Fun Zoom activities made Christmas less lonely
Hello there Alexandra Leyton, communications officer at EECS. You were the project manager for social activities for international students at EECS during the Christmas holidays. What led you to launch this initiative?
– At an early stage, we feared that the Christmas and New Year holidays would be particularly lonely for this group of students, given the ongoing pandemic. So we wanted to do something fun to help reduce their isolation.
EECS’s international student ambassadors were tasked to come up with fun activities and competitions. The basic premise was that these activities could not pose any risk of spreading infection. It was only natural that the majority of the events needed to take place digitally.
A lot of people wanted to participate and contribute
According to Alexandra Leyton, the student ambassadors showed a lot of interest and demonstrated some serious creativity, and they really gave it their all during preparations. They organised competitions and activities such as “draw and guess”, quizzes in Kahoot, online gaming days, and screenings of, among other things, the Donald Dock Christmas Special. The various EECS student sections also contributed with a virtual escape room through Zoom, where participants had to solve different tasks together. Additionally, a coronavirus-safe outdoor treasure hunt was organised in the Lappis area, in which individual students would look for hidden treasure around their surroundings.
“We called the event the “Winter and New Year’s Festivities”. Many of the participants do not normally celebrate Christmas. That is why we did not want to focus on Christmas and its religious significance and traditions,” says Alexandra Leyton.
A total of 50-60 students participated in the festivities and each activity had between 10 and 15 participants. Most were international students at EECS, but other KTH students were welcome to participate as well.
What was it like to host most activities digitally?
“The students really felt the need to “meet” other people, and Zoom should not be underestimated as a tool for promoting social interactions. In this day and age, it has become a new way of hanging out, after all. We noticed a lot of students opening up and putting themselves out there,” says Alexandra Leyton.
Words: Marianne Norén
Illustrations: Yiwen Lu