Imperial College London Hosted a Virtual Graduation for 50,000+ Guests

Since Imperial College London has a student body of almost 20,000 students, their graduation ceremonies must accommodate a large group of attendees. In May 2020, the school was forced to move its graduation ceremony online due to COVID-19-related lockdowns.

The school estimated that they would have 50,000 students and supporters attend their virtual ceremony, and they wanted to present a video as though it was a live stream. They also wanted a platform that included live chat functionality so that viewers could participate in this special event.

The Head of Institutional Events and Engagement knew that a virtual ceremony could be brought to life with the help of a professional video streaming solution. Hosting this sort of event would enable them to bring together and honor their graduates in a safe way. Since many students had returned to their homes in different parts of the world, global streaming support was a must.

Imperial College had used different streaming solutions in the past to share live and on-demand educational content. However, they needed a more specific solution to host their virtual graduation ceremony. Global content delivery (including delivery to China) and support for up to 50,000 viewers were their two non-negotiables

Three major challenges stand out for Imperial College London :

   – Getting the word out in China

   – Having a fully personalized streaming platform

   – Supporting a maximum of 50,000 viewers

The main solutions that Dacast has been able to offer at Imperial College London that:

With the help of Dacast’s video hosting technology, Imperial College was able to host their stream and produce the code to embed the stream on its website. This made it easy for any student to log in and watch the ceremony at a time.

Although the ceremony was pre-recorded, it aired as a live stream, much like a televised program would. This allowed the university to prepare ahead of time but gave graduates and their loved ones the ability to experience the ceremony together. The goal was to create a more engaging and lifelike experience.

Different departments, such as aerospace, dynamics, economics, etc., were able to submit videos to honour their students, and all of the submissions were put together to create a seamless presentation.

In order to integrate all of the moving parts of this virtual event on the Imperial College website, the school needed some customized support from the Dacast tech team. Our team was able to polish the site code so that everything worked perfectly when the graduation ceremony aired.

With the help of Dacast, Imperial College was able to successfully stream high-quality content to each of these worldwide viewers, no matter what sort of device they were tuning in on.

Katie, Imperial College’s Head of Institutional Events and Engagement said that using Dacast to host their event was very straightforward. Since her team used Dacast’s Kiosk mode for greater functionality and flexibility, they needed a little bit of technical support to help them with development work.

Overall, Imperial Collegee’s Events and Engagement team was thrilled with the Dacast platform and said that it worked really well for their event. They were particularly happy with the fact that they could reach their Chinese audience with no problem at all. This was particularly important because viewers in China made up one of the largest audiences on their stream, second only to the UK.

In the end, Imperial College’s virtual graduation ceremony was a major success. They were so pleased with their results that they’ve decided to partner with Dacast for their 2021 graduation ceremony.

Imperial College London is a public research university in London, England. Its history began with Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria, who developed his vision for a cultural area that included the Royal Albert Hall, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Natural History Museum and several royal colleges.