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How Virtual Campus Tours Helped 75% of Reporting Schools Increase Summer Visitors

Kyle James — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 15:35:17 +0000

The new class of university freshmen will begin moving into dorms and onto campuses in the coming weeks marking an annual tradition of teenagers beginning their lives as independent young adults. But before parents and students made the final decision about what college to attend, they spent the summer visiting schools. And before they began visiting schools, many of them took virtual campus tours of these schools.

A recent informal survey by The New York Times found that 75 percent of colleges surveyed experienced an increase in summer visits in 2011 even during these tough economic times. This finding indicates that making personal visits to schools continues to top the list of key factors students and parents use in deciding what college to attend. However, the survey also found that virtual campus tours have started to play a more important function for students before they visit a campus and for students who can’t afford to travel to several schools. As you begin to plan for next summer’s visitors, keep in mind that virtual campus tours drive personal visits to your school, help families control visitation costs, and puts you in line with the practices of top universities.

Driving the Campus Visit
Even while students and parents continue to visit schools in person, the value of interactive campus maps is rising. A recent report examining the online behavior of prospective students found that 54 percent of students found value in virtual campus tours. More and more, students use the maps as a way to look at schools before making personal visits and as a way to narrow down their college choices. A good interactive campus map will actually drive students to come visit your school in person by grabbing their attention and encouraging a more up close and personal experience.

Controlling Costs
Parents and students continue to make campus visits despite the rising costs of fuel, air fare and other travel expenses, but they are also looking to control costs where they can. Colleges who participated in The New York Times survey said that while campus visits were up, many families reported they were trimming costs where they could by staying with friends or family, taking day trips or combining campus visits with vacation. USA Today also advises students to take virtual campus tours to control campus visitation costs, which can easily top $3,000.

Join the Crowd
Top universities like Harvard, Cornell and the University of Chicago have added virtual tours to their websites as a way to reach out to students who otherwise couldn’t visit their schools. When these universities begin adopting new technology, you can bet the virtual campus tour is here to stay. Plus, as students use these top schools as a barometer for other institutions, they will begin to look for and demand more interactive maps.

The campus visit remains the mainstay of the decision making process. Virtual campus tours complement and enhance personal visits. Before next summer’s tour season begins, increase your visitations by adding an interactive map.

The Benefits of Using Student Video for a Virtual Campus Tour

Kyle James — Tue, 10 May 2011 18:02:33 +0000

Preparing for college is an exciting time for young people, but it can also feel a little overwhelming. With so many colleges and universities to choose from, it can be a challenge to know where to begin. Even after a prospective student has narrowed the list down to a few top choices, figuring out how to physically visit the campuses is difficult, especially if it involves expensive travel. Some colleges offer virtual tours online and that can be very helpful, but many of these are limited in scope, somewhat sterile, and a little too “pitchy” in their efforts to recruit prospective students. The best virtual tours are those that use student video, with real students serving as peer-to-peer tour guides. These presentations are much more authentic and more interesting.

Using real student members of a campus community to serve as virtual tour guides is an impressive, effective, and genuine approach to recruitment. Prospective students can best relate to dynamic, stimulating commentary and testimony by those within their same age and cultural group, and they will be more inclined to trust the validity of the message as a result of this kinship. Being able to witness a compelling video of campus life that shows students actually engaging in student activities can be the deciding factor in whether a student chooses to attend a particular school. Some of those activities includes:

work in a classroom or lab
interaction between students and faculty
attending special events
activities on campus

With a student-based video, prospective students can view the diversity of the campus population. They can listen to shared information, insights, and personal experience. The tour guides can describe their relationships with faculty members and how they are instrumental in the students’ lives as caring, accessible mentors. The student guides can virtually walk viewers throughout various campus buildings and more of the unique environment that each campus possesses, while giving engaging commentary throughout the video. There are a many members of campus that the tour guide could engage with through these adventures including:

faculty members
deans
coaches
admissions representatives
and other staff

All of these campus members interacting with the tour guides give prospective students and their parents a real idea of a school’s community and atmosphere.

