CASE STUDY
UNIVERSITY INDUCTION WEEK
a competitive tour guide of the university campus
Guests – 1,200
Location – Warwick University Campus
Format – Go Urban with bespoke content
Included – Students feet!
Duration – Split over 3 days
WMG - Induction Week
We have worked with Warwick Conferences on many occasions at this fantastic University on their fam trips and helped to engage their clients through our creative event ideas. However this event brief was passed to us via Warwick Manufacturing Group at the University.
WMG is an academic department at the University of Warwick, providing research, education and knowledge transfer in engineering, manufacturing and technology. Every year they have a huge number of new students arriving on campus to enhance their education.
Induction week is a very busy time with a lot of information for the students to take in and the team from WMG tasked with building the induction week program wanted something fun and engaging to enhance their package.
The campus is a very big area with lots of amazing facilities and buildings that the students would need to familiarise themselves with and learn about.
Sure they could provide the students with the usual paper based map and information key with links to further information, but would the students really use this and digest the information?
gamification time!
The brief was for us to create a totally new and unique experience for the 1,200 students on induction week. We were to provide them with an interactive, engaging and fun competitive activity to enhance the induction week and ensure they not only learnt about the University and its facilities but also had a great time and widened their social circle.
This was to take place over 3 days with session times of 3 hours per day.
Creativity Followed
Following some initial pre-event meetings with the team from WMG we mapped out where their most important buildings were on the campus. The WMG team then provided us with the content they wanted to test the students on relating to the university. They also provided us with valuable information about what services were available for the students at each building.
This content was then programmed into our app and set as challenges for the students in the form of questions or puzzles. The challenges were all activated via GPS on our iPads either outside the building of interest or in the area of where the service was provided. This provided a great fun way to remember where the buildings were located and learn helpful facts about them. A much better and effective way to learn as opposed to looking at a paper map (If at all).
Images of buildings and important people at the University were also used to create puzzles and games within the treasure hunt. We also created bespoke icons on the map and graphics throughout branded to WMG and the university. As well as all the bespoke content provided by the client we added our usual array of fun photo and video-based tasks as well as a race to hunt for treasure!
Hidden within various challenges were virtual keys. These keys were required to unlock special chests in a sequential order and only once a team unlocked the last chest would they be provided with a shovel to dig for treasure.
The treasure was marked on the map with an X and only the first team to dig for the treasure could claim it as theirs along with a huge point bonus!
Conclusion
The event was a complete success with excellent feedback from the students and WMG team. There was a high level of engagement from the students and the team from WMG were very satisfied that the activity met their original brief and exceeded their expectations.
Within just a few days after the event we were in talks with the University to enhance the package even more for next year!
