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3 minute read
vIrTuAl oPEN DAyS
fulneck School recently hosted its first ever virtual open day. after just a few short weeks of very intense planning, it was a huge relief to deliver what felt like a really successful event. But there was a lot to learn, in a very short space of time. here’s what we can share from our experience for others planning similar events.
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A virtual open day might not be right for every school, but it was for
us. We are a small school with a very personalised approach. We rely on meeting families face-to-face, to demonstrate what makes us really stand out – our staff and our atmosphere. For us, it was important to have the opportunity to still connect with families directly.
We are also a growing school and our open days are an opportunity for attendees to see the other families interested in joining us. They create bustle, noise and excitement. We were keen to retain this feeling, rather than opting for one-to-one meetings.
It’s important to weigh up a live versus pre-recorded approach
From the start, we knew we wanted to try and facilitate a live approach, so that parents could chat to staff exactly as they would at a normal event. However, we knew we didn’t want to broadcast live from an empty school. It could feel flat and empty and wouldn’t show us off to the best of our abilities. We chose to combine the two and had a mix of live presentations from the Principal and Vice Principals, alongside re-purposed video footage of the school, with updated voiceovers.
It helps to use a platform both staff and users are familiar with
We used Zoom to host the session because it felt like the most commonly used platform amongst our audience and we were confident it would give us the functionality we needed.
We were also able to utilise its breakout room option to split attendees into sub-groups in the second half of the session. This enabled us to tailor content to the audience across the Early Years, Junior, Senior and Boarding areas of our school. It also enabled us to host smaller, live Q&A sessions, with a member of our admin team facilitating the questions in each breakout room.
Practice definitely makes perfect
We had five practice runs and one dress rehearsal for the event! With an un-tested format it was important to make sure we all understood how the technology worked and who would be responsible for which elements. It also helped us plan for glitches – such as what to do if attendees were allocated to incorrect breakout room.
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There is always room to improve
Overall the day went really well and we had some lovely feedback from families and agents, thanking us for the opportunity to get a sense of our environment in an unprecedented set of circumstances. We now have a format we hope will provide an added service in the future, in particular to our international agents. And most importantly, we have generated new enquiries from it.
It wasn’t completely perfect though and we have a few learnings we need to take forward for next time. The important thing though is we’ve done it once and hopefully, we will continue to get better from here. We wish everyone planning their own virtual open days the very best of luck.