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Winter 2020 Orientation Will be Delivered Firtually

Humber female student sitting outside with laptop
Orientation 2020

November 26, 2020

Orientation at Humber is an exciting time for our international students. They are in the process of moving in, making friends, learning about their campus and surroundings, and getting ready for life in a new country. This year the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has forced many events to shift to online delivery. We’ve done the same with International Orientation but will do all we can to ensure it is a memorable, innovative, and highly informative experience for students joining in the Winter 2021 semester.

 

AN EVOLVING ORIENTATION

Summer and Fall 2020 were the Humber International Centre’s first forays into a completely online orientation. We re-imagined orientation by no longer making it only a one-day event, but rather a month-long series of events with workshops taking place throughout, in collaboration with other Humber departments.

These sessions were easily scheduled with, and run by those departments, within our international orientation format. Some of the more popular workshops included:

  • Learn How to Navigate the Humber Library - Virtually!
  • English Conversation Club
  • Your Morcare International Health Insurance
  • Your Career after Humber: Professional Development

Many other workshops such as our immigration workshops are also interactive by offering Q&A sessions at the end. Others are designed to allow students to meet other students through various fun games and activities such as spin the wheel and trivia challenges run by some of our current international students.

Additionally, we have increased accessibility to our orientation by running our events at different times on different days over several weeks, to ensure students have multiple opportunities to attend a particular workshop in case they are busy during this one-month period.

”Our International Orientation activities provide opportunities for international students to learn what is relevant based on their current place in the Humber life-cycle,” said Amanda Koski, Manager, International Student Services.

“Online Orientation has also provided not only new, but also returning international students, with opportunities to expand their learning and their connections to the Humber community in spite of us being physically distant.”

January 2021 virtual orientation will be launched on December 7, 2020, four weeks prior to the start of classes. Sessions will run throughout the first month of classes.

Stay tuned for more updates!

 

GET A PROPER HEAD START WITH iCENT

International students accepted for Winter 2021 at Humber are now able to travel to Canada. With our free mobile app iCent, they will be fully prepared to make a seamless and safe transition amid the global pandemic.

The iCent app was launched to support international student arrivals in early 2019. It has been customized and updated to provide arriving international students with the most-up-to-date and important information about the pandemic, quarantine planning and health during quarantine. These include a number of different and updated features that assist international students along every step of their journey, including:

  • Guides on how to create a quarantine plan before leaving their home country
  • Required documents to present at the port of entry and pre-departure checklists
  • Arrival and airport expectations
  • Shuttle and transit information
  • The ability to check in with Humber during your quarantine period
  • Tips for what to do and what not to do during quarantine
  • Important contacts
  • Health and wellness guidelines
  • Other general information

“The app is a really ideal way to provide just-in-time information to our students and get information in their hands in a format that is comfortable, ubiquitous and that can answer questions that are readily available,” said Andrew Ness, Humber’s Dean of International.

Use of iCent is mandatory for all Humber international students arriving into Canada. Each student must download the app before they travel to Canada. It is available on both the App store and Google Play store.

 

HELPING STUDENTS DEAL WITH MENTAL HEALTH

In these unprecedented times, it’s of added importance that students have the support and resources to cope with school, health or general life concerns as well as maintain their mental wellness.

With that in mind, Humber has partnered with guard.me to provide international students with a free and specialized 24/7 mental health and counselling service called the keep.meSAFE Student Support program.

The service is available in dozens of languages with students being able to receive immediate and confidential access to highly qualified counselors through their smartphones, email, online chat or a phone call wherever they are in the world. In addition, students have access to a wide variety of multilingual self-help resources including:

  • Articles
  • Videos
  • Assessment tools
  • Referral pathways for students to access counselling and much more

Keep.me.SAFE has also been configured as such that if a student is found to be in distress and immediate harm, there is a process in place that connects the student to a local resource immediately to get help.

 

The app can be downloaded from the App store or the Google Play store.

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Through these activities and initiatives in accordance with our Internationalization Strategy, Humber remains committed to mobilizing campus and community resources to prepare students for life in Canada both at Humber as well as globally.