New skills: Yvonne (far right) and her team give Kiwi burger making a go.
“I was honoured to be selected to participate in the Student Voice 2014. I got the opportunity to interact with fellow participants, Education New Zealand staff and even a senior policy analyst from the Ministry of Education,” says Yvonne.
Exploring culture and cooking
During her two day trip to Wellington, Yvonne and fellow participants were involved with a number of activities and workshops. The first day had them out exploring and getting to know New Zealand culture with a scavenger hunt at national museum and art gallery, Te Papa, followed by a cooking lesson.
“We took part in a BBQ master class, in which we learned how to make a New Zealand burger. This was followed by a Pavlova challenge, which my team won, and included Pavlova decoration, explanation and a quiz”, says Yvonne.
A series of workshops and discussions
The second day was made up of a series of workshops. The participants were invited to tell their stories, both good and bad, about studying in New Zealand using a variety of images. They also interacted with the Education New Zealand Marketing team and took part in discussions on brand promotion, international education research reports and communication channels for telling their stories about living and studying in New Zealand.
“I found the interactive session on brand promotion the most interesting. We were introduced to different types of promotional strategies using six short advertising videos, and were required to record our feelings after watching them, our understandings about them, and our overall comments on them,” she says.
“Information gathered from these sessions can help Education New Zealand choose the best communication method to promote New Zealand educational resources going forward,” she adds.
The Student Voice event is designed to provide a platform for international students’ voices to be heard and to enable them to share their experiences about studying in New Zealand. Institutions can nominate current international students and alumni from across New Zealand according to a certain criteria.