Instead of a sterile, stilted, lifeless video of simply a campus and its buildings, a video featuring the believability of real students is much more interesting and conducive to recruitment, without sounding like a typical sales pitch. Giving prospective students the opportunity to feel already “at home” with fellow students at a particular campus, while saving them the expense of having to travel for a real visit, is a wise decision for colleges and universities to make as a recruitment and informational tool. Potential students can listen to current students actively describe their personal viewpoints, define in lively detail what they consider to be the highlights of the campus, and share their experience and knowledge in a genuine personable manner. A student-led virtual tour video provides a truly engaging experience and authentic, informative access for college-bound young people exploring their options before making one of their most important life decisions—choosing the right college or university to attend.

Photo credit: Shooting video by mbtrama

The Benefits of Virtual Tours for Student Recruitment

Kyle James — Mon, 02 May 2011 14:01:39 +0000

One of the biggest decisions that any family faces is where their kids go to college. Is it in an urban area or suburban area, what are the dorms like, how much does it cost and is it a place where they can envision spending a significant portion of their life?

A key element of the decision making process is the actual campus. Where is the dining facility and how does it relate to the freshmen dorms? What about the classrooms and what do they look like? Is the library in the center of the campus? What do the science labs look like? How inviting is the place and can I see myself living there for four years.

It is in this early investigation that you and your school want to shine. For the students that fit your profile, you want to be in their final list of schools that deserve a more detailed review. You want to pass the initial test.

How can a virtual campus tour help both you as the representative of the school and the potential student make it the next step in the school selection process? How do you market the most positive aspects of your institution?

Because the first stage of any search for a college covers the broadest number of institutions, and the search will be conducted over the internet, it is important to capture the true essence of your school at the earliest point in the potential student’s search. You want to present your school in the most informative and attractive light. You want to provide a window into the world of your campus, showing what the new student’s life would be like on your campus. What the classrooms look like on the inside, not just the building’s facade. How big the dorm rooms are and what the furnishings look like. How the dining room is laid out. The more accurate and attractive the presentation of real school life is portrayed, the more the potential student will be able to determine that an on-campus visit is the next step.

It is one thing to look at a PDF of the campus map. That will show what the buildings look like and where they are in relation to each other. It is much more informative to be able to look at a virtual campus tour. To be able to see for yourself what the school really looks like to the student, and what day to day life on campus will mean to them. The virtual campus tour puts you in the middle of the campus in a way that simple photos do not.

Further, the virtual campus tour allows you as the representative of the school’s administration to display the best features of your school in a way that emphasizes your strong features. You can show the dorm layouts, special lecture halls or areas of the student union that are set aside for recreation or quiet study. You can emphasize those attributes that your current students value.

While you do not want to mislead any potential student, you do want to make certain that every potential student gets a real and accurate view of what your campus life is like. Are there unique student activities that display the essence of school life at your institution? Are there connections outside the school, perhaps to the surrounding community? Use your creativity to show what makes your school special and make that a part of your virtual campus tour.

With a virtual campus tour the school’s administration is able to display what makes you different than the rest of the collegiate world, and why any potential student who bonds with those ideas will put you on the list for a more meaningful consideration.

A virtual campus tour is an effective way to draw potential students and their families into a review of your special corner of the world, and perhaps to a lifelong relationship between the student and your school.

Photo Credit: Packing for College by Else10

5 Design Ideas To Make An Interactive Virtual Campus Tour Stand Out

Kyle James — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 14:27:53 +0000

College is the doorway students enter when they exit high school. Like any unknown doorway, it can lead to strange, fascinating, and surprising places. Often times though, the challenge isn’t getting students to walk through that door, it’s getting them to stay in it.

A great way for colleges to recruit potential students is with interactive virtual campus tours. These are tours that take place online and allow students and parents to “navigate” through the school, without the hassle of having to plan, pack, and travel to the actual location.

A doorway is simply a portal one steps through to enter a destination. It’s not enough to just build the doorway; the builder must also make it appealing.

Here are 5 design ideas to make an interactive virtual campus tour stand out:

1) Use School Colors For The Design

There are many schools out there for perspective students to consider. The school colors are one of the stickiest elements that defines your schools brand. You already display your school colors throughout the website so you should also use them as the foundation for your tours design. When students and parents leave the website, they will have those colors in their minds.

