When it comes to selling Eastern Kentucky University to a prospective student, nothing beats a personal visit, especially with all the dramatic improvements in recent years.
But for all those times where an on-campus visit is not practical, or a student wants a sneak peek before deciding what colleges and universities to visit in person, the EKU Office of Admissions has teamed with Youvisit to offer an immersive virtual tour. Using 360-degree 3-D photography, cutting-edge interactive scenes and narration by four current Eastern students, the University is bringing the campus experience to any desktop, laptop or mobile device anywhere in the world.
The EKU virtual tour is available at eku.university-tour.com, from a link on the EKU home page (www.eku.edu) and through the EKU Virtual Tour app at Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store (search Eastern Kentucky VR). Those who download the app while on campus can go on a GPS-enabled, self-guided tour of campus.
“Our goal was to connect prospective students, families, alumni, and the broader community to EKU,” said Maya Mapp, associate director of admissions. “Because this can be accessed anywhere in the world, we want the prospective students from farther distances to be able to experience ‘The Campus Beautiful’ as if they were here.
“Using our living scenes, students can experience some of our academic areas and see what it is like to be a student within those areas,” Mapp continued. “We also believe the students will enjoy using virtual reality to really immerse themselves in the EKU campus visit. Virtual reality is still very new, and being on the front edge of the newest technology is very exciting.”
The tour, which was filmed during the summer of 2017, will be updated annually to capture additional campus changes. And there will be plenty in the near future, including a new dining hall in January 2018 and a new student recreation center and renovated student union by 2020.
Anyone interested in embedding the EKU virtual tour on a website should contact Mapp at maya.mapp@eku.edu or Wesley Gift at wesley.gift@eku.edu.