When you think of a virtual commencement ceremony, you might picture a livestream video with a speaker reading off graduates’ names one after another.
But a virtual commencement can be so much more.
With creativity and Hopin’s event platform, you can turn a virtual commencement ceremony into a memorable, fun event that wows graduates, their families and friends.
Here are 9 unique ways to create a standout virtual convocation on Hopin.
1. Present your main ceremony from Hopin’s Stage.
100,000 people can join your live ceremony with Hopin’s Stage. That means your graduates, faculty and their family and friends can all attend.
On top of that, you can prep speakers and check their sound and video before they go live with Hopin’s Backstage.
And students, speakers and attendees can interact throughout the event with Hopin’s chat tool.
2. Create a multi-day celebration.
While many virtual commencements are single day affairs, you can level up your commencement celebrations by creating a multi-day — or multi-week — event for graduates.
For example, you could host a game night or baccalaureate ceremony the day before graduation using either Hopin’s Stage or Sessions. Or, you could create a week of events that lead up to graduation.
To help graduates navigate your multi-day virtual celebration, create a schedule of events. Graduates can then pick and choose what they want to attend and easily add their chosen events to their calendars.
3. Host an award ceremony.
Want to recognize students who achieved amazing things during their time at your institution? Host an awards ceremony before, during or after your main graduation ceremony to recognize your graduates.
If you host your awards ceremony inside Hopin’s Sessions, you can invite graduates to join the livestream video to accept their awards.
Pro tip: With Hopin Sessions, you can invite or allow attendees to join the live audio and video. Up to 3,000 people can join a Hopin session. Sessions are ideal for highly-interactive events.
4. Create rooms for different groups to celebrate.
Make your virtual convocation special by allowing smaller groups to gather in one place and celebrate. Using Hopin Sessions, create multiple, password-protected virtual rooms for groups that would like to meet before or after commencement.
For example, sororities, fraternities, alumni and clubs can create their own virtual Sessions with unique, private passwords. Then, they can share the password with their group.
Inside their private, virtual rooms, they can meet before or after graduation to celebrate graduates.
5. Allow graduates to create their own virtual rooms.
Graduates may want to create their own private virtual room to meet with their extended family or with a friend group before or after graduation.
With Hopin, you can easily allow graduates to create their own virtual rooms. Just set up Hopin’s Sessions so that event attendees can create their own Sessions. These attendees can make the room private or public.
For instance, let’s say a group of friends wants to virtually gather after the graduation ceremony to celebrate. They can create their own password-protected Hopin Sessions room and invite friends by sending them the password and a link to the Session.
Once they enter the Session, up to 20 people from the friend group can join the live video and audio.
6. Build fun, interactive polls for graduates, family and friends.
Transform your virtual commencement into an interactive celebration with fun polls for graduates, family and friends.
With a Hopin poll, attendees can submit their response and see what percentage of people chose each poll answer.
7. Ask graduates to participate in a collaborative collage or whiteboard.
Using Miro’s virtual whiteboard tool and Hopin, graduates can design a virtual collage or whiteboard together.
This is a great way to encourage students to interact together before or after the commencement ceremony.
8. Create a career fair for graduates.
41% of recent college graduates work in jobs that don’t require their college degrees, according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. One way to help your soon-to-be graduates land a job: Host a career fair leading up to their graduation ceremony.
Hopin’s Expo booths make this easy. You can invite companies who are hiring to create a virtual booth at your career fair. Companies can customize their booths, livestream video, play a pre-recorded video and provide resources to graduates.
Soon-to-be graduates can visit different booths, learn about companies, network and see job openings.
9. Build a virtual photo booth.
Your graduates’ convocation should be memorable. To help them remember those memories, create a virtual photo booth inside your virtual event using Snapbar and Hopin.
With Snapbar, you can create a themed, branded background for your photo booth. Your attendees can take photos and decorate and customize them. Then, you can create a photo mosaic of all of your graduates’ photos.
To add your photo booth to your Hopin event, just create a Hopin Expo booth.
Make your virtual commencement special!
Commencement is an important day for graduates. It should be a memorable celebration.
Instead of live streaming your commencement in a virtual meeting room, create a multi-day, fun virtual graduation with Hopin.
Have questions or want to try Hopin? Get in touch with our team at [email protected]
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