With the upcoming graduation and commencement season posing a number of complex and challenging issues for both universities and colleges, institutions are looking for ways to provide a safe and effective way of moving forward. These ceremonies are often seen as huge landmarks in the lives of graduates, as well as their friends and families. Whilst the past couple of years have proven terribly disruptive for all, 2022 looks set to be a year to bring back in-person graduation ceremonies – but with a few added safety features.
As some of the last remaining restrictions and guidelines that were imposed during the pandemic are removed, universities and colleges are looking to alternative means of hosting these events, with virtual ceremonies and attendances specifically in mind.
In-Person, Hybrid or Virtual?
New to the market is a whole host of companies that offer services that allow the booking and organizing of the entire graduation and commencement ceremonies to be taken care of, even down to ordering and distributing photographs, ceremonial robes, and even video hosting and graduation slides.
Many of these companies offer a simple route to hosting your graduation ceremony, no matter the size of your college, school, or university, and even allow hybrid events that take in a physical in-person ceremony as well as hosting live, streamed graduation events for users, parents, teachers, and lecturers to attend at their leisure.
With safety being the utmost priority in terms of covid, safety and security is also the number one priority when it comes to accessing virtual events and services. With each virtual event, you will be able to approve access to anyone applying, set the times of live-streaming events and schedules, as well as remove any unwanted visitors or uncooperative users at any given time.
Improving efficiencies-
We all want each graduation ceremony to go without a hitch, so employing the services of a dedicated company that specializes in delivering on their promise, they offer unique services for all budgets and all institutions. Companies such as Gradpak offer light services that every institution could benefit from, especially in-person graduation ceremonies.
Offering simple and efficient registration systems for graduates is just one way in which these services can help smooth your institution’s administrative burden, leaving your team free to handle other necessities. Further still, a simple look at the registration portal and you will be able to find a whole host of crucial services that will pave the way for your institution’s most efficient and smoothly organized graduation ceremony to date.
Whilst we see in these later years of the covid-19 pandemic that the virus affects healthy young people minimally when compared to older people or those with medical predispositions to complications and health issues, many young students will want to graduate in person. There are still a number of important restrictions on those who test positive, and the number of days in which they will have to isolate, hybrid graduation ceremonies have proven their worth in giving graduates a truly special day.
With Hybrid Events, even Quarantined Students Can Attend-
These hybrid ceremonies are a great way to ensure that every single student who tested positive or negative will be able to attend their own graduation ceremony in person and online and feel like part of the occasion. This has been hugely important to the students, especially given that they have often missed a large number of study days and in-person learning throughout the past two years.
Your college, university, or institution may not have had the administrative staff on hand to deal with such a huge shift in how learning has evolved in just two short years. Giving your institution a boost by outsourcing a number of administrative tasks to a third-party company is a great way of dealing with a huge change and especially in a relatively short period of time.
Along with the ability to host virtual graduation ceremonies, many of the companies that have helped numerous universities and colleges throughout the pandemic also offer a number of helpful services that not every institution can offer themselves.
Dedicated Tools for Personalisation and Security-
The registration module helps students register themselves for the commencement and even includes a helpful and simple to complete questionnaire that allows your institution to gather the requisite information to determine a particular student’s individual or special needs and requirements. This simple addition not only puts some power back in the hands of the students, it also unlocks your institution’s ability to plan for post-graduation and future events and ceremonies.
Not only do some of the services allow for institutions of all sizes and budgets, but the virtual graduation services also allow for personalized and branded slides for use in your institution’s graduation commencement. This is a fantastic personalized touch and helps make the ceremony on a whole seems more in-house and stylized.
One of the best ways in which hybrid and virtual commencement ceremonies can be arranged and planned for is the way in which graduates are given a greater deal of control over who they invite as guests. The online portal offers a great way for graduates to book guests ticketing, with the administration setting the maximum number of tickets each graduate can order.
Efficient Ticketing Systems for Face-to-Face Graduation-
Each one of these tickets contains a simple and unique QR code that your institution’s security team can check within a database as well as monitor throughout the ceremony event.
Many of the service providers offer a handy app that can be downloaded to Android and iPhone, whereby each graduate can use it to check-in and have their attendance automatically recorded into the database. This allows for security and local admin to monitor the number of people attending and arrange accordingly for safer progress throughout the ceremony.
One of the best things about creating a hybrid or in-person graduation ceremony is the return to the sense of community spirit within your university, college or learning institution.
This face-to-face celebration was sadly missed by some during the early days of the pandemic, but thanks to the services of virtual hosting companies, from now on, nobody will have the opportunity to miss their own commencement, and those guests, staff and institutions will be able to move forward safer, stronger and together.