At the beginning of this school year, a thousand Wageningen University freshmen photographed the Wageningen campus with their smart phones to help create the world’s first Student Street View Facebook application. This interactive virtual tour allows prospective and enrolled students to explore the Wageningen University campus, and share a bit of their university life with family and friends.

Armed with their smart phones, the students in Wageningen lined up in three education buildings, covering 11 floors and stretching across 5 miles of campus. When given a signal, they each took two pictures: one facing a given direction, the other facing the opposite direction. Hundreds of photographs were ultimately used to create the application.

The Student Street View tour begins with stepping off the bus. Visitors can then click across campus, travelling through the Forum and Leeuwenborch education buildings and the Bongerd sports centre. They can explore the lecture halls, Project Based Learning (PBL) spaces, computer labs and other practical laboratories.

To show another side of campus life, the virtual tour also takes visitors past cafeterias and coffee areas filled with students and teachers, and meets up with sports associations presenting their sports.

Wageningen University is continuously trying out innovative new ways to engage and interact with students. The Student Street View campaign was organised by the marketing department in coordination with Tribewise, an interactive agency.

You too can check out Wageningen University’s campus at the Student Street View page on Facebook. (Note that you will have to like their page in order to actually take the tour.) You can also find the press release and the making-off video on PressDoc here.