evaluation report lecturers landon carnie and jade bilowol

This report will present information relating to main activities conducted in the campaign including Amazing Box, Story Chains, Ticket Stamping, Teaser video and Interview video clips..

RMIT UNIVERSITY VIETNAM

EVALUATION REPORT

Lecturers: Landon Carnie and Jade Bilowol

Lam Xuan Mai 83169238

Nguyen Kim Thanh Thao 53246634

I INTRODUCTION

The importance of practicing educated knowledge has always been highlighted in human society; therefore, Professional Communications program required final semester students to implement a real communication project which allows those students to apply the knowledge, theories and experience achieved throughout the previous semesters into a real life context Thanks to the project, Professional Communication students had obtained an enormous amount of experience in terms of Advertising, PR, event planning and management, as well as team work

Based on a brief provided by the client, RMIT Vietnam Communication Department, Interdisciplinary Communication Project students were demanded to conduct a project aiming to connect RMIT Vietnam alumni and current students Particularly, this project, naming “Where Are They Now” (WATN), attempted to generate positive attitude of students towards job acquisition after graduating Subsequent to the first five weeks of intensive studying, planning idea, presenting to client and preparing material for the whole project, WATN campaign started at the beginning of week 7, and ended with a networking event in week 10

This report will present information relating to main activities conducted in the campaign including Amazing Box, Story Chains, Ticket Stamping, Teaser video and Interview video clips Moreover, the implementation and statistic regarding those activities from the final research finding will also be indicated in order to evaluate the output and outcome The discussion and recommendation session are the valuable and helpful for continuous project(s) in the future will be also displayed in the last section

II CAMPAIGN RESEARCH, OBJECTIVES AND TIMELINE

In order to gain a better understanding of the connection between current RMIT Vietnam students and the alumni as well as the students’ attitude about entering the workplace, a formative survey on 97 RMIT students on HCMC campus was conducted at the beginning of the semester

The research result indicated a number of reasons why WATN campaign needed to be conducted First of all, 61.9% students think that they have little or no connection with the industry and graduates Moreover, 53% students said that they lack of working experience as well as the shortage in term of the connection with people in workplace (40% respondents) Due to those surveyed disadvantages, 56% students suggested that they want to have a chance to directly interact with RMIT alumni and listen to their real experience in order to prepare well for the future career

More importantly, the Communication Department also desired to reconnect the RMIT alumni

to the university in order to enhance the networking for current students as well as enrich the university portfolio

Based on the client’s demand and research findings, three objectives were set for the whole campaign:

° To have at least 30% of students aware of the alumni success stories by week 11

° To raise the percentage of students who say alumni influence their choice of career

from 15% to 20% by week 11

° To raise the percentage of students who are confident about getting a good job after graduation by 5% at the end week 11

Teaser video clip

Filming video clips

Via stamping on motorbike tickets, we wanted to raise and increase the awareness among a huge number of audiences about the campaign intranet website.

I —

It is produced along with a purpose to arouse the target publics’ curiosity toward the campaign This video clip guided the viewers to the website which is the main objective in this project

° Filming video clip

Those video clips were constructed based on the content of the interview scripts Each video clip told a successful story of one alumnus which was aimed to inspire the positive attitude of current students toward studying and social activities

EVALUATION OF OUTPUT

The objectives of WATN campaign were greatly recognized by surveyed students due to the careful inform in our group’s activities The amazing box was successful in generating excitement and awareness among students The student’s attendance was sensational due to free gifts delivery; however, it was tough to inform every student about the website and networking event during the first two sessions In order to acquire sufficient participants for the Networking Event, an extra amazing box session was organized to inform, persuades them and had them instantly register for the event The students’ determination to have a successful Networking Event should be emphasized The ticket stamping activity did not transfer the message to the audiences; moreover, the audiences did not understand the meaning of the activity and it was hard for them to recognize the stamp behind the motorbike tickets Besides, the story board chains should be hung at different places as the hanging positions were not so transparent for students which might reduce the effectiveness of the activity Additionally, due to some objective reasons, the story chains were damaged and tumbling It is also complicated to acknowledge the storyboard chain’s contribution as we did not have enough time and human resource to observe all the stories’ locations However, the beautiful drawing caught average students’ attention, especially for stories hanging in front of laboratory and student work area on first floor

and Phoenix Ho that indicates the students prefer watching those clips rather than reading the profile Specially, 50% students among those who could recall the success stories said that they feel more confident in getting a good job Therefore, it can be assumed that the video clips partly contributed to the 3" objective achievement

