International Student Safety - Think Before

Video on International Student Safety - Think Before.com

“Some international students in Australia are not aware of the risks in their new environment and the international student safety campaign thinkbefore.com is designed to sharpen safety skills when traveling late at night. Being aware of safety issues will help deliver a positive student experience when studying in Australia.”

This video made by thinkbefore.com student campaign successfully delivered their message in a light-hearted way, prompting us to stay alert when traveling at night. The website helped created imagined communities (Benedict 1983), addressing international students as a whole, letting us know there are many of us out there that are going through the same experiences. When we identify ourselves as international students, we feel a sense of belonging to each other even though we might not have met before.

It is a good way to tell a message while not scaring away potential students with attacks on news reports (the harsh reality). They made the message much easier to be distributed where they offer the video through online, mobile, social networking channels such as Facebook, Twitter and video sharing websites such as YouTube. Since the video is spread through sharing with our social network, its spread rate is faster and enjoys higher credibility.

When I first came over, I had spent some time researching on Melbourne Studymelbourne.vic. gov.au was one of the website where I read every single page to know as much as I can before stepping into a foreign land. Other than self-research, CMS was another source that provided me information on Melbourne. CMS is an established firm of education consultants in Singapore that provide assistance for students going for overseas degree studies. On second thught, Jim See (my advisor) can be considered as a PR officer for Melbourne at that stage.

An image of Melbourne was constructed in my mind, other than the photos that I saw in Melbourne guidebooks. Jim was confident in the safety standard in Melbourne’s. During the parents’ sections, he told us to be rest assured as Melbourne is relatively quite a safe city to study in. My mother, who is generally skeptical towards consultants/agents, went on to do further research. She read news articles relating to Melbourne, asked her friends’ children for experiences. Not surprisingly, she skipped the tourism books and official websites on Melbourne, assuming that they are all rose tinted. She wanted a realistic and personal accounted view of Melbourne, not images that are being promoted at potential students. (Come to think about it, I think my mother could have easily aced this assignment.)

References

Anderson, B 1983, ‘Introduction’, Imagined communities: reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism, Courier Companies, Inc., Washington USA, viewed 7 October 2010, .

CMS (2010) Homepage [WWW] CMS Pte Ptd. Available from: http://www.cmsedu.com/ [Accessed 12/10/10].

Melbourne City Council 2007, City of Melbourne Safety Initiatives, media release, Melbourne, 1 July.

STUDY MELBOURNE (2010) Safety [WWW] Melbourne City Council. Available from: http://www.studymelbourne.vic.gov.au/living_in_melbourne/personal-safety [Accessed 08/10/10].

Thinkbefore (2008) Homepage [WWW] Commonwealth. Available from: http://www.thinkbefore.com/ [Accessed 11/10/10].