Valencia College is giving students an opportunity to share their stories on video – with a chance to win free tuition.
Based on the theme, “Why College? Why Valencia?”, the contest invites students to share their stories on Facebook (www.facebook.com/valenciacollege). All entries will be posted on Facebook, where viewers can later vote for their favorites. Five winners will be chosen from the top ten vote-getters by a panel of judges and those winners will have their tuition waived for any remaining classes they need to complete an associate degree (up to 60 credit hours).
The contest is open to all current Valencia students as well as former students who attended the college in the last five years, as long as they are 18 years of age and U.S. residents. Videos must be no longer than three minutes in length and must be produced in a standard video format (MP4, MOV, MPG, AVI, QT or WMV). The work will be judged not by production quality; instead, judges will focus on originality, creativity and best use of the theme – challenges students have overcome in pursuit of an education.
All entries must be received by Oct. 21 at noon, with public voting from Oct. 24 until Nov. 4. The five winners will be announced on Nov. 15 and their winning videos will be featured on www.valenciacollege.edu, Valencia’s homepage.
To submit your video, go to the contest website (www.facebook.com/valenciacollege), complete an entry form and upload your video.
Valencia hopes to use the contest to draw attention to the personal stories of its students and inspire others to complete college, while offering the ultimate incentive to five lucky winners – a free education.
Valencia’s use of Facebook for the contest is part of a bigger push by the college to build communities and relationships with its students through social media. As students have embraced the use of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube in their daily lives, academic institutions have been challenged to look at ways they can use social media to reach out to current and prospective students. The University of Central Florida, Texas A&M and Virginia Tech all have tremendous presence in the various social media platforms — and high engagement with their students as a result.
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