We knew that we wanted an event that would highlight resources, information, and services to our students with a larger goal of helping them feel more comfortable using the library. Our vision included an open house that was fun, social, friendly, and stress-free. To make this happen we had to answer some questions: 1. How will we let students know that the open house is happening? 2. Will the open house be a teaching opportunity or a fun event? 3. What kinds of activities can we do online? 4. How long should it be? 5. How will we staff it without taking staff away from other regular duties? PLANNING A VIRTUAL OPEN HOUSE Walden students are primarily working adults spread across numerous worldwide time zones. We would inevitably exclude many students if we hosted an event that only spanned a few hours or even a full day. Ultimately, we decided to hold our open house for a week to give students enough time to participate. To avoid pulling staff away from regular job duties for a full week, we planned a mix of live and asynchronous events. The live events were intended to give students an opportunity to interact with the librarians so they could see that there are real people here to help them. The asynchronous events would give all our students the opportunity to participate as their schedules allowed. After some debate, we chose to make the events fun in order to differentiate the open house from our instructional webinars. This way, the event would still provide information about the library but in a less formal manner.
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