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Baldwin-Wallace College, in Berea, Ohio, has been awarded the CampusTours September 2002 Four Star Virtual Campus Tour Award. Baldwin-Wallace's impressive virtual tour showcases how universities are starting to develop compelling interactive presentations utilizing a combination of technologies. The BW virtual tour begins with an interactive map that allows visitors to zoom in on any portion of campus and select buildings to determine their names and functions. Buildings that include a clickable 'GO' button link to full tour stops complete with QTVR panoramic images, still photos, location descriptions, relevant links and even video testimonials from students. So hold on to your hats, because it's time to explore the Baldwin-Wallace College virtual campus tour!
The Baldwin-Wallace College virtual campus tour requires that visitors have both the FREE Macromedia Shockwave Flash Player, and the FREE Apple QuickTime Player. If you're unsure as to whether you have these two FREE plug-ins installed, try the tour and if you have problems come back and follow the aforementioned links to obtain the plug-ins.
The Baldwin-Wallace virtual tour begins with a campus map in the right-hand side of the screen, and links and tour help along the left-hand side of the screen. We found the Baldwin-Wallace interface refreshing, because instead of simply dumping the visitor at an interactive campus map, BW has provided some interesting alternative ways to navigate the tour. The 'Where Is???' button is particularly useful. Click on the 'Where Is???' button to instantly find useful tour stops. Want to know where admissions, the library or the bookstore is? Where Is??? can help. Baldwin-Wallace has even broken their virtual tour stops down into helpful categories for visitors, so that students can quickly navigate Classroom Buildings, Residence Halls and Other Buildings.
The BW Campus Map achieves the difficult dual mission of providing campus perspective while continuing to maintain its usefulness as a navigation tool to particular buildings. Visitors first encounter the map in the zoomed-out stage, with the entire college visible to provide a good perspective on the campus. Clicking the '+ ZOOM IN' button moves the visitor in closer to the map to expose more detail and clarify the names of buildings and tour stops. [To move the map, you must click within the map window with your mouse, and drag the map opposite the direction you want to go.] Clicking buildings with a 'GO' button launches a tour stop window where photos or a panoramic scene of that location are provided along with detailed explanations of the tour stop, links to relevant information and video snippets from current students.
The video clips, although small, provide the sense of the college community that is difficult to convey through still photos and panoramic images. Including testimonials from current students gives the tour some personality and allows BW to begin to build personal connections with prospective students. Baldwin-Wallace has chosen to compress the size of the video window, and as a result the videos play quickly and fluidly without a pause even on our dial-up test machines. Instead of designing two tours - a high bandwidth tour for fast Internet connections and a low-bandwidth tour for slower connections - BW has managed to develop a tremendous presentation by focusing on the overall tour experience and foregoing complicated introductions and extraneous animations.
The Balwin-Wallace College virtual tour combines a comprehensive and straightforward design with an engaging experience to produce a compelling presentation of the institution. The CampusTours Awards Committee found this to be an exemplary expedition, well worthy of the CampusTours Four-Star Virtual Tour Award!
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