Webinars have gained exponential popularity due to the rising demand for online learning. They are useful for educators, teachers, and instructors to realize the full potential of video content and reach a wider, more diverse student audience without any kind of geographical barriers. Hosting webinars in academic institutions is one of the best ways to engage students, faculty, and external participants remotely. They are one of the best and most effective ways for education and engagement.
In this guide, let’s understand the core reasons, the process to host webinars in academic institutions, and how to create a memorable webinar experience.
Main Reasons for Hosting Webinars in Academic Institutions
Hosting webinars in academic institutions helps deliver valuable knowledge to the students. These interactive sessions help to enhance one’s professional development with skill-based lectures, workshops, or certification programs. Some of the main reasons for hosting webinars in academic institutions are as follows:
Hosting Webinars is Flexible and Convenient
When it comes to education, webinars are one of the best options that offer great flexibility and convenience to organizers. They perfectly fit into the busy academic environment. They can be of various types, such as live sessions, which provide better interaction, whereas the pre-recorded sessions allow the attendees to learn later at their own pace.
Hosting Webinars Expands Knowledge
Webinars are perfect knowledge-expanding event formats, which the academic institutions can use to reach students, researchers, and educators beyond physical campuses. Interested people can attend from anywhere. This erases the need for travel and geographical barriers. The audience can actively participate at their convenience from the comfort of their homes. They can boost their knowledge in their interested subject or topic. The learning journey can be easily continued with webinars.
Hosting Webinars Boosts Interactivity
Webinars encourage attendees to interact with one another. There are several webinar platforms for academic institutions, like Dryfta, that consist of audience engagement tools. These interactive tools help the attendees to have group interactions as well as one-on-one interactions whenever and wherever they want to.
Hosting Webinars Invites Global Experts
Academic institutions can bring renowned speakers all under one single platform without worrying about visas, travel expenses, accommodation charges, or scheduling challenges. This is helpful to bring diverse and international views and build meaningful academic discussions.
Hosting Webinars Support Learning
Webinars are considered the most effective learning tools when compared with in-person learning methods. Webinars have a positive impact on students when they are about the learning process and retaining useful information.
Hosting Webinars is Affordable
Several academic institutions and teachers prefer hosting webinars when compared to in-person sessions because of their affordability. The cost that goes into venues, traveling, accommodation, printed materials, and logistics gets eliminated. With webinars, neither the attendees nor the organizers are spending their money. With only a simple internet connection, the attendees can attend these types of events. Academic institutions can invest those savings in research, tools, or student support.
Hosting Webinars Promotes Research Sharing
Promoting research is an important aspect for academic institutions. With the help of webinars, researchers and young scholars can present their works quickly. They offer researchers with, a wider reach to get connected with more audiences, including peers from other institutions and nationalities. Additionally, they also create space for more meaningful academic conversations, which is helpful to enhance the research findings.
Hosting Webinars Increases Institutional Visibility
Many academic institutions are actively involved in hosting webinars because they help to increase their visibility as well as to establish themselves as a reliable knowledge source. Webinars are the best platform for educational institutions to showcase their students’ achievements, especially in terms of research, faculty expertise, and innovative programs.
They also provide details on the latest partnerships with other institutions and corporations, and the current projects they hold. Webinars are highly useful to share the research outcomes, contributions, and thoughtful leadership. This results in boosting the academic credibility, fostering better relationships and building a lasting reputation for the academic institutions.
Step-by-Step Process for Hosting Webinars in Academic Institutions
Webinars must be organized carefully. They are useful for academic institutions to achieve expected attendance rates, flawless technical execution, and meaningful exchanges that encourage scholarly interactions and community ties. Webinars are used to effectively progress research conversations across audiences worldwide, involve alumni, and exchange expertise. A step-by-step process for effectively hosting webinars in academic institutions is as follows:
Step 1: Have a Clear Goal and Target Audience
For hosting a webinar, it is essential to have a clear and achievable goal. It is a good idea to display the recent research discoveries and instructors’ experiences, and the latest technologies that are used. It is also equally essential to make students remain in contact with business executives who help them to advance in their careers.
The targeted audience can be present enrolled students, alumni networks, potential faculty recruits, multidisciplinary researchers from various partnered universities, and educational institutions. Academic institutions that are willing to host webinars should consider approaching their respective stakeholders in advance. This is useful to know the main areas of interest, engaging topics, and strategically plan the webinar that aligns with the academic calendars and institutional agendas.
Step 2: Select the Right Platform and Tools
Academic institutions must assess the platforms that help conduct webinars according to their capacity requirements, learning management system integration capabilities, and compliance with data protection laws. To support interactive sessions, technical teams assess screen-sharing capabilities, polling features, audio-video quality, and breakout room alternatives. Ask the support personnel to set up backup internet connections and backup equipment to avoid interruptions during live broadcasts.