Statistics from our survey result show the popularity of specific activities as follows:

aware of the activities

IV EVALUATION OF OUTCOMES

This objective was successfully achieved as there were 41% of the surveyed students answered “yes” when they were asked about the knowing of the success stories This result was a combination of effort from attracting their attention about the campaign to informing them about the website as well as the benefits of alumni’s success stories’ awareness Prior to the campaign, the stories were only told by friends with limited frequency, the other way should be contacting external relation department, however, students rarely asked the department about alumni

Our activities contributed greatly to the awareness of students regarding campaign’s website as the alumni’s website was viewed over 4.500 times The students were well-informed and persuaded during four main sessions and one extra session of Amazing Box regarding entering alumni’s website as well

as registering and attending the Networking Event The significant role of Amazing box in luring students for website access, Networking Event register and attendance is tangible as we directly

a great deal of students who desired to participate in the Networking Event to acquire necessary information as well as widen social relationships In relation to Alumni clips, they supported greatly to

a considerable increase of 19% regarding the influence of alumni stories on career choice among students who could recall at least one story

Vv IMPLEMENTATION (ACTIVITIES, RESPONSIBILITIES AND

COMMUNICATION MATERIALS)

1 Storyboard chains: 30/3 - 29/4

Our group was responsible for developing the story chain’s ideas and worked with Design Team to turn those ideas into the stories In order to plan suitable places to hang the story chains, our group had to directly deal with Property Service and prepared event notification forms to book for those places After getting stories from Design Team, we had to write the caption below each picture as well

as stick each story into a rope Then we divided two different periods of time to display those stories (Wednesday of week 6 and Saturday of week 7); and hung all of them one day before the storyboard chains’ execution day

2 Amazing box: 5/4 -22/4

In order to run the Amazing box effectively, we allocated one member to be in the box who would deliver gifts, and a group of 5 people who constructed students and promoted about the WATN website During running the amazing, we needed to manage the participants well in order to ensure that there were enough gifts for each session More importantly, we also stamped the WATN logo on participants’ hand to raise awareness about the website Surprisingly, due to an over-expected success

of Amazing Box, on Friday week 9, we held an extra session which mainly focused on gaining the number of registration for the Networking Event by cooperating with external relations teams

3 Ticket stamping: 5/4 - 15/4

link on tickets Our team worked with Designer team to design the stamp, collaborated with external team and purchase team to get approval We contacted people in charge at parking lots and get their permission to stamp on back of tickets We stamped about 1, 500 tickets on Tuesday and Friday since many students go to school on those days We did extra sections in week 10 because there were still vouchers for this activity

4, Teaser video clip: 5/4

The video teaser was originally planned to finish at the end of week 4 However, due to the lateness in receiving the script and approval, teaser filming had to be delayed until week 6 Our group wrote a story board based on the original content of the proposal We contacted with Ms Vo Ngoc Hue Trinh, a Prof Comm student to become the main actress in this clip Moreover, we also asked for helps from Ms Mai Anh (Prof:Comm lecturer) and Career Center officer Importantly, we needed to ask one External relation member to contact with Ms Trang Le (the alumnus) in order to get an approval to use her photo

5 Filming the first 4 success stories: 22/3 - 14/4

For the first video clip (Ms Phoenix Ho), our group went together with filming crew to be figurants in the video clip After 5PM Friday (1 April 2011), we filmed Ms Phoenix at her office and basketball hail For the other clips (Le Trang, Mr.Son and Mr Quang), one day before each filming day, our group received the scripts from Content team (C.T), then read through the scripts to get the whole idea in order to collaborate with C.T in transferring ideas to filming crew We attended four filming days in order to assure that everything would be done accurately with our purposes After the filming crew edited the video clips and sent them to us, our group’s responsibility was to check the content and assure that everything was on the right track

VI DISCUSSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS

students’ awareness regarding alumni’s success stories Meanwhile, the long term objective was defined to support students become more active for their future choices Compare to our execution, we found that within 10 weeks including planning and executing the project, we totally achieve the short term objectives and partly reach the long term objectives

Particularly, students seemed to favor receiving free gifts and promotional items from our campaign, especially the wristband Moreover, the number of students involved in Amazing Box was extremely high in comparison with other activities Thus, in term of Amazing Box, we had to increase gifts’ amount due to high demand from the students Therefore, in the next stage of the campaign, organizers should be aware of gifts’ quantity as well as monitoring the delivering process to ensure the execution duration of Amazing Box

