For over 20 years, 3RC has been well known for their Rocking Future Career Expos at schools, a live show, where students in Grade 12 are exposed to some of the leading private colleges in the country. However thanks to Covid-19, they have been unable to produce these live shows and have had to innovate and pivot fast in order to still make a difference. To this end, 3RC created the Rocking Future Virtual Career Expo.
With the necessary uptake of online schooling during Covid-19 and ensuing increase in the level of comfort with being online, it was an ideal opportunity to reach a wider market, reach schools in all provinces, and make sure that these learners also had access to pertinent information about their study options outside the normal scope of what is commonly understood by learners as their next step. This decision was immediately ratified when over 7,000 online registrations were captured within just a few weeks of launching.
The move from live exhibitions to the highly accessible virtual experience enables the teachers to become facilitators, showing learners how to use the virtual portal, walking them through their registration and password creation, and demonstrating how to navigate the expo. In this way, learners are empowered to discover more about what their options are. Learners also have access to onsite assessments, which they can use if they are not sure what they want to study, and then search for courses to study that match their assessment scores.
This new virtual platform has certainly unlocked several benefits for learners, the most notable being the 24/7 availability of the platform, the opportunity to come back for repeat visits, the ability to move around freely, and the functionality to search according to industry and narrow down choices.
Excitingly, learners were also able to enter the competition for a R20,000 cash prize. The winner of the competition was Bahiyah Davids of UJ Metropolitan Academy in Johannesburg, who said, “[The virtual portal] is a fun interactive way during these tough times to explore the many tertiary and career options available. It is a fantastic, informative way to really see which tertiary institute is the best fit for you and your career. I would recommend 3RC to all youth – it has everything you need or want to know about life after matric, right at your fingertips in the safety of your own home.”
