In an effort to ditch its old-fashioned methods of monitoring student health, Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma, has turned to wearable technology for help. While the school does have a history of making students meet strict fitness goals, this new step is taking the school to a whole new level, never practiced by any university in history. Oral Roberts is requiring its students to wear Fitbits as part of their school curriculum, as reported by the Washington Post.
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All 900 freshmen at the school are now required to wear the fitness monitors, after the school had spent a few years studying Fitbit and determining whether to proceed with implementation. The Fitbit Charge HR, which was recommended by the school because it records movement, heart rate, and sleep cycles, costs $150. An Oral Roberts representative, professor Fritz Huber of the Health, Leisure and Sports Science Department, mentioned that costs are the only complaints the school has received thus far. According to the curriculum, the students only need to report their number of steps and heart rate information, which is then logged by the school’s computers.
The announcement of a school requiring all of its students to purchase and wear Fitbits should come as a major victory for the company, which is dealing with some turmoil as the stock price continues to fall in wake of some legal troubles and lack of new demand. According to a recent news article on TheVerge, a nationwide class-action lawsuit was filed in January after three plaintiffs alleged that the heart rate tracking of the Fitbit Charge HR and Fitbit Surge are inaccurate by a “significant margin” when tracking heart rate. The issue becomes more prevalent during periods of intense exercise. This is not the first class-action lawsuit for Fitbit either. The company was also sued in spring of 2014 for selling wristbands that caused consumers to suffer from skin rashes. Fitbit is also dealing with subpar reaction from their latest release, the Fitbit Blaze smartwatch.
ICYMI: ORU students no longer have to record exercise, new program syncs Fitbit data w/ university system! https://t.co/KfXI4f457b #MustRead
— Oral Roberts U (@OralRobertsU) January 8, 2016
In light of Fitbit’s disappointing start to the year, the Oral Roberts story could bring optimism to some investors. Fitbit needs new sources of growth and may try to tap into the education sector. Currently, Fitbit is relying on signing more deals with corporate wellness programs after signing another big deal with Target in September 2015. However, competition is getting more intense, as other sport apparel companies such as Under Armour, are starting to develop their own wearable technology.
One of the largest barriers keeping Fitbit from continuing to build on the education front are concerns with student privacy. Oral Roberts has not reported receiving any complaints from students regarding breaches of privacy but that could be either because no student complaint has yet to surface or that the students understand that they are attending a private school and have a choice on what school they can attend.
It will be interesting to see if Fitbit can continue to build its brand in the education sector, but for now it appears to be that this story is just an outlier from a school that has historically always been working on tracking student fitness. Therefore, it only seems natural that the university moved towards an easier way to record the data it was already monitoring.