In the time of COVID-19, Project Directors (PD) from various student organisations have been racking their brains to find innovative ways to engage with their members. One forward-thinking student group is the NUS Students’ Sports Club. The student PDs tasked themselves to give SunNUS 2021 participants a “phygital” experience and collectively they came up with an interactive activity – Sentosa Outdoor Amazing Race or “SOAR” for short.
So what is phygital? It’s simply a coined term; a combination of the words physical and digital to create a new word: phygital. Designed to allow its players to participate at their own pace, SOAR is “The Amazing Race” look-alike will see teams of up to four members race around Singapore’s offshore island resort.
Powered by the SunNUS mobile application, players go on an adventure to explore Sentosa to find hidden gems, collect points and work their way up the leaderboard based on the race’s clues and challenges in the App. The catch? They must complete the race onsite within three hours. The countdown starts when players are logged into the App.
Nikki Ang, Year 3, Engineering student and Vice PD of SunNUS said: “Phygital challenges are fast becoming common as the format allows people to stay safe but also have fun at the same time in both worlds.”
“Grappling with the deluge of information and the changing safe management measures that student organisations have to adhere to when planning for events have been extremely challenging for my committee and I,” revealed Nikki. She added: “We had to keep revising our plans, and in the end, we decided to extend the play period to a month-long event so that everyone can take part.”
She encourages players to take advantage of the prolonged race duration to plan in advance when completing SOAR various challenges.
Still not sure whether to sign up? Maybe this video will convince you:
From the organisers (and we echo): “We will “SEA” you there!”
Quick Links
1. Sign up form for SOAR – application closes 19 September 2021. Race ends 30 September 2021.
2. Download SunNUS App from Google Play Store or App Store
3. Race information
4. Risk Acknowledge and Consent Form
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Writer: Office of Student Affairs
Images and videos: NUS Students' Sports Club
