Colleges across the nation are encouraging tour guides to stop walking backwards when giving tours to prospective students, mirroring a three-year-old AU policy.
AU started the policy in an effort to minimize danger to the tour guides and also to encourage discussion between visitors and the guides, according to Blair Bailey, a co-coordinator for the AU Ambassador program.
"Walking backwards is dangerous for the guide," Bailey said. "We have had many guides become injured walking backwards from ripping off toe nails to spraining ankles and knees, to tripping over roots and trash cans and banging their heads. Also, by walking with the group, it allows the prospective students and families the opportunity to ask questions that they do not wish to ask in front of the entire group."
This sudden change in prospective student tours is due to the fact that many colleges want to give a more natural feel to their tours, The New York Times reported. Colleges feel that by having their guides walk with the group, visitors can walk about campus in a more ordinary setting, as if they weren't in a large group of students, and won't feel discouraged from engaging with their guide in a more personal way.
This new trend hasn't only affected how prospective students feel during a tour, it has also had an effect on both the tour guides and prospective students' parents.
Having to walk with the group has made guides feel more confident in what they are doing and allows them to do a better job, according to Bailey.
"The tour guide feels more like they are holding an important conversation with their tour group rather than shouting at them," Bailey said. "It also fosters a great feeling of friendship and breaks down barriers between the tour guide and the student," she said.
Parents are also coming away from these tours with a more positive attitude. They have been commenting on how refreshing it is to have AU's guides walk with the group, Bailey said.
"I have had parents come up to me after my tour and say, 'thank you so much for walking with us and talking with us rather than herding us and shouting at us,'" she said. "It's a refreshing change [for parents] after touring another school earlier in the day and two or three schools the day before and the family is tired of being shouted at."
Although these changes seem to be having an overall positive effect on prospective student tours, Bailey said when it comes to students really engaging and liking a tour it doesn't really matter how a guide is walking.
"A student is going to listen if they are interested in the school," Bailey said. "If the guide or the school doesn't pique their interest, then how the guide is walking won't matter."
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