Engaging students in the school’s unique and compelling story
The Chicago School of Professional Psychology has seven campuses located in metropolitan cities across the United States. The university is dedicated to preparing students for the workforce through programs in psychology, counseling, health services, and business. The Chicago School provides practical training and internships through firmly established community partnerships. However, they wanted a new way to engage students and give them a campus experience without having to actually visit. So when they saw an opportunity to do that with Concept3D’s 360° Tour, they took it.
The Chicago School’s Story
What started as one program in the heart of Illinois, The Chicago School has since expanded to include seven campuses at Chicago, Los Angeles, San Diego, Anaheim, Dallas, and Washington, D.C. Additionally, they offer nearly all of their programs online. Their 6,000 almost exclusively graduate students, locally and internationally, are molded into professionals that expand beyond psychology. The Chicago School is committed to building an environment of mutual respect and inclusion where all individuals are valued for who they are and what they can contribute, and in turn, are expected to be participatory members of an active learning community that promotes cultural awareness, competence, and understanding of diversity. They heavily encourage students to participate in volunteerism and community service. In fact, students collectively serve 1.2 million hours annually to their communities, demonstrating a fierce commitment to the people and surrounding environments they serve.
The Challenges The Chicago School faced
Before the pandemic, The Chicago School provided prospects with in-person tours of their campuses. Their campuses also underwent construction changes, and without a virtual solution to update in real time, it was difficult to detail these changes in a timely manner. However, once in-person campus visits became unreasonable and real-time virtual options became a basic expectation, they saw a perfect opportunity to implement a 360° Tour with Concept3D.
“We needed to have a different model to showcase our campuses when we’re not able to have students on campus…for us that really accelerated our decision-making in getting the tours up and live.”
Why The Chicago School chose Concept3D
After extensive research for other virtual solutions, helped by positive word of mouth recommendations from neighboring schools, The Chicago School team decided to go with Concept3D’s 360° Tour. Compared to the competition, Concept3D was simply the best choice. The team loved 360° Tour’s cost-effectiveness, intuitive CMS that updates edits in real time, and overall ability to allow international, national, and local students to see the school virtually. 360° Tour allows The Chicago School to create a perfect first impression that blows the competition out of the water and helps prospects more easily picture themselves attending the school.
How The Chicago School is using 360º Tours
Since recently implementing their 360° Tour for their multiple different locations, the team has used the virtual solution to give students an excellent experience and the opportunity to digitally engage with the university. Through the 360° Tour engagement product features like hotspots, callouts, and interactive links, the university can showcase information essential to touring students and customize the media to their specific brand. Additionally, they can update the tour to showcase what is changing on the campuses in real time with an exceptionally user-friendly CMS.
“The ability for Concept3D to be flexible with edits was a big concern for me, because we’re often adding and changing spaces… I can go in and build a whole tour as long as I have the assets. It’s user friendly and I appreciated that, to come out with a really professional product from someone that doesn’t have a design background.”
Results
With 360° Tour, The Chicago School strives to increase earlier and faster prospect engagement. They are confident that their 360° Tours can continue to help students as the campuses and student needs change. They’ve also realized that students enjoy taking the virtual tour even if they have no intention of actually coming to their campuses. In the future, the team will continue to use the tour on their website in hopes to increase student engagement even more.
“We hear anecdotally from online students—they actually like seeing tours even though they have no intention of visiting any of our campuses.”
