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Opinion
Mapping Out the Future of Campus Maps
6/28/2007
Luckily, as we all know, colleges and universities benefit tremendously by the presence of creative and innovative people who stick around and work for less than they could get elsewhere in the market because of, among other things, the quality of life aspects related to working on a great college campus.
I asked Ted why his particular department had this responsibility, and it seemed as though it was a rather serendipitous thing. Most of the detailed drawings, plans, and hard data about the design and location of the parts of the campus' built environment are created and managed by the university architect's office. That is still where Ted's staff goes for authoritative data and images. But that office doesn't have the same responsibility as university relations for the interface with the external world.
Luckily, the decentralization that is common to many large universities with regard to IT has some advantages to compensate for the resulting departmental and budgetary miniaturization. Those tiny departments get into the habit of cross-departmental collaboration (the library, the architect's office), and they also have a lot of individual responsibility to prioritize and tackle projects of interest. As Ted put it, "People pretty much don't say 'Stop!' a lot."
I asked Ted where he and his staff look to find best practices in college and university work related to what they do. He mentioned Michigan, Penn State, and others, and had especially high praise for the UCLA Web folk, who he said just "do incredible stuff." But when his staff took on the Google map project for Ohio State, they weren't following anyone else's lead; it was a purely internally driven concept.
And well executed, I say. As a user, this is the kind of map I want to see when I virtually visit the campus. Of course, in addition to the Google map, the website has links to various drawn images, historical maps, and high-resolution printable maps. However, I suspect that most people who come looking for the campus map are quite satisfied with the Google map, especially when it displays the satellite image overlay and the various "filters" at the same time.
I should have asked him how it is decided and who decides what information gets into the various filters, but I didn't. I guess it's a no-brainer, though, that the Admissions Office and the Registrar each have their own little Google pin-bubble.
About the author: Terry Calhoun is Director of Communications and Publications for the Society
for College and University Planning (SCUP). You can contact him through CT's IT Trends forum by clicking here. View more articles by Terry Calhoun.
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