Start a Webinar Series

The New Student Programs & Family Outreach's (NSPFO) Parent and Family Webinar Series was created this fall as a new strategy for connecting and engaging with our Oregon State parents and family members. Currently, we have completed two different sessions, recorded both, and then made them available through our website. As this was not only a new initiative for our department, but for myself, I have some tips below if you are considering creating something similar!

  • Brainstorming topics: take an in-depth look at what is happening around campus and the time of year–contact departments that may spend time speaking with parents or family members via telephone or email; what questions are frequently being asked?
  • Identify if there are current video-casting products available to you. I found that we had a license with WebEx–then from there I found multiple YouTube (free) tutorials and our Web Services team offered a training!
  • Utilize student affairs professionals, university administrators, and professors. There is constant discussion of the benefits to collaboration between academic and student affairs; this is a great avenue to create lasting partnerships! Keep in mind, parents and family members want to hear from a multitude of departments all over campus; professionals that interact with their students in and out of the classroom.
  • Take into account different time zones and that parents and family members could live all over the world–I’ve found that 10:00 a.m. (PST) is NOT the best time to host a live webinar.
  • Have a trial run if you are planning to go live–this was one of the best things I could do to play around with the WebEx system and also make sure the viewer (a colleague) was capturing everything we wanted them too!

If you have any further questions about how to get a webinar program started for your parents and family members please feel free to contact me at [email protected]

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