Schools using digital media to snag prospective students


Schools are using digital media to attract potential students.

Hoping to attract prospective students, colleges and universities are turning to new and innovative ways to engage potential freshmen in course catalogs and information about campus social life. Using digital media such as augmented reality and quick response (QR) codes, some schools are breathing new life into tired catalogs and dry literature.

High school students graduating in 2013 are used to instant gratification and multi-tasking with different devices and technologies. Indeed, many experts note that high schools and college campuses are no longer one-to-one environments, but are often three-to-one environments because students own more than one mobile, internet-ready device.

Some campus officials wonder if today’s students are more attracted to interactive catalogs with embedded videos and other interactive elements.

Academy of Art University, a private art and design university, is not only betting on it—it is investing in it. Having teamed with Aurasma, an augmented reality platform, Academy of Art University (AAU) has launched an interactive digital college catalog that offers prospective students an in-depth look into the university’s 19 fields of study.

Augmented reality uses GPS and compass features, such as those found on smart phones running Google’s Android operating system and Apple’s iPhone, to access high-speed wireless networks that mash up local web content with the user’s surroundings. Augmented reality often overlays images onto a user’s screen.

Intersections, AAU’s catalog, comes to life when users point their iPhone, iPad, or Android device at displayed images. Intersections contains 50 “auras”—interactive content such as animations and videos.

“We wanted to help prospective students feel more engaged by offering them rich content beyond the printed page,” said Vince Engel, co-director of AAU’s School of Advertising. “It brings the university’s story to life while showcasing current and former students’ work. We want potential students to look at this book and say, ‘Wow—maybe one day I can make something as cool as that!’”

So far, 500,000 copies of Intersections have been shipped to prospective students in a massive distribution effort.

Incorporating interactive media into its college catalog helps to set Academy of Art University apart from universities across America. This type of forward-thinking and precise marketing strategy will likely succeed in attracting tech-savvy prospective students.

University officials are able to upload and edit “aura” content.  “Aurasma’s technology allows the reader to easily view content without having to go to another site,” said Engel. “It is easy to use and allows video content to be updated on the backend.”

Aurasma officials said that roughly 20 percent of the company’s business is in education, and that number is expected to grow.

“Augmented reality makes the learning experience more interactive and interesting by offering the ability to layer digital creative information on top of printed and real-world objects,” said Jennifer Rapp, general manager of Aurasma. “It takes the traditional classroom one step further to make the educational experience more exciting.”

“There is a strong emphasis on being technologically relevant in today’s world,” said Engel. “Inspiring students through the use of relevant technology is important. That’s where the world of communications is going.”

Aurasma is teaming up with other universities, Rapp said. The University of British Columbia included the Aurasma platform in an app that brings its recruiting materials to life, and students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign integrated Aurasma into a ‘Virtual Dugout’ app to enhance the experience of watching their team’s baseball games.

Some universities are developing augmented reality projects for use in K-12 education. The Handheld Augmented Reality Project (HARP), a collaboration among Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of Wisconsin at Madison, uses wireless handheld computers to enhance teaching and learning through a series of activities that draw on the attributes of students’ surroundings.

A sample HARP activity, dubbed “Alien Contact,” assumes that aliens have landed on Earth, and students must work through math and literacy problems to figure out why the aliens have landed. Students use GPS-enabled handheld computers and form theories based on evidence they collect at certain GPS “hot spots.” As students get within 20 to 30 feet of each designated hot spot, they can complete the assigned activity.

Other forms of digital media-based outreach include QR codes—small black and white squares that look like a barcode. QR codes require a smart phone, but the majority of all university students own a smart phone, and campus tech officials are capitalizing on that statistic.

Misericordia University, a 2,300-student campus in Dallas, Pa., was at the forefront of QR code use in American higher education, using the technology in campus paper materials since 2008.

In 2011, the university sent print material to prospective students that included a QR code they could scan with their smart phone and watch a YouTube video of a typical day of a Misericordia student.

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