Schools and colleges across Ireland and the world are keen to promote a healthy campus but none have gone so far yet as a college in Oklahoma where 900 first year students are being made to wear Fitbit bands as part of their curriculum.
The data around steps and heart rate information is relayed directly to a school computer where students are graded on their activity.
Oral Roberts University in Tulsa has been monitoring physical activity as part of its student offering for a number of years but it was done on a ‘pen and paper’ model with students having to remembers to check their heart rates and log whatever physical activity they did.
Oral Roberts is thought to be the first organisation to make the wearing and recording of data a mandatory part of student, or indeed, working life but it is a little different to most institutions. Students are not permitted to smoke or drink and pre-marital sex is also forbidden.
Monitoring of the student’s obligation to take 10,000 steps per day and 150 minutes of rigorous physical activity each week is used towards their end of year grades.
Students are required to pay for the devices themselves and the University has reported that their have been no complaints about invasion of privacy recorded to date.
“ORU offers one of the most unique educational approaches in the world by focusing on the Whole Person – mind, body and spirit,” said University President William M. Wilson.
“The marriage of new technology with our physical fitness requirements is something that sets ORU apart. In fact, when we began this innovative program in the fall of 2015, we were the first university in the world to offer this unique approach to a fitness program.”
Today it would seem like a very long stretch to see something similar implemented in Irish universities but who knows in future when grade bonuses might be applied to those who are making a genuine and recordable effort to live up to the notion of a healthy campus.
