When Asha Mata, the assistant director of operations at the University of Houston, hires her student staff members, their initial training includes a walk through of the building, as if they are getting a tour of the campus recreation center.
After the new student staff members have shadowed one or two additional rec center tours, they’ll start leading the tours.
Mata, of course, does not leave them unprepared. In addition to tour shadowing, each staff member has a sheet of paper with all of the essential and detailed information about the rec center at University of Houston.
She said, however, that a piece of paper does not compare to when the students can put their personality into the tour.
“The more that they’re here and the more that they understand what we do in our departments and all of the programs, especially when they participate as well, it’s not just the basic ‘this is so many square feet and this is how many pieces of cardio we have,’” Mata said. “They can talk about our programs and our offerings as well, because they also are active with them.”
Not only are the tour guides able to showcase their favorite parts of the facility, but a few students are able to give bilingual tours as well.
But for students, or potential students, who are not able to see the recreation center in person, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, features a virtual tour on their website.
While its Bronco Recreation and International Complex (BRIC) was under construction, the marketing and public relations department wanted to provide a tour of the upcoming facility. The problem was the construction was not done so the building was not ready to show.
When he was in his junior year of college, Michael Hari, a computer information systems major major, decided to teach himself to provide a 4-dimensional tour of the BRIC, using programs such as Cinema4D, Revit, Illustrator, Premiere Pro and many other software programs.
“So, one way we’ve used it, while the facility was under construction, we would do a short presentation to incoming freshman, which would be upwards of 6,000 freshmen coming in. And we would show them this tour so that they could get a feel for what’s really inside this brand-new facility,” said Cathy Neale, the marketing and public relations manager of Associated Students, Inc.
After the construction was finished, the department decided to keep the virtual tour on its website and continue showing the video on the TV screens in the rec center.
“I’ve always loved learning new things, and I think the best way to learn is to simply get started doing it. We were sitting in a meeting to talk about ideas that would generate excitement for the new recreation center, and I believed that students would be most excited if they actually got to walk around and see all the cool things in the recreation center,” Hari said. “So I proposed a virtual tour. When my supervisor said that he thought it was a great idea and gave me the okay to start on it, I was thinking, ‘What have I done? This is going to be a lot of things to learn.’”
Being a polytechnic university, Neale believes the video not only shoes Cal Poly’s “learn by doing” methodology, but also the hands-on aspect and technical strength of the university.
Mata said an advantage of an in-person tour is the ability to ask questions, and it allows student staff to represent the university and its culture. If a student cannot get an in-person tour, however, Neale says a video can capture student’s attention and communicate what they need to know about the rec center.
This virtual tour of a Rec Center, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona is awesome! However, going on a real tour and trying out the numerous equipment works better for me. CalPoly in San Luis Obispo has an outstanding gym, too! Enjoyed working out there last Fall. Good article, thank you for publishing it!