New opportunity to promote your institution through Study UK: Discover You

Deadline: COP Monday 31 July 2017

Study UK: Discover You, the GREAT Britain Campaign and British Council partnership, has an innovative opportunity for UK HEIs to reach potential students around the world.

We are creating a number of short TV-style programmes on one of the most popular social media platforms, Facebook Live. Each of the programmes will be hosted by future university students and are aimed at future students, supporting their journey and promoting the complete UK HE experience. 

Each #StudyUKLive! show will be 20-25 minutes long and includes the following –

• Introductions by the student presenters
• A specialist presentation by an expert on the show’s topic – e.g. a subject area, aspect of student life (linked to the show via webcam)
• A special guest to appear on the show and interact with the student hosts e.g. an employer, Ambassador of a selected country

And from a UK HEI:

• A two-minute students’ view of the week’s featured HEI:- an edited film of a few of the institution’s students showing the viewers around the campus with an iPhone/Periscope style video, to give a flavour of what it’s like to study there. To be sent to British Council one week before the FB live stream event.

• A 3-5 minute pre-recorded video interview with a representative from the featured HEI, to cover the week’s topic (as above) and why viewers should study at the HEI. This will be recorded with your representative and the show’s presenters on the Monday, two days before the live stream.
• The filming takes place in Madrid, Spain, so the interaction between the UK HEI and Facebook Live will all be pre-recorded: no live camera interaction is required, unless the UK HEI has a presence in Madrid. 
  There is no charge to institutions to take part in this project. 

The audience

• The show will be delivered as a series of 12 episodes over 8 months and will aim to build up a regular following of prospective international students, based all over the world. Our pilot show drew 36,000 video views and a Facebook reach of over a quarter of a million. It is promoted via the British Council Study UK Facebook pages.

What are we looking for?

Representatives from UK HEIs with

• Confidence in experimenting with social media to reach new audiences
• Confident to talk to camera via a laptop, on the topic of the programme (programme topics will include campus life, how to manage your finances, study support options, etc)
• Technical criteria: high speed reliable internet connection (LAN cable preferable to wifi), laptop with webcam, microphone or headphones with good quality microphone (such as iPhone headphones); download the free webinar tool Zoom onto your laptop.

How will HEIs be selected for this opportunity?

Expressions of Interest from UK HEIs will be selected based on the extent to which they meet the following criteria:

• Topic of interest to future students (5 points)
• Subject areas and countries targeting (5 points each)
• Booster support (5 points)
• Alignment to campaign messages (see EOI form) – demonstrated through sharing examples of (10 points each)

• Support to international students on-campus  (positive student learning experience)
• Support to international students on career development  (positive support to graduate outcomes)
• Institutional international engagement and support to develop key overseas influencers -  eg TNE partners, agents and media

• We aim to ensure as wide regional representational as possible across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, so applications will be scored against the criteria and measured against other EOIs from the same UK nation (so there will be four groups). If HEIs in one region want to collaborate, we encourage this, to maximise opportunities for all institutions. We’ll also try to ensure a spread across research intensive and specialist institutions.

You can see a link to our pilot programme here (starts from 5 minutes in).

We plan to run a first series of four programmes in August and September, and a second series of eight programmes from September to March. We will therefore have 12 slots for HEIs between now and the end of March. Dates of the first four shows are:

• Weds 16 August (edited film of your students’ tour of campus will need to be sent to British Council by Weds 9^th August)
• Weds 23 August (edited film needed by Weds 16^th August)
• Weds 13 September (edited film needed by Weds 6 Sept)
• Weds 20 September (edited film needed by Weds 13 Sept)

The dates of the other eight shows will be confirmed in August onwards.