Would you like to increase your accessibility to prospective international students? Would you like to increase your own productivity? We will show you two ways to be more accessible to students in a controlled and organized way.
First let's talk about why you want to be more accessible to prospective international students. Campus visits are an important recruiting tool in the United States. Prospective students and their parents receive direct contact with admissions officers and current students. We know that this direct experience is difficult for international students to obtain. We are advocates and users of digital tools, such as Google Hangout, webinars and possibly virtual fairs, that connect international students with higher education professionals. These are important contact points.
How about one-on-one sessions for prospective or admitted students to increase yield? How can you give international students access to you without creating a huge scheduling nightmare for yourself? How can you handle the time zones? Many universities use scheduling tools for these campus visits. We'll show you how to apply these inexpensive or free tools for your international student recruitment activities.
We have two suggestions for you to schedule "international office hours" for yourself or your international student ambassadors and remain in control of your schedule. In my own experience, I improved my productivity and organization by using the following tools.
1) Integrated calendar scheduling:
- Allow students to schedule an appointment directly on your calendar by using the TimeTrade tool (see Picture 1 below)
- The system will give visibility to your calendar within the time that you permitted and the time slots you allocate. If your calendar changes, your availability will automatically change when students look to talk with you.
- The student will schedule an appointment. You and the student will receive an automatic confirmation and the appointment will appear on your calendar with the student's name and contact information.
- If you want to see how it works. Feel free to click on this link with my own calendar which will allow you to schedule an appointment with me. If you want to talk to me, go ahead and schedule an appointment. I am always happy to talk with our readers.
2) Automatic scheduling for pre-determined time slots:
The second tool (see Picture 2 below) allows you to open a specific set of meeting times and the students can schedule a time to talk with you or anybody you designate using simplybook.me In this case the system is independent from your calendar and the meeting notification will only by sent via email to you or whomever is responsible for the meeting schedule. Again, if you want to see how it works, you can click on this link to try out the system.
Just to be clear, we don't have a relationship with any of these companies other than using the scheduling software for our company and our clients.
We kept it simple and inexpensive today. We know that these companies offer more advanced versions that can be integrated with your Customer Relationship System (CRM) or fully customizable systems for universities, which is more expensive than the versions we have shown you. Those premium services can make sense for your on-campus visits or if you have large volumes of international students and you want to customize and integrate the registration process with other university systems.
Let us know if you have used other scheduling software or other ways that make it easy for international students to reach you.
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