On Monday 28 April, Queen's University Belfast's Widening Participation hosted its Senior Academy Induction event. Senior Academy, which is run by Outreach Officer Grace Heatley and assisted by Graduate Intern Jane Doran, The Queen's Senior Academy is a two-year programme supporting Year 13 into Year 14 participants in non-selective secondary schools and further education colleges to develop their potential to progress to Higher Education, including Queen's University Belfast.

This year, the Induction event was a virtual event where we welcomed the successful participants onto the programme. Typically this induction would have involved bringing the students to Queen's and having them interact with each other through ice breaker activities and games, as well as giving them an insight into University life through a Campus tour of Queen's and study skills activities. Unfortunately with current circumstances, this was not possible. The Senior Academy team therefore adapted their intended programme to work as an online event, while still remaining as fun and interactive as possible. This proved to be a challenge but an extremely rewarding one as it highlighted the power of the internet!

They had a total of around 30 students who were split into different groups to get them talking and interacting. They played different activities including Two Truths and A Lie, as well as some quickfire questions - everyone got involved and it was wonderful to see the students engaging. We then directed the students to Canvas to complete some more activities including a Wellbeing module. After that, they then went on their own virtual Campus tour of Queen's and were given questions to answer about some of the important areas of Queen's.

While the day presented its challenges, it was certainly rewarding to see the students interacting and participating to the fullest despite current circumstances and the Senior Academy team are extremely excited to continue the programme in whichever form it may take.