Earlier this year, Sophie Dear, Head of Marketing and Campaigns at the University of Portsmouth joined Jane Rodriguez, Director of Global Events Strategy at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and Aly Manse, Higher Education Client Success Manager for Cvent for an online discussion on the role of virtual events for educational institutions.
All three panellists had seen first-hand how further eduction establishments, which had previously relied on in-person campus open-days, meet-the-tutor applicant days, alumni reunions, fundraising dinners, plus learning and development events, suddenly needed to translate these vital programmes for a virtual audience during the pandemic.
“Our largest donor fundraising event for alumni was due to take place in the Spring of 2020 and we naively postponed it until September,” Rodriguez says. “My 12-strong team were desperate to deliver for the class of 2020 so we turned to Cvent for a virtual version in November.”
At the University of Portsmouth, Dear had opted for a more limited virtual event platform, just to be able to stage its first open-day of 2020 in June that year.
“We quickly realised that we needed a solution that was flexible enough to accommodate a broader set of use cases,” she recalls. “We needed data security for students under the age of 16, one-to-one appointment scheduling for post-graduates, plus exhibition booths for the undergraduate recruitment fairs. These were events with around 70 different course talks along with exhibitors and sponsors.
"There were very few software providers in the virtual events space that were able to meet all these requirements without fragmenting the experience but Cvent’s Virtual Attendee Hub offered a flexible, secure, and professional solution all in one place – and unlike other platforms, could provide a customisable experience our audiences could relate to.”
With features like Language Management, which allowed Dear to tailor course materials for different overseas audiences, the University of Portsmouth saw the reach of its recruitment programme escalate.
“Our open-days usually attract visitors mainly from the south of England but we were seeing potential students log-on from South Africa, the Middle East and all over Europe,” Dear says. “The flexibility of an online platform also allowed us to run sessions in the evenings for parents of potential students and make the content available on-demand for anyone who couldn’t attend.”
In Chicago, the Booth School of Business found that Cvent’s Virtual Attendee Hub had the added benefit of attracting a higher calibre of speakers to present virtually.
“A greater willingness to participate in an online event without the need to travel saw us attract both a greater reach of attendees and high-level keynotes from the world of business,” Rodriguez says. “It resulted in more dynamic content, which we mixed with virtual entertainment such as a magician for an extremely successful event.
“The Hub also allowed us to ask more questions at the registration stage so we could better understand how to target donors with tailored content for better outcomes. This, along with real-time data on participation and engagement helped us to deliver more targeted and process-driven fund-raisers, supported by vital insights,” Rodriguez says.
Cvent’s Aly Manse has worked with dozens of universities on a range of virtual event formats including conferences, education credits, alumni reunions, open-days and seminars. She believes there’s four key areas that planners should consider - content delivery, duration tracking, accountability and verification.
Manse says: “Whether content is delivered live or on-demand may depend on an institute’s engagement goals. Most education content for example is delivered live so that tutors can assess participation through polls, and other interactions. If students are watching on-demand, tutors may wish to insert verification codes at certain points in the content for proof that students are watching.
“By offering one-to-one appointments, viewers can take responsibility for their own scheduling and built-out their own agendas. This is especially helpful for open-days where there’s a vast amount of course content and different sessions. By adding virtual exhibition booths, viewers can navigate all this content via each individual booth making it much more accessible and engaging.”
All three panellists admit that pivoting to virtual for higher education use-cases is a steep learning curve and should always be done with goals and objectives front-of-mind.
The key pieces of advice from each were to:
- Start small and scale-up once comfortable with the technology
- Consider how the in-person event format could be improved by a virtual translation
- Don’t be afraid to extend the lifecycle of the event online for greater flexibility
- Consider participation techniques such as polling, gamification and chat functionality
Manse says: “A three-day education conference packed with break-outs may work better spread out over a month with on-demand content and a few live sessions to maintain engagement. If there’s reunion elements or networking, dedicate time to helping viewers chat and connect.”
Dear agrees: “Get creative with virtual formats and don’t just replicate your in-person events. Our open-days would start at 9am and finish at 4pm so we had to reimagine what that would look like for an online audience in different timezones wanting to dip in and out of available content. We started small to scale-up and now Cvent helps us to deliver 60 live sessions across a single day.
“My best tip however is a practical one. The Attendee Hub allows you to replicate an event, which makes adding additional events so much easier.”
Rodriguez concludes: “You can also replicate registration forms, which again is a massive help. Less is definitely more with virtual education formats and don’t be afraid to lean heavily on the Cvent team for support. It’s not something you can get from other technology providers and for us, an attentive and high level of support was extremely appreciated.”
