The University of Akron (UA) is planning to provide its 500 student athletes with tablet computers and may eventually extend that to the whole student body, the Akron Beacon Journal reported.

UA began the program last year with 30 men and women's basketball players and now plans to add students in other major sports next year. The school decided to start the initiative with student athletes because they face time and scheduling crunches that most students do not.

The initiative is meant to allow students to keep up on schoolwork and research, as well as review material from their coaches such as game film and playbooks. The tablets will also allow students to take their work anywhere with Wi-Fi, instead of being confined to computer labs or hauling laptops around.

UA is following the model set by a number of other schools with NCAA Division 1 sports programs, such as Ohio State University (OSU).

"Being a Division 1 student-athlete is a real challenge given the practice and traveling time demands," Jim Sage, UA's vice president for information technology, said.

OSU decided to stop loaning its students laptops after 11 years of the practice and instead joined the University of Maryland, Stanford University and Fresno State in lending tablet computers.

UA men's basketball coach Keith Dambrot sees the initiative as a "relatively inexpensive investment to help athletes."

During the season, a basketball player will spend as much as 20 hours per week at team practices and will play in 30 regular season games. When the team travels for road games, they take a bus as a team and spend several hours getting to the venue.

"This will give us some other things that other people don't have," when it comes to recruiting, he said. "You're showing people you're putting money into academics. It's the right thing to do."

The NCAA requires that all student athletes, at any level, must show academic progress and must pass all their classes to be eligible to play on their team.

"We can put on the programs that they need and they have an ability to research while they're on the road," Anne Jorgensen, associate athletic director for student-athlete academic services, said. "It works like a charm. We think they're paying more attention to getting things done in a timely manner."

Sage said the school has paid the $15,000 for the 30 tablets it already bought and that they have received donors to buy the rest. He did not say who the donors were.

"We concluded that if we could help address time demands for student-athletes, lessons learned could be applied to all of our students, Sage said. "The student-athletes will have to turn in the tablets when they leave the university, just like they do sports equipment."