The History and Evolution of Virtual Tours

Is a virtual tour of a college or university simply a journey through its’ buildings and facilities? How do you best tell the story of a complex educational institution to those considering attending? What is the proper role of the virtual tour in the overall college admissions process?

At CampusTours we believe that virtual tours are essentially about storytelling. Because colleges and universities are complex organizations with dynamic communities, each school needs to tell its story in their own way. For some schools telling the story of the institution in the course of an online walking tour still works well. Other institutions find that topical or program-oriented approaches work for them, while others develop Day In The Life student-focused experiences or take entirely different approaches. The goal should be to develop a presentation that conveys the character of your community and your approach to education, not to exhaustively visit every location on campus. As one student in a focus group put it "the buildings look great. But the buildings always look great. College is hopefully about more than buildings. What I want to know is what is it like to go there? What’s it like to attend [the school] as a student?"

The Virtual Campus Tour Timeline

	1994	The first virtual tours appear. Most tours follow the traditional walking tour model, showcasing the institution through an exploration of its buildings and facilities.
	1996	Photographic Tours - Stop based tours approximating the actual campus tour are introduced. These tours contain text, photos, and in the most sophisticated cases, QuickTime™, IPIX™ or JAVA™ panoramic images.
	1997	CampusTours.com founded, begins cataloging virtual tours (see CampusTours in the WayBackMachine).
	1998	Photographic Tours with Guide Narration - Stop based tours narrated by a tour guide gain popularity. These tours are generally comprised of a series of photos with directional arrows giving users different choices as they navigate the campus. Audio narration for each "stop" is often provided by a tour guide, visually represented by a photo. In some cases a campus map is also present to provide the visitor with a sense of the layout of campus.
	1999 - 2000	Panoramic Tours - Panoramic tours exploded onto the college market starting in 1999. Panoramic tours are a good complement to the traditional walking tour, and give visitors the capability to immerse themselves in a college scene. Some panoramic tours offer an accompanying campus map, and others include narration. A number of panoramic image formats emerged introducing users to IPIX™, QuickTime™ and JAVA™ viewers.
	2001	CampusTours begins building virtual tours for colleges and universities.
	2003 - 2004	Video Tours - In 2003 the first video tours begin to emerge on college Web sites. Initially colleges simply provide a digitized version of their five to ten minute promotional video.
	2004	CampusTours Develops Juilliard School Virtual Tour - In conjunction with the Juiliiard School CampusTours constructs the first version of the CampusTours Multimedia Engine and creates the Juilliard Virtual Experience.
	2005	CampusTours Unveils MultiMedia Engine Virtual Tour Content Management System. The first version of the MultiMedia Engine supports fully content-managed tours comprised of photos, narration, music, videos, animation and interactive maps.
	2006	Themed Video Tours - Colleges begin to move away from showing each and every campus location, and instead refocus the presentation on the experience of attending the institution. The tours are often complemented by an interactive map that gives the ability to explore the campus.
	2007	InteractiveVideo Virtual Tours - CampusTours introduces InteractiveVideo (see InteractiveVideo Sample), a technology that allows universities to add interactive links within videos. InteractiveVideo allows institutions to produce shorter primary videos and encourages visitors to jump off to separate experiences within the video depending on their interests.
	2008	Day in The Life Tours - Colleges begin to emphasize student stories in telling the story of the institution. "Day In The Life" or "Year In The Life" experiences offer the visitor an inside look at several students daily lives.
	2008	CampusTours debuts StatFrame Tour Traffic Tracking service. StatFrame allows institutions to monitor every user tour session independently, providing valuable feedback for modifying the tour with the MultiMedia Engine Version 5.
	2009	Student Commentary - Colleges begin to add student commentary to tours, augmenting official tour videos with commentary clipped from students on the same topic. (See Commentary Sample)
	2009	Photorealistic Campus Maps Emerge - As technologies permitting lush three-dimensional rendered landscapes became available, CampusTours was the first firm to apply these technologies to college campuses, generating Photorealistic Campus Maps. Photorealistic Campus Maps have since become an industry standard. (See Photorealistic Map Sample)
	2010	Mobile Device Tours - Colleges roll out mobile-optimized tours for devices ranging from phones and handhelds to tablets. (See Tablet Sample --- Smartphone Sample)
	2011	Personalized Tour Experiences - Personalized tour experiences alter the tour based on user choice and preferences, and report their session information back into Student Information Systems for detailed admissions tracking.
	2012	HTML5 Tours - As browser standards slowly evolve, 2012 was the first year in which all-HTML5/JavaScript tours became a truly viable option. (See HTML5 Tour Sample)
	2012	CampusMaps.com launched, begins cataloging campus maps.
	2013 and Beyond	Advanced Admissions Lifestage Personalization - the capability for the tour to adapt not only to student interests, but also to each student's progress in their college search, providing tips and videos from current students tailored to the admissions lifestage of the prospective student.