Columbia College Chicago now offers interactive virtual tours for prospective students using the vicarious online travel platform Georama and the GoPro camera.
The tours are streamed live or on-demand in HD, which Georama’s technology ensures is stable. Tour guides are equipped with a GoPro, which is a point-of-view camera that can be mounted on one’s person, and the tours have traditional stops like the college’s departments, classrooms, facilities, and dorms. Students can interact with the guide and ask questions, including making requests to get a better look at a particular room. Because of the GoPro’s convenience, it’s as easy for the tour guide to grant these requests as it would be during an in-person tour.
The virtual tours benefit those who can’t, for financial or other reasons, make an in-person visit. In particular, some international students would have to get a visa just for the visit and can now investigate the campus virtually. It’s not meant to replace traditional tours, but rather to encourage students to make an on-campus visit when they have the ability.
ECampus quoted Ania Greiner, Director of Admissions Events and Services at Columbia College Chicago:
With the use of Georama’s platform, we’ve made it feasible for anyone to take a tour of our campus from anywhere in the world, at any time. From the comfort of their homes, students and parents can participate in a campus visit and learn first-hand what our college offers.
Dozens of tours have been completed already, writes Rhea Kelly of Campus Technology, and fifteen more are scheduled for the rest of the summer.
Nihal Advani, Founder & CEO of Georama, said:
Many students aren’t able to make the initial visit to multiple colleges. Our technology provides the next best option to an in-person visit via live, high-quality video. And beyond streaming live, tours with our technology allow for two-way interaction in real-time, thereby making them highly personalized.
Georama is a virtual travel agency that uses live streams from guides to give vicarious travel experiences and vacation recommendations. The company has also worked with Lurie Children’s Hospital to take patients on virtual adventures, writes Jim Dallke of ChicagoInno, and plans on bringing the virtual tour technology to Robert Morris University and others along the coast.
