Universities, colleges embrace virtual tours
Instead of bringing prospective students to campus for the usual fall open house, the COVID-19 pandemic is forcing Edmonton post-secondary schools to bring the campus to students.
Every year, universities and colleges host information sessions for students to learn more about the programs and services they offer. The open houses are major recruiting tools for post-secondary institutes. However, schools have had to adapt because of the virus.
Kelty Heck, the assistant registrar for student recruitment and engagement for the University of Alberta, said normally students and families would be able to attend one day of campus tours, workshops and presentations.
She said this year they extended the open house, which started on Thursday, to three days.
“Now that it's virtual, it's even easier for students to attend from across the province and country,” she said in an email. “The University of Alberta International has a booth at the event to help answer questions specifically for international students. As this is a brand new format, we are looking at this as a benchmark year. We also know it may be difficult to gauge true attendance numbers as there may be multiple viewers on one login/ device.”
Heck said virtual open houses offer real-time interactions with staff as well as provide information specific to the events.
Aimee Hill, director of the office of communication and marketing for Macewan University, said their open house, which is scheduled for Nov. 7, will feature a 360-degree virtual campus tour.
She said it took a couple of months over the summer to capture everything from the school's corridors to classrooms.
“We really wanted to focus on giving students as much of a sense of what the campus is like because that is one of the things they do like to know,” she said.
“What do the labs look like? What's the theatre look like? What do their classrooms look like? We try and answer those questions with the virtual tour.”
Hill said roughly 5,000 students normally attend their open houses and the goal is to reach at least that many. She said moving online has its advantages, as it allows MacEwan to reach more prospective students outside of the Edmonton area. Hill said she believes Macewan will eventually adopt both in-person and virtual open house options going forward.
Northern Alberta Institute of Technology's open house on Friday and Saturday featured 20 virtual booths, a presentation, chat rooms and a self-guided tour of the campus. NAIT student recruitment manager Angela Finlayson said the material and presentations will be accessible for the next 30 days for anyone to view.
“We're really excited about what we're putting together for this year's open house because we're not able to do one in person,” she said. “There are certainly some exciting features to these virtual events that we're excited to have a part for this year.”
Finlayson said NAIT will be hosting other recruiting events in the winter.