The Divine Word University recently hosted its’ first Virtual Open Day last Saturday at the Madang Campus.
The Open Day brought together all the faculties in the university which included the Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences, Faculty of Business & Informatics, Faculty of Education and Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences.
The Virtual Open Day was initiated by the President of Divine Word University Fr. Philip Gibbs, who advised that it was a safer and easier way to conduct the event due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
“With the previous open days, we tend to have big crowds of people coming together for such an event like this, therefore we have decided to proceed with hosting a Virtual Open Day here at the campus where people can still be part of the event via online means.”
Fr. Gibbs said that the people can still be informed of what is happening during the event through the aid of modern technology.
All faculties together with the organizing committee met together to discuss and plan out on how the virtual Open Day would be portrayed and carried out.
“The preparations of the event took about three months where each faculty was required to prepare film clips and a virtual guide tour of the University.”
The DWU President said that they experienced a number of challenges given that it was virtual Open Day instead of the traditional way of hosting the event on campus.
He added that a number of things had to be checked thoroughly prior to the event such as the technology requirements, the webinar on zoom and the live streaming on Facebook all of which were technically challenging for the organisers.
“Since this was an online event, we had to make sure we did not experience any problems mainly with the power source, the internet, and to make sure all videos were of high quality and at a sufficient standard.”
Fr. Gibbs said that the event is likely to happen again virtually next year depending on the Covid-19 situation.
He further stressed that the majority of the people in Madang must be vaccinated if they want to attend an actual Open Day at the campus.
“From the perspective of people living in Madang, there wasn’t really a good feedback, being that they wanted to attend just like every other year with only a few in the province benefiting from Virtual Open Day.”
However, President Gibbs said despite this, there was a good response in terms of the national perspective of people in other parts of the country and also from overseas who were able to join in on the Virtual Open Day.
“The outcome has been good so far; statistics will have to be improved with more viewers watching the event live on Facebook.”
“I really think that this event has pushed DWU in taking another step up in terms of operating on a modern level.”
It has been challenging, but that challenge has meant that we had to learn and operate at a higher level which is part of the learning process.”
Fr. Gibbs added that the committee is set to schedule meetings to evaluate on what was done well and what could be improved for future virtual Open Days.