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Aalto University has launched the Virtual Campus Experience, a new immersive and interactive service, at virtualtour.aalto.fi. The virtual campus experience allows users to explore the campus, regardless of their geographical location or the situation with COVID-19 in the world. This helps many prospective students, exchange students and faculty who are considering where to study or work but are not able to visit the campus.

The service offers a 360° panoramic virtual tour of the Otaniemi campus with two interactive digital guides: student Rebecca Adrianzen and Assistant Professor Rodrigo Serna. The tour can be viewed on a desktop or mobile device, and it can also be experienced via a VR headset. The virtual reality version of the tour is simpler than the other versions, since the emphasis has been put on creating a truly immersive visual and aural experience

Virtual visitors can explore the campus by touring around 44 different hotspots in the order they find interesting: learning facilities, laboratories, workshops, service spots and outdoor spaces. There is also a thematic tour available, focusing on spaces for learning and research, as well as a pre-designed automatic tour.

‘Aalto University has a lot of international applicants, students and employees. We recognised that not everyone is able to visit our vibrant campus in person especially now during the pandemic. We had a vision to create an immersive and interactive virtual campus experience that would show all interested what our amazing campus looks and feels like’, says Anastasia McAvennie, Visitor Experience Specialist at Aalto University.    

When developing the service, great emphasis was placed on user experience. Several different elements were included to enable clear navigation, such us a location map, progress tracking functions and a variety of prompts by the digital guides. There are plans to develop the service further by adding versions in different languages, more campus locations and thematic tours.

The Aalto University campus in Otaniemi, Espoo, is a meeting place for the university, its partners, visitors and people living, studying and working in the area. The Otaniemi campus is known for its lush green areas, refreshing nature, breathtaking architecture and multifunctional facilities. It has developed rapidly in recent years: We have new impressive buildings for the School of Arts, Design and Architecture and the School of Business, and older buildings have been modernised through major renovations. At the moment, the campus is in very limited use due to the pandemic, and the university operates mostly remotely.

All feedback of the service is warmly welcome and can be submitted through the ‘Contact us’ form in the virtual tour, or by sending an e-mail to virtualtour-feedback(at)aalto.fi.

Contact:
Anastasia McAvennie
Visitor Experience Specialist, Aalto University
anastasia.mcavennie@aalto.fi, virtualtour-feedback@aalto.fi.