As you may have read in the Summer 2020 newsletter, HM faculty members have had to adapt the structure of their classes to COVID. As you might have guessed, those social distancing guidelines carried over to the spring 2020 semester, and for instructor Ms. Ashley McCowan, it gave her the change to reinvent her events class.
McCowan, took what was originally the one-day “Hospitality Summit” and created the Hospitality Summit Webinar Series. Education directed by students, for students. The webinars were held Mondays and Wednesdays throughout the semester and all hospitality students and staff were invited to participate.
As part of their assignment, pairs of students were tasked with creating their own webinar from inception to execution. The students had to determine the topic, contact their speaker, and conduct the webinar. McCowan quickly realized that “allowing students to learn to schedule and manage webinars is extremely beneficial.
Virtual, online, and hybrid meetings were once a small percentage of the industry and now all meetings, essentially, are either cancelling or going the virtual/hybrid route for the foreseeable future.” She went on to say that “students did an outstanding job and will be well served by this experience as they enter the industry.”