Virtual cafés to stay in touch with students
Published on 03/24/2020
Thematics :
Virtual cafés to stay in touch with students
Published on 03/24/2020
The virtual cafés set up by the Heads of Programme are there to maintain contact with students and provide them with the reassurance they may need. Example of the MS and MSc Part Time Prep Year.
Imène Haouet, Management Control professor and Head of the MS/MSc Part Time Prep. Year , is used to checking in on her students. The period of confinement began at a fairly critical time for the programme's 28 students. This was due to be their final week of classes followed by one week of exams. This is also the time of year when students start looking for their end-of-year internships and their apprenticeship contracts for the start of the school year in September.
"The students started getting quite worried and I answered a lot of their questions by e-mail at first. Then I thought that a more interactive way of informing and reassuring them would be much better," says Imène.
On Monday, March 23rd, Imène opened her first virtual café and invited all her students. Even though the initial discussion was slow to begin due to shyness, little by little the students managed to relax and ended up having a pleasant time. "I would never have thought they would be so happy to see each other, they all played along and turned on their cameras to create a fantastic atmosphere, which had a really positive effect on their morale!" Imène is pleased to say. "After about an hour of discussion, myself and Odile left the virtual café, and the students carried on chatting together for about 40 minutes; I think it really did them a lot of good."
The first virtual café has produced very positive results: the worried students are now more reassured and got answers to their questions.