2) Real Testimonials From Real Students

Don’t just show people smiling and reading lines that were written for them. Take actual students and have them give their honest opinions. After all, if they didn’t like the school they wouldn’t be there. Have the students talk about the positive, negative, and unexpected aspects of the school. What was it like for them when they were newcomers? What were their biggest fears? What were their greatest hopes? And did any of it come true? All the elements that make great stories are what you are looking for. Remember as a marketer it is your job to be a storyteller.

3) Teacher & Staff Biographies

Meeting new people can be a very stressful situation for some people. To help with this, have short bios of select individuals at the school. List where they are from, their background, their goals, and their tastes and preferences. Humanize them and let students know that they are people too. Make them approachable.

4) Layout Of The Entire School

No virtual campus tour is complete without the actual tour. Allow students to travel through the entire campus – online. With just a few clicks, they can travel from the parking lot all the way to the stadium. Once inspected, they can instantly be in the library. Done with that, they can see each individual class room. Using pictures and footage, allow them to travel to every corner, hallway, and cranny of the school. Want them to attend? Show them what it’s like first.

5) Streaming Webcam

Using streaming webcams, allow students to see what life on campus is like. Let them check-in on some of the classes, practices, or school events. In today’s online world, everybody wants the real and the now. People have become tired of glossy, staged events that are intended to entice them. They know they are being sold something. So, if you have to sell them something, sell them reality.

Make your doorway as welcoming as you can. That’s the school’s job. Then let the students decide if they want to walk through it. That’s their job.

Image Credit: Ideas by Preoccupations

Hobsons’ Student Recruitment Data Shows Importance of Virtual Tours

Kyle James — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 13:58:18 +0000

Earlier this year Hobsons came out with its annual report on undergraduate student recruitment. Similar to the results we reported earlier this year from Noel-Levitz, this report also stresses the value of the campus visit and the online virtual tour. What is really interesting in Hobsons’ data is that both the campus visit and virtual tour provide value in the search, applying and final decision process. This essentially covers all the levels of the recruitment funnel.

Beginning the School Search

Interestingly there is no one tool that even 50% of people find effective for beginning the school search process. There are obviously a whole lot of things that go into starting someone to look at your school. Two of those items are the campus visit and the virtual tour though. As we have argued before the campus visit is usually once students have narrowed down their list to a handful of colleges. One of the ways students narrow down that list is by viewing tours online.

Applying to College

As any good admission counselor will tell you the campus visit is the most important item to help a prospective student decide that they want to apply to an institution. As you can see, this data absolutely agrees with that. There isn’t anything even close. What is interesting here is that the virtual tour is just as effective to the applying decision to a prospective student as an admission counselor or guidebook.

Credible Resources for Decision Process

Once again for the final decision the campus visit still ranks supreme. The virtual tour ranks higher than many things, but ultimately it is found to be a credible source by over half the prospects surveyed.

Closing

Hobsons also has a graduate and international student recruitment report. Each has slightly different results, but all show relatively similar results. The big difference is graduate students tend to put more relevance into the actual campus visit and international students in the virtual tour. I think both of those findings make sense for obvious reasons.

I also find it very interesting that social media (Facebook, YouTube & Skype specifically) ranks so low down the list on all three surveys. I completely agree with the data and social media is fun and interesting, but when it comes down to the final decision it’s not a determining factor.

St. Mike’s Interactive Campus Tour Through YouTube

Kyle James — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 13:02:02 +0000

Last week St. Mike launched an interactive campus tour in a slightly different format. St. Mike launched their tour completely through YouTube. The creator of the tour, Mallory Wood, was recently interviewed by collegewebeditor. What is really interesting from the post is Mallory’s insistence on crediting Seth Odell with the idea on his blog almost a year ago.

Mallory also goes on to share in the article that a driving focus of her tour was recruitment based.

“First of all, we wanted to provide prospective students a way to “visit” our campus from their home. The campus visit is an important part of the recruitment process, but before a student decides to visit a college they will most likely check out the website. I want to give prospects an authentic taste of what our campus is like during their initial search…”

This interactive campus tour was accomplished through YouTube’s linking to other videos from their player. This linking functionality is not brand new. It was almost two years ago that TechCrunch first broke the news around this new functionality. This is simply one of many innovative uses of the feature. It’s also a great example of enabling some functionality that is used in ways probably never dreamed of by the creator.