On the other hand, Motorbike Ticket Stamping did not attract many students even though many of them enthusiastically contact with us to get vouchers They were only excited with the voucher gifts while very few of them were aware of the activity’s objective Moreover, the happened technique problem led to participants’ dissatisfaction Hence, in the next stage, organizers should be careful to ensure there is nothing harmful to the project

Additionally, among activities that deliver alumni success stories, our story board chains received a great deal of positive feedbacks from current students such as attractive drawing and meaningful stories’ contents However, if we had created some hooks to get audiences involve in reading the story chains, this activity would be effectively conducted Particularly, it is suggested that mini games should

be conducted to engage the students with the stories; moreover, we should provide comments section

on our main site for students to share their thoughts about those success Stories

Furthermore, two story chains were damaged in specific places (breeze way on 4th and Sth floor) due

to bad weather conditions Similarly, some stories in building 8 and lab room (1st level) were not entire till the last week of the campaign This might lead to the fact that English students studying at 4th and Sth level, and building 8 could not significantly involve in reading those stories Further recommendations for this issue is that our group needs to assign tasks for particular members being responsible for checking the story chains display condition frequently

project, thus, we need to make careful considerations to avoid later crew substitution which happened during WATN Furthermore, it requires numerous discussions among responsible members and samples inspection to conclude adequate decisions Secondly, the pre-filming process was so complicated due to the fact that it requires Content team to interview and write scripts, then External Relation team to ask for approval, finally, the CT team had to send the scripts again to Production team The misunderstanding and confused working structure severely led to the late submission of alumni’s clips

Therefore, we recommend that there should be only one team who will interview, write scripts and work with the crew on the shooting days Time saving, better understanding the content of scripts and better working process observation would be visible advantages of simplifying the working structure

VII INDIVIDUAL TASKS

NGUYEN HUYNH LE

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I took responsibility for storyboard chains execution

- Wrote creative content for all the story chains

- Worked effectively with Designed team to develop the ideas

- Collected pictures, wrote the caption below each of them and stuck them on a rope

- Directly dealt with E.R team and Property Service to book suitable places for hanging

- Hung those story chains together with my team members

- Wrote Event Notification Form to get approval for activities’ venue

I also involved in other activities such as stamping, amazing box, teaser clip, photo board, photo standings and networking event

- Participated in the teaser clip preparation day (a figurant and prepared some filming material)

- Prepared for stamping activity (stamped on motorbike tickets, prepared for photo standing display)

- Managed phone calls to contact with students winning the prize on motorbike tickets

- Prepared for photo board activity (board decoration, drawings, images sticking)

- Attended all photo board execution days (took photos, delivered the key message and campaign’s purpose for the audiences, instructed them to visit alumni website)

- Worked efficiently with team members to decorate the Amazing Box

- Executed Amazing Box activity during the campaign (organized participants to queue

up, announce campaign’s purpose, sat inside A.B and delivered gifts)

- Instructed students to sign in networking event on the last day of AB

- Prepared for networking event at Hard Rock (balloon decoration)

- In networking event, I was in charge of Chris Tran (discussed with him about the schedule and made sure that he conducted the presentation at the right time)

NGUYEN THI THACH THAO

° Bought materials (decal papers), created and decorated Amazing Box

° Prepared the materials such as cutting, sticking and hanging the story board chains

- Implementation period:

° Attracted students involve in Photo Board activity and informed about the campaign

° Put on photos and adjectives that made by students on the Photo Board

° Mainly managed the execution of Amazing Box

° Stayed in front of Amazing Box to inform about the campaign also control the crowd

° Divided tasks for team members and volunteers in Amazing Box activity

° Managed the number of gifts in order to avoid missing

° Supervised volunteers for Amazing Box activity

° Helped to stamp students’ motorbike ticket

° Be responsible for rewarding for lucky students in Stamping Student Ticket activity

° Helped filming crews in some parts

° Cooperated with external relations to open an extra Amazing Box’s session

° Staying in information booth of extra Amazing Box session in order to inform students about the Networking Event and guided them to register

° Contributed in preparation period in HardRock Café for Networking Event

° Directed and welcomed guess in the Networking Event at the parking plot’s entry

° Encouraged students involve networking with alumni and industry people in the Networking Event