No Paper for a Day

Clearly, one of the biggest educational paper consumption issues is the use of paper based textbooks and course material in our classrooms.  To minimize the environmental impacts (and costs) of texts, Schools re-use textbooks, offer reselling programs, and attempt to minimize moving to new textbooks (or new editions) each year.   At www.npfad.com, we have been following the new trend to move to digital course resource material in 2009 and see buy-in from both the publishers and various educational institutions across North America.

Please check out this story from the NY times (note registration for their online paper is free and saves paper) on the future of textbooks.  The article points to increased online resources and even open source learning tools to help improve education in K-12 and College through University programs.  These initiatives fit the npfad.com mantra of improviving educational tools and operational processes while reducing the environmental impacts of paper usage.

The following schools and articles also reveal a dedication to moving towards paperless course materials:

• Professers Gone Paperless - Open source texts and three examples of prof’s providing paperless options course materials
• Open Source textbooks make learning more affordable - petition to help spread Open textbooks as a viable option for higher education.
• Anaheim University will be the first accreditted paperless campus in North America - course delivery and processes will all by digital;  they are working with publishers to convert all course materials to be reviewed through the Sony Book Reader and Amazon Kindle

This leads to my next article which will explore some of the technologies available that make the movement towards paperless possible like never before…

Regards and reduction,

Kyle Gruen

The concept behind No Paper for a Day is not to reduce paper usage entirely;  there are indeed situations where paper presents the best current option for information sharing.  Rather, we hope that thinking in terms of “What would my options be if all photocopiers and printers were turned off for a day?” will help spur some ideas that will significantly help reduce paper consumption.  Paper use is on the rise at BCIT (and, arguably, globally as printing technologies improve) so our goals are:

• Good:  Ensure that paper use doesn’t increase in 2009-2010
• Better:  Reduce Paper Consumption in the School of Business (and BCIT as a whole) by 10%
• Best:  Reduce Paper Consumption at BCIT by 20%

This post will assemble some current best practices and allow you to share ideas that you already have implemented in your classrooms.  Our next post will allow for new ideas and share some news from other campus initiatives across North America.

Best Practices in Education:

1. Distribute Class Notes electronically before class using My.BCIT.ca or Share-in/Share-out
2. Print / Photocopy all handout’s double sided when necessary (most of our printers and photocopiers in the School of Business have duplexers so check your print settings).  To allow duplex printing in WINXP, select START - PRINTERS and FAXES - Rightclick your default printer and select PROPERTIES and add the Duplex option under the Device Tab.
3. Consider distributing Study Packs electronically.  Some schools are moving towards electronic textbooks aswell.
4. Distribute Course Outlines to students electronically (will save over 50,000 copies in the SoB alone)
5. Encourage students to use some form of netstorage to access files anywhere.  You can vew information about how BCIT handles netstorage through “Personal Files”
6. Use flash drives or email to transfer documents to/from home or to/from students
7. (Re)Use paper from your recycle bin to print out notes, adgenda’s or emails if necessary
8. Consider alternate testing methods or condensed printing of multiple choice exams that are typically used for an hour, stored for two years and then recycled.
9. …
10. Communication is so important:  ie “Think Before You Ink” campaign -

Please enter your comments (below) with new ideas and I will add the most impactful methods for reducing paper use in our top 10 list.  The list will also be maintained at our Facebook Group and we will be launching a survey to keep a running total lof how your paper reduction activities have contributed.