Erica: COVID-19 has impacted almost all aspects of life, and “normal” has a dynamic definition that shifts daily. How do we plan events to showcase the John Carroll University community's scholarship, creativity, and intellectual achievement? Programming must be agile and flexible. Event planners need to be resilient and patient, and ready for unexpected changes. Every stakeholder needs an easy way to engage.

Carole: Now that we’re entering the pandemic’s third year, we continue to shift our approach to programming. We’re moving toward more in-person events while continuing to follow the Covid-19 safety protocols on our campus. As event planners, we have to accept the “new normal” and the expectation that people will need options in the way they interact with each other. This is where hybrid programming comes in.

Erica: Thinking about the new norm and how it has affected on-campus programming, we knew we needed an innovative solution. Canceling our annual Celebration of Scholarship two years in a row simply wasn’t an option. I watched colleagues struggle with homegrown options, too many meeting links, hastily made websites, and knew there had to be something better available. Enter Symposium. A couple of meetings with Ansh and Yash and I knew we found an excellent option for our first virtual Celebration of Scholarship. I was so excited by the potential of this tool, JCU also used it to host the annual Scholar’s Day, a featured event sponsored by a grant through ServeOhio and the Corporation for National and Community Service. We engaged with stakeholders on campus, around the corner, and across the state between these two events! An impressive feat seeing that Ohio was still under shutdown protocols. One of the best parts about Symposium is that both JCU events saw more traffic than our normal in-person events. This platform gave families, colleagues, friends, and institutional partners easy access to the events.

Symposium offers substantial cost savings over the traditional poster presentation method. Past poster events with approximately 125 posters would cost about $5,000. With Symposium we see a 33% decrease in expenses per event. The fact that Symposium allows five events with our annual subscription means we could potentially save over $8,000 per year. But we have to consider if the tangible benefit of dollars saved is worth the intangible benefits of an in-person poster event. Research day events allow for networking, community engagement, student experience, and the sense of satisfaction that comes from presenting your work. With some creativity and the innovative tools offered through the Symposium platform, I feel we accomplished both.

For instance, JCU’s Celebration of Scholarship poster session requires students to also upload a 2 minute video presenting their poster as if a judge was standing in front of them. This is an excellent exercise for students to practice soft skills and blend them with technology. We all know how hard the perfect elevator pitch is, now record yourself and post it online. Our students are rising to the challenge in all academic areas. As we are gearing up for the 2022 Celebration of Scholarship, I remember how engaged our judges were and that the amount of time they could spend with each poster was unlimited given the online format. They left encouraging and uplifting comments for our presenters that I’m not certain they would have had the time to give in a normal poster session.

Carole: We are just beginning to explore the possibilities that Symposium can offer our university. For example, our Admissions and Alumni Relations departments are considering using Symposium to present prerecorded video content to potential new students or alumni groups. Symposium’s live meeting and webinar options for personal interactions are levels above the “usual” Zoom or Teams formats. There are so many ways that we want to use Symposium in our outreach efforts to give personalized attention without burdensome travel time or expense!

Carole: There are several ways that Symposium has improved the traditional “academic conference” format. Students who prepare virtual presentations gain experience in digital arts and communications. They still interact with their audience - and judges! - through discussion rooms or chat functions, gaining experience in new forms of interaction that will be a part of academic and work cultures for the foreseeable future. We have been able to recruit judges for our events from literally all over the world, allowing experts in their fields and local community members to interact with and mentor our students. This would never be possible without Symposium.

Anita: As the Director of JCU AmeriCorps, a federally-funded program that aims to reduce disparities by improving health outcomes, I organize state-wide conferences for students, educators, volunteers, and other community members. Our annual Scholars Day presents several challenges when held in-person, including travel time and expense, accommodation challenges, and presenter familiarity with the venue, to name just a few. Symposium eliminates these barriers and creates an equitable opportunity for all participants without the cost and other barriers of in-person conferences. The platform is easy to use and interactive, allowing students to provide feedback, network, and collaborate with others across the state. Accessibility to posters and presentations even after the conference enables participants to continually review and refine their projects.

Although we did not directly track how many individuals participated, we do know that Symposium increased accessibility for family members and other participants who traditionally would have difficulty attending an in person event. It was great to see parents joining our live sessions and reviewing presentation materials. Students reported the excitement of being able to easily share their presentations with their loved ones. Symposium is extremely user friendly and our students had no troubles uploading presentations. They loved the fact that they could access their work on an iPhone. Students also joined sessions with their iPhones during their bus rides home. Symposium gave us the added benefit of time. Being able to access all content on an iPhone or iPad greatly increased schedule flexibility and allowed for greater participation.

Carole: Symposium has significantly improved the judging process for our student research competition. We’re a small, liberal arts, primarily undergraduate university, not known as a big research school, but we still have students who conduct exceptional research, collaborating with mentors beyond our campus. As a result, our students compete in every field from astrophysics to zoology, but finding effective judges in all these fields is challenging (especially when our faculty feel uncomfortable judging their own students). This is where Symposium comes in! We’ve been able to recruit judges from literally all over the world because they’re able to evaluate our students’ work and interact with them right on the Symposium platform. Symposium’s judging function makes it easy to upload our judging criteria and score sheets and assign posters to individual judges. From the comfort of their own computers, judges evaluate, comment on, and score research presentations. They also interact with the presenters, either in real-time or via a chat function. At the end of the event, we download the entered scores, add up the points, and we have our winners! But most importantly, our students have been able to “meet” and get feedback from esteemed leaders in their respective fields.

Carole: The name of the game has been “communication.” Even in the third year of the pandemic, many features of virtual or hybrid events are still new to many people, and the rules are always changing. Our 2022 event will be different from that of 2021, so it’s even more of a challenge directing people in the right directions. A lot of our planning effort has been in advertising: building our event website, creating signage with QR codes, and distributing flyers, emails, and even social media. Compared to pre-pandemic years, a much larger fraction of our time and effort has been spent just getting the word out and directing everyone to the Symposium links.