Student Guides as Mediators of Institutional Heritage and Personal Experience

This chapter examines the role of student guides as mediators between the institutional mission and heritage of their university and visitors to the historic campus. Drawing on a longitudinal study undertaken at two historic universities in the west, the authors establish that a small cadre of elite, competitively-chosen guides at these institutions perform a role of openness and democracy on behalf of the increasingly complex and hybrid modern university. The chapter considers how student guides are able to navigate their own pride at such privileged engagement and how this privilege impacts on tours offered to visitors, where campus tours become a negotiation based on internal and external influences and are constructed and reconstructed according to the imagined or actual demands of different tour groups. By managing risk at the point of employment, and by encouraging free reign in tours, there is limited risk involved to host universities as student guides offer an informed, personalised heritage experience to both domestic and international tourists.

THE ROLE OF COGNITIVE SCRIPTS IN THE ORGANIZATION OF CAMPUS TOURS

The aim of off-campus educational activity guides are to expand the knowledge of participants; however, visitors often rate tours according to the quality of their experience, rather than by what they have learned. Thus, ensuring that visitors are engaged requires that tour guides be able to identify the needs and expectations of visitors. This study sought to contextualize campus tours using four dramaturgical elements: “Actors” (tour guides), "audience” (visitors); “setting” (campus); “performance” (the tour). Dramaturgy and cognitive scripts were combined to form the research basis of this study. Free association models were employed to rank the sites subjects most wish to visit and service blueprints were used to illustrate how campus tour services should be organized and delivered. This study provides a comprehensive analysis of the processes used to decipher complex service encounters as well as concrete examples of their application. Key words: cognitive script, field trip, informal education, theatre, tour guide, visitors