Dive Brief:
- Oral Roberts University in Oklahoma has required students to meet daily fitness goals for 50 years, relying on the honor system for reporting, but starting next year, it will require incoming freshmen to wear Fitbits.
- Co.Exist reports students can opt out of the program, where health instructors will get access to step count and heart rate data for everyone, but already student groups are clamoring for access to data for research about sleep patterns and test grades.
- Oral Roberts already uses student data for predictive early warning systems to track students’ academic progress and the Fitbit could be the first in a line of more wearable technology in education.
Dive Insight:
Whether the data collection is about fitness activity, academics or student movement around campus, there is always a question of privacy. More colleges and universities are bringing together data about who students are, how they engage in their coursework and whether they seek out support services and other campus resources to get better information about which students succeed. Student supports are being tailored to the needs of specific campus populations, and to do that, campus leaders need data.
Administrators considering innovative ways to use and collect data are grappling with the privacy concerns inherent in the practice. They are weighing student and institutional outcomes with privacy, drawing their own lines, which are sure to be debated for years as new technology allows for new data collection opportunities.