Engaging online content for all generations
UCSIA organizes lectures, study days and summer schools for a wide public about topics related to the five thematic lines. The traditional public that frequents our activities are students and highly educated elderly. Since COVID-19 we have noticed that our public is less inclined to participate in physical events. While a lecture evening before corona easily catered to 70 to 80 participants, we now only reach half this amount of spectators. Therefore, UCSIA is increasingly looking for online alternatives, offering podcasts and webinars next to our traditional on-site lectures. With the renovation of the UCSIA office, we have installed recording camera’s in the event room to provide opportunities for livestreaming, and we even installed a small studio for recording educational videos and podcasts to further professionalize our online work.
Though, while we have the infrastructure and equipment, our staff currently lacks the skills and knowledge to create engaging and interesting online content for our public. Especially with regard to the use of the studio, we are in need of assistance in how to effectively use the equipment available to us. How can we translate our traditional onsite activities (conferences, study days and summer schools) to an online format (ex. educational videos, podcasts, …)?
Secondly, we find that, although a large public is interested in online events, for our elderly public, this creates many thresholds. We want to make sure that we do not leave behind this group in our activities. Therefore, it is crucial to us that the online content that we create is accessible and relevant for all our target groups, in particular for students and elderly people. How can we make sure that our online content reaches both target groups?
What do we need?
We challenge the students of the social hackathon ‘digital bridges and gaps in society’ to develop engaging digital formats that speak to both the elderly as the student audience of UCSIA. Ideally, these formats contain detailed descriptions and concrete examples, like audio fragments, instruction videos, etc.
We would like students to develop guidelines for the UCSIA staff that answer two main questions:
- How can we translate our traditional onsite activities (conferences, study days and summer schools) to (an) online format(s) (ex. educational videos, podcasts, …)?
- How can we make sure that this online content is accessible and relevant for both our target groups, being university students and highly educated elderly?
Ideally, the guideline contains concrete examples, to make the information more understandable and usable, ex. a short podcast example, instruction videos, links to relevant platforms, etc.
The guideline should also be applicable to the work of UCSIA, taking into account the topics and the activities linked to our organization. We are not looking for ‘general’ guidelines, but contextualized suggestions linked to the work that we are doing and our specific target groups.
More information:
We advise the students to at least read about our organization and the work that we are doing in advance of the social hackathon. All information about our organization can be found on our website: https://www.ucsia.org/.
We will provide documentation of two events that are exemplary for the UCSIA program, giving students the opportunity to use these events to create an online ‘alternative’. We will also provide pictures and information about the video and podcast equipment that we have available at the organization.
