An interactive campus map is an important part of any school’s web presence. Prospective students will use campus maps to explore the school, plan visits, and get a feel for the size of the campus. Current students, faculty and staff rely on maps to find buildings in unfamiliar areas, give directions to guests and visitors, and to plan their routes between classes. Most schools do a good job of providing maps for their students and staff, but many lack the ability to update these maps quickly. School administrators rely on expensive software developers to provide updates, a process that takes time and costs money. Interactive campus maps are a great way to inform students and staff about road closings, construction projects, special events, and even weather alerts, but without the ability to quickly edit the maps, they do no good. While many universities are migrating towards content management systems (CMS) for their website management, most are still falling behind on their campus maps. Fortunately, their are software solutions like our interactive campus map platform that makes it easy to quickly edit and update your campus maps without needing to pay for an outside software developer.
This new mapping technology is incredibly easy to use,and offers a wide range of features. If you can use Facebook, you can now easily edit, update and expand your campus maps. Not only can you edit the maps as needed, but you can add pictures, information, even links to news items or construction alerts. Now you can turn a boring campus map into a guided tour of the school, a valuable safety tool, or even a traffic and weather advisor for their school.
Traditionally, interactive maps were built using streaming video technology like Flash and Shockwave, making them impossible to change without expertise in those systems. Also if you didn’t have the expert on staff you typically found yourself paying an outside expert $100+/hr to make edits for you. As content management systems emerged, they changed the way people build web pages. Suddenly, the power to create, edit and publish was only a few mouse clicks away. Unfortunately, CMS systems don’t fully address the needs of academic and government institutions. Now that has changed, and administrators can take advantage of the same easy-to-use interface for changing and improving their campus maps. Why pay an expensive developer when you can do everything you need from your own computer?
In the rapidly changing world of modern technology, it is important that your school stay ahead of the curve. Today’s generation of students needs to know that their university understands the importance of technology. A customized interactive map is one way to help show prospective students that your school is embracing a new generation of digital technology.
We aren’t saying that we are the only solution, but watch the video below to see how easy it is to update elements of an interactive map in our system. Bring your school into the 21st century while providing a valuable resource for prospective students, current students, alumni, and staff.
Want to know more? Check out our Interactive Campus Map Kit today!