Developing a Virtual Orientation Week
As the Ryerson School of Journalism prepares for an online fall semester, the first glimpse of what that will look like for students is the virtual orientation happening from Aug. 24 to Sept. 7, 2020.
“We were worried about students not being able to make connections because meeting is easier when you’re there in person. When everyone is online, you miss out on the little moment of looking over to the person beside you to start a conversation and making that connection,” said student affairs coordinator, Beverly Petrovic.
According to Petrovic, despite the challenges of developing and hosting an online orientation for first year students, this year there will be a greater focus on what is most important for students to know.
“We used to have orientation for a whole day; now it will only be four hours a day. We needed to break it down to what are the most important things and we are concentrating on what students need to know,” said Petrovic.
The staff at the RSJ have been working for months to provide the best possible experience for students and have compiled a website (external link) which details each event hosted for orientation as well as the links to join each event.
The Journalism Course Union at Ryerson has also put together an extensive schedule for J-Frosh 2020 which includes NetFlix Party movie nights, a mental health workshop and panel talks for first-year students to partake in.
“It was definitely difficult this year. For J-Frosh there has always been a template of signature events that happen every year and the team just builds on it as the years go by. However, this year everything was flipped on its head and we had to start fresh. We started out by outlining what was most important from in person frosh week and figuring out how to replicate that, ” said Sahara Mehdi, VP of events for the JCU.
According to Mehdi, the new online format of orientation, which was extended from one week to two weeks, allows students to choose and interact with events or content that resonate with them the most.
“It is two weeks worth of events, some happening simultaneously so students can choose what they want to attend. We host some casual events like movie nights which usually have smaller turnouts while more school-related events like panels have larger numbers of attendees,” said Mehdi.
The JCU has chosen to have the popular social media platform TikTok be the theme of this year’s orientation.
“This year’s theme is TikTok, we have been utilizing the platform by producing some educational videos with tips or virtual campus tours as well as lighter and more fun videos students can connect with,” she said.
According to Mehdi, while there have been challenges to hosting orientation events online, the team at JCU has maintained a positive attitude and has been able to adapt to the virtual format.
“There have been times when my computer just doesn’t want to cooperate. There can be a lot of technical difficulties so we try to foresee and plan ahead but a lot of it is out of our control. The whole team has always kept a good attitude about challenges which is encouraging,” said Mehdi.
Mehdi and the JCU team are determined to work through challenges and adapt to create a valuable experience for RSJ students.
“It took a lot of fine tuning, in fact we are still fine tuning.That is the reality of a virtual landscape, it constantly changes and we have to adapt to it,” she said.
The JCU and the staff at the Ryerson School of Journalism continue to adapt to provide online experiences for students to excel in their academic careers.