“It feels real”: Events management and online experiential learning in COVID-19

Abstract This paper examines the experience of students transitioning between online and in-person live event projects during the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing upon longitudinal qualitative data collected over a 3-year period, we explored how students perceived the challenges, their own development, and the pedagogical changes. Events management pedagogy relies on experiential learning and the hosting of student-led in-person events. The absence of in-person events and teaching had a significant negative impact on students, not caused by the adjustment to learning environment or assessment but by the act of change itself. Students ultimately recognized the value of experiential learning online and the benefits of developing digital skills, communication, resilience, adaptability, and confidence, leading to the embedding of online communications and virtual elements within 2022’s live event projects. This paper considers the lessons learned from transitioning between in-person and digital event projects and evaluates the future of online tools for experiential learning in higher education.