Gen Y and paper

[D H]

From the thread on "Best powerpoint colors":

 

I like white on black personally, or white on a charcoal gray gradiated background

That is a real bitch to print though.

Pr... int?[/quote']

 

This little interchange reflects a huge difference between Gen Y and previous generations. Assuming you work in a multigenerational team, walk through the offices of your employer. You will see some desks strewed with paper and others that are immaculately clean. Discounting the clean freaks (a disease that can strike any generation), those immaculate desks inevitably belong to someone from Gen Y. Their desks are clean not because they are afflicted with some obsession to keep their desks unsullied but rather because "Pr... int" is a foreign word to them. They have finally achieved the goal of a paperless office. All prior attempts at making a paperless office have failed because we older farts would feel lost without paper.

 

To our Gen Y (and younger) members: Do you feel more comfortable looking at something on the screen rather than on paper? How in the world do you scribble math without paper? I personally would be completely lost without my pad of green engineering paper.

 

To our more aged members: Does your work environment support IM? Do you use it? Do you even know what IM means? If your boss threatened to take all of your paper away would you print your resume immediately?

[iNow]

I am almost completely paper free. I much prefer reading things on my computer, especially since it's so much more portable and I can also search large files and applications for specific pieces in a hurry. Also, I go through so many papers and presentations and status reports and specs and blah blah blah that I'd need a whole warehouse to store it all if I did so on paper.

 

Having access to a few network drives, and putting in place a creative folder structure, I can find what I need in seconds, no matter how old or obscure.

 

I don't do much math in my postion, but I do write some code, and I find that the computer allows me to do this much cleaner than anything I put on paper. Further, even if I were writing math, the latex would work. If I need to do something where hand writing is required, I'll throw it into Paint or use the edit tool in PowerPoint.

 

I think the last thing I printed at the office was a map from google that I could take with me in the car to find the office party. In the last several years, I haven't printed a single thing work related unless an older collegue asked for a printed copy. Printing is far too wasteful, far too unorganized, and doesn't allow the quick searches and edits that are so common in my dailies.

[npts2020]

I like paper only because I am more adept at using it. If there was such thing as personal computers or cell phones when I was growing up or in school I am sure those would be my choice.

[Glider]

I don't really use paper. I tend to edit on-screen. I used to find that difficult and would have to print hardcopy to make changes with a pencil and then refer to that whilst changing the document on-screen. I seem to have dropped that habit though. I don't remember when it happened, it wasn't deliberate. It's just faster to learn to do things on-screen (as well as cheaper and more environmentally friendly).

 

It's flippin' students that need paper! I post lecture notes online (we have a system called BlackBoard). Students can access and download these at any time. But if a tutor were to dare to turn up for a lecture without a huge stack of lecture notes for the students, there'd be a riot!

[CharonY]

But if a tutor were to dare to turn up for a lecture without a huge stack of lecture notes for the students, there'd be a riot!

 

Ouch, that is what happened on my first lecture here (also using blackboard). Also I learned that if you upload the lecture as pdf, convert it into the oldest formate you can find. Quite a number are not able to update the reader to the current version. Or the version from last year.

[Gilded]

USB drawing boards are handy if you need to scribble equations or something without destroying all of Earth's rainforests etc.

[CharonY]

I used my tablet. But I found out that I wrote too fast as compared to using the blackboard (non-digita that is...).

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

For doing math, I either do it in my head or grab a piece of paper. I think quickly, and there's no way I could type the LaTeX to a math problem fast enough to keep up with my train of thought.

 

For anything else, I'd be willing to go electronic. I have no problem reading things on a screen.

[iNow]

It's flippin' students that need paper! I post lecture notes online (we have a system called BlackBoard). Students can access and download these at any time. But if a tutor were to dare to turn up for a lecture without a huge stack of lecture notes for the students, there'd be a riot!

