Planning a class event - on or off campus

[HermoineG]

Hi everyone,

One of my class teaching requirements is planning two community event for students. If students attend one of them, they get 5 points, if they attend both, they get 10 points. I am pregnant, so hiking is not very feasible right now - I am exhausted most of the times. I have two sections (20 students each) 40 students so buying dinner/lunch for all of them also is quiet expensive for me. What else can I do? I live near the beach, so may be going to a beach is possible - but what do we do after we go to the beach? 

Also, I am an introvert and I have literally never planned parties for people I just know. I only plan parties for my closest friends and family. Any guidance or ideas? Do you may be know about any board game that 40 Freshman (together) would like to play? I can probably buy it. 

Any tips would be helpful!

Edited October 8, 2017 by HermoineG
typos

[Sigaba]

1 hour ago, HermoineG said:

Hi everyone,

One of my class teaching requirements is planning two community event for students. If students attend one of them, they get 5 points, if they attend both, they get 10 points. I am pregnant, so hiking is not very feasible right now - I am exhausted most of the times. I have two sections (20 students each) 40 students so buying dinner/lunch for all of them also is quiet expensive for me. What else can I do? I live near the beach, so may be going to a beach is possible - but what do we do after we go to the beach? 

Also, I am an introvert and I have literally never planned parties for people I just know. I only plan parties for my closest friends and family. Any guidance or ideas? Do you may be know about any board game that 40 Freshman (together) would like to play? I can probably buy it. 

Any tips would be helpful!

Can you clarify if dinner is one of the two events or is that a third activity?

[HermoineG]

1 hour ago, Sigaba said:

Can you clarify if dinner is one of the two events or is that a third activity?

Dinner could have been one of the activities/event. But I cannot afford it.

[TakeruK]

Can you do the dinner (or some other meal) without having to pay for your students? (i.e. everyone pays their own share). To make it simpler, you could order catering from a local restaurant and have them deliver the food so that it's cheaper and more convenient than going to a restaurant with 20 people! Whenever I planned events with food like this, ordering pizza usually comes to less than $5 per person and ordering Thai or something like that comes to $7 or so per person...and people are happy to pay for their share since they get more food/variety for less money than if they went themselves.

Alternatively, if a meal is a good way to do your event, what about a potluck? Or something like a "dessert baking competition"? 

I've been part of planning plenty of social/get-to-know-you events for various school things I volunteered with so here are some other ideas:
- Scavenger hunt around campus
- Attend a cultural event together (maybe some sort of festival or something in your town?)
- Most towns/cities have a "cheap theatre" that plays movies that have already gone to DVD. Tickets are usually like $2 or so each.
- Walking tour of cool stuff around your town 
- Reverse trick-or-treating at your campus residences (i.e. get your freshmen to dress up in their costumes and then you go around the dorms handing out candy). Alternatively, go around the residences near campus or a senior centre etc.

Just a few ideas. It might help if you provided some parameters/requirements for these events (i.e. what purpose must they serve? do you have to pay for all costs? can you get funding? can you ask attendees to pay their own way? etc.)

[fuzzylogician]

Some low-energy activities for tired pregnant ladies: 

- Movie screening (if your department has a seminar room with screening equipment, you can pick your own movie and screen it at basically no cost if you do this over the weekend); you can order pizza and share expenses, that is usually pretty cheap per person
- Potluck lunch at a local park
- Apple picking / fall leaves viewing / other seasonal attraction near you 
- Picnic on the beach (potluck style!) 
- Attend a local concert if you can find a cheap/free one (e.g. at a church, a local choir, etc)
 

More energetic activities could include scavenger hunts, walking tours, etc. 

[rising_star]

The suggestions above are awesome. You might want to ask students what kinds of things they'd like to do. Assuming that they're all first years, many are probably new to the town/area and thus don't know what opportunities are available. You could organize a trip to the local farmers market or another interesting community venue they may not know about. 

It's also possible that your university offers discounted tickets or cheap/free access for students, which might make it possible for you all to attend an event at little or no cost to the students. For example, if your school gives free bus passes, you could all take the bus to a neighborhood and just walk around and explore it together.

Hope this helps! Let us know what you decide to do.

[GreenEyedTrombonist]

Just to add on, if you go with a game night, don't try one tabletop game for 40 people. The logistics are just a nightmare. Game nights can be really fun if you have a variety of games (both in the sense of several tabletop and a mix of tabletop/video/activity-based). Given the size of your event, you probably want a few quicker to play games (Don't try and get everyone playing Betrayal at House on the Hill because that can last a few hours). Quicker games let people have short bouts of fun and leave easily when they're ready to move on. Card games (CAH, Exploding Kittens, Superfight) are great for this kind of play. I also enjoy games like Forbidden Island, Tsuro, and Tokaido for slightly longer games (without being great epics). You could also do themed parties and, if you're ambitious, put together a murder mystery or tabletop LARP event. You can either make your own or find a pre-made one. Here are the free-to-play tabletop LARPs from last year's Golden Cobra Challenge. Full disclosure, one of those games is mine, haha. Having a variety of games also allows people to gravitate towards things they like, rather than be bored watching others play a game they aren't really interested in. 

 

Hope this helps!

[avflinsch]

What type of class is it?

Only asking because you might be able to integrate some of the course work into the event theme (obviously more difficult for some course topics than others).

 

 

[HermoineG]

On 10/9/2017 at 5:11 AM, avflinsch said:

What type of class is it?

Only asking because you might be able to integrate some of the course work into the event theme (obviously more difficult for some course topics than others).

 

 

Its a Freshman neuroscience class.

[HermoineG]

Thank you so much everyone!! This was extremely helpful. Sorry for my late reply  

I will let you guys know what I end up doing, but it will most likely be one of your suggestions. Thanks again!

[avflinsch]

19 hours ago, HermoineG said:

Its a Freshman neuroscience class.

That would be one of the more difficult topics to integrate into an event theme...

 

[Sigaba]

Things being what they are, I recommend that you double check with your department and your school (especially the office of risk management) to make sure that your plans are within policy, especially if the activities are off-campus.

[HermoineG]

Yes, will run this by the main faculty for the course. Thanks:)

[Sigaba]

1 hour ago, HermoineG said:

Yes, will run this by the main faculty for the course. Thanks:)

I very strongly recommend that you double check the answer you receive if it's "yes," especially if the faculty members you ask have tenure and/or belong to a union.

[E-P]

What did you end up doing?

As a note, it's probably against policy to require you to do anything you have to pay for.  That's a work expense, and you should be reimbursed for it.  So...don't let your university take advantage of you.