I’m sure this won’t be the only YouTube interactive campus tour, but it will be interesting to see if this becomes a regular distribution channel or not. Realistically, any school that has short videos associated with locations around their campus could easily turn it into a YouTube tour with some additional video editing. Hmm, I wonder if there is a way that nuCloud can do that programmatically for you? I can absolutely see the value of reusing existing content for this new channel. I also think that it can go both ways. If you are building a tour and have the video first, why not leverage YouTube to distribute the content while you build the rest of your tour or map?

As a final shout out, you might recognize Seth’s name for his most recent project, HigherEdLive. HigherEdLive is a Sunday night web show where he brings on guests from the higher ed web community to tackle subjects. Just this past Sunday I joined Seth on the show to talk about “Going Viral With YouTube.”

New Report: 58% of Students Value a Virtual Tour On A College Website

Kyle James — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 14:05:44 +0000

Last week Noel-Levitz released their 2010 edition on the E-Expectations Report about what college-bound students are looking for in terms of online engagement during the admissions process. To create their report they surveyed more than 1,000 high school students about their online behavior and expectations. I’m not going to rehash the complete report here, but if you are looking for that, Karlyn over at .eduGuru wrote a nice summary or simply go download the report for yourself. What I would like to do is present a few very interesting data points and discuss exactly how we address those points.

76% of Students Use Facebook

Facebook was the clear winner of the social media websites surveyed although at 79% it still seemed this number is a little low. With Facebook even this week expecting its 500 millionth user and the entire phenomenon starting in colleges and universities, you would think this number would be closer to 95% of the audience. The slight difference here is that we are talking about college bound high school students in this survey. Either way if over three quarters of your audience is on a channel, you simply can’t ignore it. nuCloud gives you the ability to embed your virtual tour right on your Facebook page. Don’t just take my word for it; check out this example of one of our customers actually doing it.

58% of Students Identified Virtual Tours as Extremely Valuable or Adds a lot of Value

Speaking of embedding those virtual tours we have to be extremely excited to hear that almost 60% of incoming students find our product valuable! It has never been more important than it is today to have a compelling and easy to use virtual tour on your website. I think the big key in that last sentence is “easy to use.” If you try to use a lot of the tours out there on college websites many are hard to figure out and even more painful to let them load. Many prospective students have a well known dislike of being patient for things.

77% of Students Identified Campus Visit Request Forms as Extremely Valuable or Adds a lot Of Value

I very strongly believe that a campus visit is one of the strongest elements in the decision process of where a student chooses to go to school. Any admission office will tell you that if they can get a student to visit their school they can get that individual to apply. With this being such an important part of the recruitment funnel you have to think about as many ways as possible to open up it up more. I strongly believe that an online virtual tour is definitely one of these methods. If a student visits 30 school websites and knows they are only going to visit maybe five of them then seeing a virtual tour of the campus might be one of those important decision makers to keep a school on the list.

52% Have Viewed Videos About Colleges But Only 10% on YouTube

Finally this last data point shows how valuable students think videos are, but interestingly enough the world’s biggest video website isn’t where they watch this content about schools. According to Alexa YouTube is the 3^rd largest website in the world. If you drill down into the data a little deeper then you will see 42% of the students are watching video on your website. If you don’t have video on your website then you probably want to get some up there. nuCloud does give you the ability to embed video in your map stops on your website as you can see in this example. This probably isn’t exactly what students have in mind, but we are already in the process of developing a tool to let you embed video on your website.

Conclusion

These four data points are just a few of the many in this report. Once again I highly recommend you learn what college bound students expect from your online efforts and read the report. Just as we have to understand the data and what students desire so we can build products and services accordingly. It is important for colleges and universities to address these same desires. You can download the full report here »

Download our Interactive Campus Map Kit and learn exactly how nuCloud can help your recruitment efforts. We are here to help.

More Than an Interactive Campus Tour – Stadium Tours

Kyle James — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 16:40:23 +0000

One of the first things we realized when starting nuCloud is that our map tools can be used for so much more than just campus maps. Any sort of virtual tour that can be accomplished through a map is a possible use of the software. Because we have a strong background in higher education it makes sense for us to start with that market, but it is by no means the only viable solution. Part of demonstrating these different uses is giving examples. By clicking on the image below you can see an example of our mapping tool used to explore historic Fenway Park in Boston, MA.

