We host a symposium every spring where our undergraduate students present their research and creative activities. Normally this event is held in-person on our campus, but in the spring of 2020 our campus was shut down in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. Rather than cancelling the symposium I started looking for an option to host the symposium virtually. I happened to come across the ForagerOne post on a Council for Undergraduate Research forum and jumped at the opportunity. We hosted symposium virtually in the spring 2020 using the Symposium platform, which turned out to be an excellent way for the campus community to come together during such a difficult time. While I originally thought this was going to be an alternative just during COVID we found that offering the symposium virtually brought extra benefits of being to share the event with many individuals who normally wouldn't have been able to attend. This included alumni, donors, and key stakeholders—such as our Board of Trustees—and students were also able to share their work with family and friends.

Given that our virtual symposium in the spring of 2020 was such a success we decided to continue to utilize Symposium. Since this time, we have hosted 3 additional events using the Symposium platform. In the fall of 2020 using Symposium we again hosted a fully virtual Undergraduate Research & Creative Activities Symposium and in Spring of 2021 we hosted a virtual First Year Launch symposium and a hybrid (virtual and in-person) Undergraduate Research & Creative Activities Symposium. For the Spring of 2021 event our campus remained socially distanced, so we could not invite the broader community. By combining the in-person and hybrid aspects we were still able to bring the event to a much larger audience. Using Symposium has saved 20+ hours of event set-up for the fully virtual events and facilitated the registration process for our hybrid event.

We have hosted fully virtual and hybrid (virtual and in-person) events using Symposium. The fully virtual events were used when we could not host in-person events, or we were under strict social distancing requirements. As we have been emerging form the pandemic, we have been doing hybrid events that are both in-person and online. The hybrid events have been the best of both worlds with the virtual platform being a way for students to share their work to a large audience, many of whom would not be able to attend even in spite of the pandemic, but we still host an in-person event so that we can come together as a campus community and students are able to share their work with the local community.

More than anything the Symposium platform has allowed us to have a broader audience for our event. Having the virtual aspect has provided the opportunity for us to showcase works with alumni, donors, key stakeholders, graduate school recruiters and family/friends of students. It has also offered greater flexibility and leaves us with a centralized repository of student work that provides great marketability.

The Symposium platform has really allowed us to broaden our audience. In the past with just an in-person event, our audience has really been limited to the local community (we are located in a small town in rural southwest Colorado so our local community is likewise small). Symposium has allowed us to connect out current students with alumni, donors, graduate school recruiters, which we feel has greatly helped these individuals remain connected with the campus community. Additionally, students have been able to share their work with family and friends who would not normally be able to attend the in-person event.

I think hybrid is a great option and what we will continue with in future. This has been a great way to engage the largest possible audience for our event. With little additional work we have been able to bring our symposium to alumni, donors, family, friends, graduate recruiters and prospective students. Having to prepare and upload their presentations slightly before the event has also given students a bit more practice and made for more polished presentations.

#1 Don't give students an an option of participating in only one event (in-person or virtual), have it be a single event that includes both aspects. We do have some distance students who can only do the virtual event, but I ask that faculty contact me about these students. Basically, if students are participating in the on-campus event they register through their virtual submission. This has greatly simplified the programming.

#2 Consolidate the programming so that individuals can attend in-person or virtually, but then use targeted messaging to inform groups that are likely not able to attend in-person (e.g., alumni and donors) to let them know that they can attend virtually.