Kathmandu: The coronavirus pandemic has pushed educational institutions to reckon with a new mode of teaching with many institutions conducting classes, examinations and ECAs through online mediums.
Naturally, promotion of students and admission are also done virtually.
As the National Education Board is planning to publish Secondary Education Examination (SEE) results within next month, plus-two colleges have already opened pre-registration for admission of the new intake. And so they have also started promoting their courses.
Around this time in a normal year, higher secondary colleges would be busy promoting themselves at educational fairs, where representatives from the colleges would counsel and try to attract students and guardians. But since the coronavirus pandemic is here to stay, those physical activities are not recommended.
As an alternative to those educational fairs and inability to reach the colleges physically, colleges have started promoting themself digitally. They have started uploading promotional pictures and promotional videos in their social media handles. Online counselling sessions are also all the rage.
Kathmandu-based Uniglobe College, for instance, is following the same strategy for the promotion of college and available courses from last year and for them it is as effective as physical practice.
“Those online sessions and other digital ways of promoting colleges are proving to be very productive for us,” says Shekhar Adhikari, program coordinator of Management and Law streams at Uniglobe College. “As our college is technically sound, we haven’t faced any challenges while doing things virtually.”
“In physical meetings, we could explain and show the physical infrastructure like the classroom and labs. As an alternative, we have filmed all our infrastructures and have been providing a virtual tour to all those who are interested in our college.”
According to Adhikari, to make the interested students more informed about the college, it is running around three to four online counselling sessions each day. Each session is being participated by around 100 participants on average, he informed. Participants from far flung places like Darchula, Rukum and Bajhang are also attending those sessions.
Even last year, by following the same strategy the college fulfilled its enrollment capacity, which is 1,200 students.
Unlike Uniglobe, however, the DAV College has not yet found the online promotion “productive”.
“The online method of promotion is not really helpful for us,” said Suman Basnet, academic director at DAV. “The responses we are getting from those promotional strategies are unable to meet our expectations. It is just our goodwill that is attracting students towards us.”
While on the other hand, he also says the online promotions are comparatively very economical than those educational fairs that would be conducted to promote the colleges.
Akin to Uniglobe and DAV, South Western State College is also promoting the college virtually.
Regarding its efficacy, Raju Dhakal, Program Coordinator of Science stream in Southwestern State College, says, “In physical meetings, we could explain and show the physical infrastructure like the classroom and labs. As an alternative, we have filmed all our infrastructures and have been providing a virtual tour to all those who are interested in our college.”
With that, the college is also informing them about their facilities, courses and teaching methodology through online sessions.
“These strategies have received fairly good responses from potential students,” said Dhakal. “Last year too the college followed the same methodology. And it successfully fulfilled its intake capacity.”
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