 

I suggest that it's up to the professors and tutors to lead on this issue. It's really a case of behavioral inertia. Change is icky and scary, ya know? Students, if primed and reinforced properly, will come around. It's a cultural thing, I suspect. If the school fosters a culture of sustainability and minimal environmental footprints, the students will accept the alternate approach.

 

You, of course, quite know this already, I have absolutely zero doubt about that. After all... you're Glider! I just wanted to share.

 

When I returned to university last semester to study Chinese, the blackboard system was not only accepted by the students, but leveraged by us to make the course material much more robust and engaging. Our teacher would publish "supplements" to the course material, and we used these to open discussion threads, engaging in dialogs to help each other with questions and confusions. When people see the benefit of such a system, the desire to "do things the old way" quickly diminishes.

 

The blackboard system also allowed us to send invites for study groups (and the end of semester party) to the entire group of students enrolled, which was a lot easier than going one-by-one to collect peoples emails and phone numbers!

[Glider]

Ouch, that is what happened on my first lecture here (also using blackboard). Also I learned that if you upload the lecture as pdf, convert it into the oldest formate you can find. Quite a number are not able to update the reader to the current version. Or the version from last year.

Yeah, that's what I do. PDF files are the best I think, although some lecturers just upload their actual notes, either the presentations or the documents. I think that defeats the object as students can just use their computers to cut and paste bits whilst bypassing their brains.

 

I suggest that it's up to the professors and tutors to lead on this issue. It's really a case of behavioral inertia. Change is icky and scary, ya know? Students, if primed and reinforced properly, will come around. It's a cultural thing, I suspect. If the school fosters a culture of sustainability and minimal environmental footprints, the students will accept the alternate approach.

 

You, of course, quite know this already, I have absolutely zero doubt about that. After all... you're Glider! I just wanted to share.

 

Introducing change is actually quite simple in University. If the changes are introduced over the summer, then the next set of first-years don't know it's a change. The third-years are too busy panicking over their projects to mind, and don't have much longer to go anyway. It's only second-year students that seem to worry about change, and most of them, in reality, are quite reasonable about it, as long as the need is explained.

 

The main problem is not that it's hard to get students to accept change, it's more political than that. The pressure for Universities to behave as businesses means that more and more, students are becoming thought of as 'clients'. With increasing fees, many students are beginnning to think of themselves as clients too (with a few believing that a degree is their due by virtue of their check having cleared).

 

With University being thought of in this way (by both students and management), the pressure is on to 'provide more'. It's not just about education. It's about engendering a feeling of being catered to and looked after. That's not necessarily a bad thing in principle, but it does make it harder to cut back on the frills, such as hardcopy handouts in each lecture.

 

However, given that our particular school has just been issued with the order from above to come up with a £14,000,000 surplus this year, I would imagine it's going to get a bit easier for managers to accept the need and find ways to cut back on such things.

 

When I returned to university last semester to study Chinese, the blackboard system was not only accepted by the students, but leveraged by us to make the course material much more robust and engaging. Our teacher would publish "supplements" to the course material, and we used these to open discussion threads, engaging in dialogs to help each other with questions and confusions. When people see the benefit of such a system, the desire to "do things the old way" quickly diminishes.

 

The blackboard system also allowed us to send invites for study groups (and the end of semester party) to the entire group of students enrolled, which was a lot easier than going one-by-one to collect peoples emails and phone numbers!

Yep, BlackBoard is very good and students like it. I think it's underused at our University, but it seems to be growing. Some tutors use it more than others. The 'old school' types find it a bit of a bind, but that's because they think of it as an 'as well as' system, rather than an 'instead of' system.

 

I think Blackboard could replace a lot of the paper-based stuff, as well as being used to suppliment the course. Some think they have to produce both in parallel, which is why they're reluctant. Also, some tutors feel it's going a bit too far down the 'distance learning' path and they fear ending up as a cheap OU knock-off.

Edited October 11, 2008 by Glider

[bascule]

I certainly prefer documents-as-PDFs and ebooks to real books, at least if they're technical references. Being able to search and carry literally thousands of books around with you on your laptop is huge.