters for Tutoring Institutions
In a physical tutoring center, a teacher can see all the tables at once. They notice when a group looks confused. They hear when a conversation goes off-topic. They can walk over at exactly the right moment.
This natural awareness is what makes small-group tutoring effective. The teacher can distribute attention across multiple groups, stepping in when needed while letting productive conversations continue.
The one-room-at-a-time limitation of Zoom and Teams destroys this. Instead of fluid oversight, teachers are forced into a frustrating pattern:
- Join Room 1, check on students
- Leave Room 1, join Room 2
- Leave Room 2, join Room 3
- By the time you're back to Room 1, you've missed 10 minutes of what happened there
It's exhausting. It's inefficient. And it means problems go unnoticed for far too long.
The Real Consequences
We've spoken with dozens of tutoring institution owners across the Netherlands and Belgium. They all describe the same problems:
Students go off-topic. Without teacher presence, it's easy for students to start chatting about games, social media, or whatever else is on their minds. By the time the teacher checks on them, half the session is gone.
Quiet students stay quiet. Some students participate actively when a teacher is watching, but go silent the moment they're on their own. Without visibility across all rooms, teachers can't identify and encourage these students.
Problems escalate before they're noticed. A group might be stuck for 15 minutes before the teacher happens to check on them. That's 15 minutes of frustration and wasted learning time.
Teachers burn out. The constant room-hopping is mentally exhausting. Teachers spend their energy on logistics instead of actual teaching.
Parents are paying for professional tutoring. They expect their children to receive attention and guidance throughout the entire session — not just during the brief moments when the teacher happens to be in their room.
What Teachers Actually Need
The solution isn't complicated. Teachers need what they have in a physical classroom: simultaneous visibility of all groups.
This means being able to:
- See all breakout rooms at once — a dashboard showing who's in each room, who's talking, and who's been silent
- Hear multiple rooms simultaneously — picking up on confusion, off-topic chatter, or productive discussion
- Join a room without losing sight of others — helping one group while still keeping an eye on everyone else
- Move between rooms instantly — no waiting, no complicated menus
This is exactly what we built Simpleclass to do.
How Simpleclass Solves This
Simpleclass was designed from the ground up for tutoring institutions. Our breakout room system works fundamentally differently from Zoom and Teams.
Multi-room dashboard: You see all your breakout rooms in a single view. Real-time indicators show who's speaking, who has their camera on, and who's been quiet. At a glance, you know exactly what's happening across your entire class.
Listen to multiple rooms: You can hear audio from several rooms at once. Experienced teachers quickly learn to focus on the room that needs attention — just like in a physical classroom where you hear multiple conversations but tune into the one that matters.
Join invisibly: When you do join a room, you can choose to enter invisibly. Students don't know you're there, so they keep working naturally. Perfect for authentic assessment of how students collaborate.
One-click student movement: Need to move a student to a different group? Drag and drop. No complicated menus, no waiting. Regroup your class as fluidly as you would in person.
Broadcast messages: Send announcements to all rooms at once: "Five minutes remaining", "Come back to the main room", or any other instruction. No need to visit each room individually.
Built for European Education
Beyond breakout room monitoring, we built Simpleclass with European tutoring institutions in mind:
- Full GDPR/AVG compliance — Dutch company, all data stays on EU servers (Netherlands and France)
- Custom subdomain — Your own branded portal at yourschool.simpleclass.eu
- Simple pricing — €8 per user per month, all features included
Try It Yourself
The best way to understand the difference is to experience it. We offer a 7-day free trial with up to 10 users. No credit card required. Setup takes 5 minutes.
Run a session with breakout rooms and see what it's like to have real visibility across all your groups — the way online teaching should work.