We are going to continue to find creative ways to use our maps and share these with you. This really is just the tip of the iceberg. All of the following are potential uses for our software:

Real Estate Home Tours
National Park Tours
Residential/Commercial Development Area Tours
Tours of the Human Body
Sports Venues – baseball like Fenway, as well as basketball, soccer, football, etc.
Museum Tours
State Tours

The list could go on. The idea here is to think of things that could be better displayed through a mapping tool and then working together to help make that vision come true. Expect more examples in the future, and as we continue to share more interactive map examples, hopefully you will continue to think creatively.

Cisco’s Interactive Map Tour of their Flagship New Data Center

Kyle James — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 14:00:29 +0000

Leave it to a major player like Cisco Systems to investment in showing off their newest data center through a flashy interactive map. Cisco recently spent $80 million in the renovation of an unused office building on its campus in Richardson, Texas. What better way to fully display this achievement than through an interactive map?

Cisco's Richardson Data Center Interactive Map Tour

View the Richardson Data Center Interactive Tour.

The tour has a collection of videos with all the details about the data center, including close looks and insights from the architect. Not only can you see a cross-section of their whole campus and drill into a few different buildings but the crowning achievement of the Richardson Data Center is that it has details on all the cool dorky networking tech things a Cisco certified professional (CCNP, CCNA, etc) would care to know.

The 3-D cross-section of the center has galleries of photos along with videos on the following subjects:

AC Handling
Building Ramps
Server Racks
Data Distribution
Structured Cable
Etc.

For any world enterprise company looking to build a world class data center, this is a great resource to explore and see how a company that provides the backbone for most of the Internet builds their data centers. From a marketing standpoint the transparency and open access to information like this build huge amounts of credibility with their target audience.

I won’t go into all the details of the facility, like the 25,000 gallon thermal storage tank that stores up to 5 hours of water supply to the facility in the event of a water system failure. I’m guessing many of you simply aren’t interested in the details of a data center, and if you were you probably aren’t still reading this post as you have moved on to check out the interactive map for yourself.

I really recommend checking out this interactive map tour even if you are a true network administrator junkie.

The Difference Between a Virtual Tour and an Interactive Map

Kyle James — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 15:39:44 +0000

When I look at different interactive maps and virtual tours around the web, more often than not there is a very distinct difference between the two. After all, a map is a map and a tour sometimes includes a map, but I’ve noticed that people commonly call anything a virtual tour including the following:

360 degree panorama photographs
A video of someone walking through locations
Detailed text with pictures of locations
Pictures accompanied by an audio track of what you are viewing

Defining a Virtual Tour

As you can see by just the four examples above virtual tours can mean different things to different individuals. If you look up the word virtual in any dictionary it has a pretty open meaning. Dictionary.com defines the adjective virtual as:

being such in power, force, or effect, though not actually or expressly such: a virtual dependence on charity.

So yes, based on that definition pictures, video, audio and any other online elements that can create the “virtual” sensation of a tour really do count as virtual tours.

Defining an Interactive Map

Defining interactive is just as straight forward. Once again utilizing dictionary.com there is a great definition of interactive as it pertains to the context of a map:

(of a computer program or system) interacting with a human user, often in a conversational way, to obtain data or commands and to give immediate results or updated information: For many years airline reservations have been handled by interactive computer systems.

So being interactive is virtual but being virtual isn’t always interactive. And I think that is the main point. Someone can easily have a virtual tour inside of an interactive map but not always the other way around. So an interactive map is always a virtual tour, but a virtual tour isn’t always an interactive map.

Power of an Interactive Map

What really makes interactive maps like our interactive campus map offering so compelling is the fact that you can have both a virtual tour and an interactive map in one! Keeping things simple but powerful builds a strong case about why you would rather have something interactive than simply virtual. Of course there is more programming and logic that goes into creating an interactive element, which is why you want a system that can handle the logic in place.

So if you are still curious about examples of interactive maps and virtual tours, a simple Google search on each will bring back lots of examples. What you will notice is that some of those virtual tours will be interactive maps and very few interactive maps will make the mistake of simply calling themselves a virtual tour. Why not go ahead and take the extra step next time you create a virtual tour and just make it an interactive map?

Photo by: samuelviani