Step 3: Come up with an Engaging Speaker Lineup and Content
To ensure relevance to contemporary scholarly discussions and institutional research. The faculty coordinators curate information around timely subjects that are helpful for higher education or sustainable campus initiatives. Renowned experts, such as department heads, visiting scholars, and alumni, are invited by institutions to give talks. This encourages audience participation and keeps viewers attentive during the entire session. Content designers create visually appealing slides with minimum text, excellent photos, and linked videos.
Step 4: Develop Strategies for Registration and Promotion
Marketing teams create user-friendly registration sites that record important information like attendee responsibilities, follow-up events requirements, and preferred time zones for international attendees from various continents. Email newsletters, creating various social media campaigns on popular social media and networking platforms, are a good idea. These need to be focused especially towards academic professionals.
Step 5: Perform Technical Rehearsals and Focus on Arrangements
Before the webinar’s date, it is good to conduct extensive rehearsals in which all speakers, moderators, and technical support staff should be gathered in a special “green room” session to test their microphone levels, internet speed, and practice transitions. They must get accustomed to the interactive features, such as chat moderation tools and live polls. Thoroughly check recording settings like audio and video quality for post-event on-demand access. Also, have proper backup plans, such as scripted announcements, for any technical issues that might occur during the live presentation session.
Step 6: Execute the Live Webinar Smoothly
Panelists must be present first for final audio checks, and early registrants should be acknowledged with interesting icebreaker polls or questions. This can be anything related to the subject of the webinar or general salutations. To maintain excitement levels throughout the session, the speaker should be able to engage the audience.
They should also actively encourage attendees to take part in the Q&A and live polls. Ranking questions based on their relevance and participant upvotes, and offering space for real-time feedback through emoji reactions or hand-raising features is also a good idea.
Step 7: Engage and Interact with Participants Actively
Presenters should combine dynamic aspects such as live demonstrations of research findings, audience-submitted case studies addressed on the spot, and interactive whiteboard sessions. Attendees must also be given a chance to contribute to the ideas, and this should be visible to all participants connected via the webinar platform’s shared digital canvas. To promote inclusion and contributions from every participant, regardless of their physical location or institutional affiliation, they must be incorporated into the panel discussions.
Step 8: Follow-Up Post-Webinar for Maximum Impact
Send gratitude emails most preferably within 24 hours after the end of the webinar. Sending session recordings, downloadable slide decks, and certificates of attendance verified through trusted platforms is a good practice. Academic institutions usually analyze engagement metrics such as attendance duration, poll participation rates, and question submission volumes to refine future webinars. Cordially, send invitations to the high-engagement participants, and share details of upcoming webinars. Exclusively following up regarding research collaboration and providing volunteering opportunities within the academic community is also helpful.
Ways to Create a Memorable Webinar Experience
Hosting webinars require strong emphasis on presentation skills. A successful webinar is not solely dependent on the content but also on the way it is delivered and the way it is presented to the audience. The way information is conveyed, including body language, tone of voice, gestures, language and words used, and eye contact, can have a great impact on the prospective student’s perception and their engagement.
To make a webinar stand out and have a memorable experience, a few essential things must be considered, which include:
Communication
Whoever is speaking in the webinar must focus on using simple-to-understand language, avoiding any kind of unnecessary jargon, and organizing the delivered content logically. This ensures the audience stays focused and easily follows along and comprehends the main messages that are being conveyed.
Personalization
Always address the participants by their names whenever possible. Speakers can also include interesting stories related to the topic or any personal anecdotes. Encouraging the audience to ask questions or share their insights related to the topic during the session.
Technology
Using an all-in-one software like Dryfta for hosting webinars helps academic institutions to easily manage all the important aspects. Using interactive and engagement boosting features like personalized chat boxes, virtual hand-raising, simplified screen sharing, and breakout rooms is helpful. Innovative solutions help ensure audiences’ active participation and proactive collaboration.
Quality
Always prefer quality over quantity while hosting webinars. Sometimes there might be only a limited audience for a session; even then, make sure to deliver the best without getting compromised on quality. Use unique and rich content so that it looks more appealing.
Testimonials
Share reviews, messages, images, collages, and videos of the webinar in the form of testimonials. These add a strong layer of credibility and authenticity. Provide details on how the current students, alumni, or whoever attended benefited from the webinar.
Resources
Provide easy-to-access, view, and download links, slides, graphics, recordings, documents, and any useful materials after the webinar. Sharing these references after the completion of the session reinforces learning, extends value, and explores the subject further.
Parting Thoughts
Webinars have become a powerful tool for academic institutions. It is helpful to easily achieve the enrollment objectives by carefully organizing, marketing, and presenting engaging webinars. They also have an impact even after the live event ends. A successful webinar has the potential to create an everlasting experience for the audience and this is possible by focusing on delivering an impressive and engaging experience.