World Trivia Competition Brings Griffith Students Together

After the success of the Gold Coast Scavenger Hunt and the Race Around Brisbane, the team at Student Linx returned to the drawing board to put together another event which would help to maintain the forward momentum during the early stages of the semester. Given the diversity of Griffith University's student population, the aim was for a social activity that took all cultural backgrounds in mind. At Student Linx it is our goal for every event or program put together, to appeal to, challenge and involve both local and international Griffith University students. Andrew Monaghan - Student Linx Coordinator stated that "we needed to put on an event which made the benefits of engaging with local or international students obvious to all those who took part, and which gave all students their own chance to shine."

From this the Student Linx World Trivia Competition was organised on both the Nathan and Gold Coast campus with questions sourced from both local and international history, geography, sport, music, politics and current affairs and were designed to favor teams made up of students from a wide mix of cultural backgrounds. 

Planning for this event began even before students started arriving on campus for Orientation Week. Third year event management students Haley Meer on the Gold Coast and June Christensen at Nathan coordinated the World Trivia Nights at their respective campuses. Preperation for the trivia nights began at the end of February as part of their Work Integrated Learning (WIL) placements with Student Linx. With the venue of the Uni Bar previously organised the team's tasks included marketing and organising questions for the rounds. The biggest challenge found by Haley on the Gold Coast campus was getting the word out to students by means of print advertising used around campus in addition to utilising the Student Linx and Griffith University Village facebook pages to encourage students to attend. Ties with the Griffith University Village further helped inform students living there about the event. As the event was run in collaboration with the Student Guild, all necessary equipment was provided with the great help of Joel McInnes and Ben, the bar manager. June found that developing rounds and questions was the biggest challenge in organising the Nathan event. During O-Week the Nathan team found a venue for the Trivia Night on campus at the Eco-Centre. 

All of the hard work paid off for both Student Linx teams with both having different experiences in running the trivia nights. The Gold Coast event was made up of ten full teams of four students with an incredible mix of nationalities, ranging from French and Australian to Chinese! Haley thought "it was amazing to see everyone come together and work together to try and answer all the questions - especially since some questions were quite difficult - Barry Lee from the Griffith University Village even joined in on the fun!". Although June and the team at Nathan had a slow and anxious start, with not knowing how many students would attend, the Trivia Night was a great success. Three teams of five students with a wide mix of nationalities were formed and students in each group introuduced themselves and from which country they were from and then the challenge began! 

All in all, Student Linx is very proud of the Trivia Competitions organised by it's members, especially given that it was a first attempt at a trivia night. In running the events each teams learnt of some strengths and weaknesses and look forward to continuing to work on future events. "There are definitely things we can improve on and we look forward to making this a more inclusive and most importantly enjoyable experience for all students next semester" said June.

The individual and team winners of both trivia nights took away Coles/Myer and iTunes vouchers for their efforts, but most importantly, all the students who particpated and had a great time, learnt something new about other countires and left the Trivia Night with new found friends.