<body><div><figure><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=1J3DYi_1H437OkC00" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=1J3DYi_1H437OkC00" width="1200" height="800" ></figure>Last month, Campus Recreation launched their new activity tracker, which allows students and faculty to view the crowd levels at various Campus Recreation facilities. The function is located at the bottom of each page of the website, under Facility Hours.The new tool shows usage data for both the ARC and CRCE. The tracker also displays the percent capacity of each facility’s various rooms, such as the gyms, multipurpose rooms and strength and conditioning areas.According to Parker Sheppard, associate director of Member Services, Student Development and Assessment at Campus Recreation, the tracker was developed as part of Campus Recreation’s ongoing mission to serve students.“We’ve got a responsibility to make sure that students … whether they use our facility regularly or not, have the ability to see what our hours are, what different facilities’ hours might look like, and, in an ideal world, how busy it is,” Sheppard said.Even with this fall headed to be the warmest on state record, members of the Champaign-Urbana community are still preparing for cold winter weather. Sheppard discussed the importance of the tracker as a tool which could allow students to have a sense of which Campus Recreation facility would be worth traveling to on cold days in the months ahead.“It’s not going to give you the exact feeling of what you’re going to feel like when you walk over,” Sheppard said. “But it might tell you whether it’s worth it to make that walk or to just stick to where you’re close to.”According to Sheppard, the tracker was built with usage data the University has been collecting since the COVID-19 pandemic. While the new activity tracker displays this historical data in blue and orange bars, there is also a secondary orange line connecting scattered dots across the display. This is the activity tracker’s “Live” usage function, which is updated every hour by Campus Recreation.Although it is not technically live, as the data is updated hourly rather than continuously, this function of the tracker represents the most recent usage data by combining card swipe-ins, manual counts of how many students are using each facility and numbers of students detected by sensors in specific rooms throughout the facilities.Sheppard described the sensors, placed in the entrance to spaces like the gyms at the ARC, as being like virtual clickers that keep track of the number of people in each room.Leo Di Zillo, junior in AHS and a Member Services worker at Campus Recreation, discussed how student workers help facilitate tools like the activity tracker.Di Zillo said facility assistants are responsible for counting the number of people using different rooms or facilities within Campus Recreation. He said the activity tracker is useful from a member services perspective because it helps members and students understand how busy the facilities will be before they go. “Some people have a preference to go to the gym at the more quiet times when it’s not as busy,” Di Zillo said. “So I think it just helps people to go to the gym at the times they like and get a gauge of what it’s going to be like before they go there.”Caroline Gallagher, freshman in Business and facilities assistant at Campus Recreation, talked about her role observing students at CRCE. Gallagher said opening hours between 6 a.m. and 2 p.m. were generally the calmest at both CRCE and the ARC, and that the facilities experienced the most traffic after 5 p.m.As for her own experience as a frequent Campus Recreation patron, Gallagher said that machine availability was an important factor which the new activity tracker could help address.“Nobody likes to go when you have to wait 10 minutes to get to your machine,” Gallagher said. “So I think when people know it’s a little slower … that’ll help people make it more accessible and put it into their schedules.”The activity tracker also aligns with Campus Recreation’s mission statement and the goals outlined in its strategic plan.“Our new slogan is: move, thrive, belong,” Sheppard said, “I hope that this is showing students there’s a bunch of students moving. There’s a bunch of students who are thriving in our facilities. This helps people understand which facility they belong in.”</div></body>

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Last month, Campus Recreation launched their new activity tracker, which allows students and faculty to view the crowd levels at various Campus Recreation facilities. The function is located at the bottom of each page of the website, under Facility Hours. The new tool shows usage data for both the ARC...

Campus Recreation launches new activity tracker

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Last month, Campus Recreation launched their new activity tracker, which allows students and faculty to view the crowd levels at various Campus Recreation 

Campus Recreation launches new activity tracker

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