How interactive classroom technology is making an impact on the playing field

If you follow this blog, you know by now that interactive classroom technology can help drive student satisfaction and improve university reputation. And while Ricoh Senior Region Manager of Higher Education Ben Ruch has certainly talked before about how higher education technologies can affect a football player’s experience on campus, there’s one area you may not have thought about: Technology’s role in getting the football player on campus.

According to Fox Sports¹, a top school can turn as much as a $90 million profit from football, with twenty programs making $28 million or more in 2014. To bring in that kind of money, a program needs to perform well, which in turn requires top players – players who are being recruited, trained and assisted on the field by technology.

The presence of interactive classroom technology continues once the perfect team is assembled. The advent of interactive collaboration tools like those used in innovation incubators and flipped classrooms, enables coaches to collaborate on plays and more with their team on and off the field. The ability to strategize, mark up and change plays on the fly on a digital whiteboard is a significant advantage – along with having assistant coaches, defensive instructors and team members use their connected mobile devices to share their ideas to a large interactive display.

Interactive classroom technology’s uses for the football team don’t end there. Game film and the playbook are arguably the backbone of a team’s training, and both have seen huge changes as technology has improved.

For example, Mike Bobo, Offensive Coordinator, University of Georgia, told USA TODAY³ that the rise of tablets means “we can install 15 times more (plays and formations) now.” Previously, heavier, paper playbooks could prove difficult to carry throughout the day for active student-athletes, but tablets are not only lighter and smaller, students are often already familiar with the technology, making it easier for them to flip through plays and learn them right off the screen.

Meanwhile, game footage has come a long way since the days of passing around a film canister after waiting for it to be developed. Many coaches expect multiple cuts of game footage to be ready same-day, so their staff can make notes on what to practice and what to discuss with players at the next practice. Coaches may even use interactive displays to annotate footage in real time while discussing strategy with their assistants or players.