International students do in many cases not have the opportunity to visit their future university. In order to tackle this, ESL seeks to inform prospective international students by means of a Virtual Open Day (VOD) on November 30th.
Vital interactive element of the webcast will be three international students, three staff members, and a moderator sitting around a table in front of the camera, discussing the questions sent in through the virtual open day website, according to Esther van den Heuvel, organizer at Erasmus School of Law. Also short movie clips will be depicted during the live broadcast, having current international ESL students tell their story on their study and life in Rotterdam. Van den Heuvel got the idea of organizing a Virtual Open Day from The University of Applied Sciences of Amsterdam.
Watching from abroad
“This format is a great way for both informing prospective international students about the English language master programs at ESL, and make them familiar with staff and students, while they stay in the comfort of the their homes abroad”, Van den Heuvel explains. Although RSM has made use of webcasting prior, ESL is the first faculty at EUR to set up an interactive talkshow format for this.
A deliberate decision was made to time the webcast in a way to have students from Indonesia, China, Russia, and Eastern Europe to follow the online event live, given the fact they are an important target group for the ESL master programs.
Online buzz
Having welcomed 81 international fulltime master students this year, ESL hopes to turn the buzz on Facebook into actual viewers. According to Van den Heuvel, about 3000 people became followers of ESL on Facebook, and 60 people indicated on Facebook they will attend the webcast. Van den Heuvel: “I hope for about 150 interested students watching the webcast. And that due to the webcast, at least 5 students will sign up for a master program at ESL.”
Not from Erasmus Paviljoen
Initially, Van den Heuvel hoped to broadcast the webcast live from the Erasmus Paviljoen at Woudestein campus, but this turned out to not work well. “We heard it was not possible to close off the Paviljoen entirely for the broadcast, so the decision was made to broadcast from a studio in order to play safe, rather than having noise from cutlery and talking students in the background.” Desmet studio’s in the center of Amsterdam turned out a convenient location.
The webcast will last about 45 minutes, and will start November 30th at 12 hrs GMT (1pm Dutch time). If you are interested, the Virtual Open Day is broadcasted here. LJa
