Looking through brochures and reading about student life on college websites can help give prospective students a sense of their future as college students. But there’s nothing like campus tours at orientation to really help them find where they belong.
Make sure that your new student orientation includes meaningful plans for helping incoming students explore their beautiful campus. Give them a sense of the student resources, hangout spots, and academic buildings they’ll be frequenting for this important stage in their lives.
A successful campus tour during orientation week can prepare students for long-term success and connections.
Why You Should Host Campus Tours at Student Orientation
Many incoming students may have toured campus before enrolling. But several of the current students coming onto campus for orientation week will be stepping foot on the grounds for the very first time.
The rise in virtual campus tours and online information sessions means many students make their enrollment decisions without a campus visit. Even those who did take a quick walking tour of the campus as part of their selection process were looking at it from a different perspective than an admitted student viewing the practical and personal aspects of their new home.
A successful orientation week invites students to see themselves in the space. It helps them get comfortable accessing all the campus has to offer.
Building a Sense of Belonging
One of the most important impacts of a campus tour is to help students feel a sense of belonging. Many incoming students will be transitioning from a high school environment.
Orientation programs designed to help these students find their footing in their new college setting can help them see beyond the overwhelm of a sprawling campus. They’ll start to understand their place in it—socially, academically, and recreationally.
Familiarizing Students With Key Locations
The many student services, academic programs, recreational offerings, and social scenes on your campus are only useful when students know where to find them. Get new students off to a great start with an orientation that focuses on key locations. Then, they know where to go when they need tutoring, a lunch meet-up spot, or a quiet place to study.
Showcasing Campus Resources and Services
There can be many barriers to accessibility when it comes to campus resources and services. Knowing where to go shouldn’t be one of them. Ensure that your orientation week shows students how to access academic support, financial aid, the accessibility office, and health services.
Enhancing Student Engagement and Retention
Remember that the ultimate goal of a campus tour during orientation week is to help students acclimate to campus life as smoothly and quickly as possible so that they’re engaged and excited. When your new student orientation helps students feel welcome on campus, they’re more likely to get out and about. Then, they can join school groups, make friends, and find the ties that will lead to long-term retention and better academic outcomes.
How to Host a Powerful Campus Tour
Incoming students have a lot on their minds—and their schedules. Make sure that the campus tour is an engaging component of orientation week that truly reaches its goals by planning ahead for a meaningful experience.
1. Plan the Route Strategically
Strategic planning of the campus tour route is important for any tour. But it’s especially important for group campus tours at orientation or self-guided campus tours at orientation.
Consider training tour guides for different sets of students. You can give transfer students, international students, graduate students, or student-athletes customized experiences designed to highlight the campus spaces most relevant to their needs.
Ensure that the flow of the route is logical and engaging, with a mix of practical highlights and more quirky, personable details.
2. Enhance the Experience With Technology
No matter how well you design a tour or how small you make the groups, you’ll never be able to fully personalize the experience to meet each student’s individual needs. Even one-on-one campus tours at orientation can’t predict every question or interest.
Integrate technology to enrich the tour experience. Provide additional layers of information that are available to students right when they need them. Integrate multimedia elements like FAQs for specific buildings, social media posts, and interactive components. These efforts can turn the campus tour into an opportunity for in-depth exploration.
Concept3D provides powerful tools for facilitating campus tours at orientation with technological enhancements. Interactive virtual maps allow students to explore with ease. Also, added accessibility features mean that you can ensure every student feels welcomed and supported.
3. Showcase Academic Facilities
Make sure that the campus tour goes beyond pointing out buildings on campus. Take students into the spaces where they’ll be spending so much of their time. Partner with faculty and staff to create hands-on opportunities to explore labs, classrooms, and libraries.
Many campuses have invested in unique, student-centered facilities. When you’ve got an amazing space like a low-sensory study room, an integrated health center, or a “brain gym,” make sure you use the campus tour to show it off.
The chance to enter these spaces will help make students more comfortable before their first day of classes kicks off.
4. Explore Student Life
Much of student life will take place in spaces like student centers, dining halls, recreational facilities, and dorm rooms. Help students envision their day-to-day life on campus by including stops in these places on the tour.
Enhance the experience with strategically placed photo opportunities that encourage social media sharing. Plan as many opportunities as possible to actually use the spaces. Consider setting up a social hour with games in the student centers or scheduling a meal as a group in the dining halls.
Have current students volunteer to show off their real-life dorm spaces and offer tips to incoming students about making the most of their time on campus.
Making these connections explicit and inviting in the first week of new student orientation is crucial. It can help combat the epidemic of student loneliness. As Inside Higher Ed reports, experts believe “technology has made it easier for college freshmen to stay in touch with their high school friends, which may benefit those relationships but can also diminish the desire to form new connections on campus.”
Help these incoming students find their space on campus from the very beginning. Then, they can add new, in-person connections to their virtual ones.
5. Discuss Campus Involvement
Early involvement with clubs, student organizations, and sports leagues is a marker of long-term success and retention. So, help students explore their options during the campus tour.
Highlight the spaces where these groups meet and encourage student groups to set up recruitment materials in central locations. Then, orientation week opens doors for incoming students to find the groups that fit their interests.
The more you can get student groups involved with the campus tour and other elements of orientation week, the more authentic incoming students’ interests will be. As Kelly Lam writes for Times Higher Education, student orientation week is a great time to leverage these connections:
“A performing arts club can organise lunchtime concerts for those who are music enthusiasts, while a sports club can offer trial experience sessions for those who enjoy physical activities. These events can help freshmen feel welcome and connect with like-minded peers.”
6. Address Accessibility and Inclusivity
Make sure that your tour plan includes accessibility and inclusivity so that students with a wide variety of backgrounds and needs feel welcome and included during orientation week.
Work with the accessibility office and other staff members to ensure your tour path meets disability access standards and will move through campus using accessible ramps and entryways.
Create tour options that include less visual and auditory stimulation for students with different sensory needs. Ensure that all campus tours at orientation highlight campus resources and facilities designed for student diversity. Also, include spaces geared toward international students and different cultural centers.
It’s also important to make sure that the representatives students meet along the tour (including the tour guides, student volunteers, staff, and faculty) are representative of campus diversity.
Upgrade Your Campus Tours With Concept3D
Building a campus tour into your new student orientation week is a great way to invite students to see themselves on the campus. They’ll feel emboldened to explore their new home confidently.
Make sure that you’ve crafted campus tours at orientation that will create meaningful connections and give students the tools they need to access the spaces available for fun, learning, and assistance.
Concept3D is an expert at designing campus maps with interactive elements and accessible features so students can have robust campus tour experiences. In addition, using an integrated system designed by Concept3D ensures a seamless experience between the orientation tour and students’ ongoing use of campus maps to navigate campus tomorrow, next week, next month, and in the years to come!
When you’re ready to create a campus map experience that will empower students to make their college experience their own, contact Concept3D or request a demo today.