Student Print Accounting Project

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Student Print Accounting Project

• Dawn BushDirector of Academic TechnologyCalvin
  College

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What led us to this project?
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Students doing more printing

• Growth in use of technology over previous 5-7
  years
• Students doing research online and printing
  results
• Faculty building more and more content into
  Blackboard
• Use of online textbooks some students still
  need to print to study

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Printing was out of control

• Hundreds of pages a day printed by students
• Students abandoning print jobs
• Cost of student public printing going up 12 to
  15 a year
• Students doing non-course related printing
• Printing flyers for their own small businesses
• Printing for off-campus non-profit businesses
• Students from other colleges printing at Calvin
• No easy way to measure printing

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Phase 1Getting ready for print accounting

• Limit printing to Calvin students only required
  logins in all labs
• Open project with the goal to limit unnecessary
  printing

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Project requirements

• Must be
• Convenient
• Fair
• Easy to administer
• Cover printing cost for a typical student
• Anticipate boogey men
• New Activities and Technology Fee of 112.50 per
  semester
• Approvals (Buy-in)
• Information Services Committee
• Representative of Student Senate
• Information distribution
• Provost / deans
• Academic department chairs

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Phase 2Research (Spring 2005)

• Researched hardware and software solutions
• Purchased and installed a software solution,
  pCounter
• Benchmarked printing silently on all student
  accounts
• Researched quotas at other colleges

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What we learned

• 900,000 pages were printed
• 3 top students printed
• 3,391 pages
• 3,041 pages
• 2,953 pages
• Average student printed 250 pages
• 10 of our students would have exceeded a quota
  of 25.00 (500 bw pages)

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Phase 3No Charge Pilot (Fall 2005)

• Established preliminary quotas and charges
• 25.00 printing per student (500 bw pages)
• .05 a page
• .08 duplex page
• .35 per color page
• Built in 10 or 2.50 allowance for printing
  errors (i.e. misfeeds)

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Ran print accounting on all student accounts (no
charge)

• Print accounting window each time a student
  printed
• Indicated their current Student Print Accounting
  status
• The cost of the current print job.
• The opportunity to continue to print or cancel
  the print job

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Advertised the pilot

• Calvin Chimes (student newspaper)
• daily student listserv
• CIT web pages

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What we learned

• When students were aware we were tracking
  printing
• Printing didnt increase usual 12 15
• 18 reduction in printing from spring semester
  (900,000 to 727,000 pages)
• Only 1.6 of the students would have exceeded a
  quota of 25.00

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Phase 4Implementation (Spring 2006)

• Ran print accounting on all students (with
  charges)
• Minimal issues
• Project closed and ongoing support passed to
  HelpDesk

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What we learned

• Easier than we thought to get student attention
  when money is involved
• 2 student organizations got involved
• Calvin Chimes student newspaper
• Student Senate Policy and Issues Committee
• Additional 6 reduction (681,000 pages) since
  fall semester
• Almost 25 reduction since beginning of project
• Only 3 of students exceeded the quota
• 1,054 collected to help cover costs of public
  printing
• Interesting note enterprising pre-law student

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Results

• Met primary goal of limiting unnecessary printing
• Reduced student printing by over 250,000 pages a
  semester
• Estimated to save the college 12,500 a semester

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(No Transcript)
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Did we meet our project requirements?

• Our solution
• convenient
• fair
• easy to administer
• covers printing cost of a typical student

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What we did right

• Long lead-in time
• no surprises students knew ahead of time
• 2 semesters to adapt to idea
• 10 buffer for printing errors
• virtually eliminated student complaints
• Quota of 25.00
• more generous than most other schools
• high enough to affect only small portion of
  student body
• Implemented in all student labs
• all student labs at the same time eliminated
  students ability to print to areas where charges
  were not in effect
• Selected a software solution, pCounter, instead
  of a hardware solution
• far less cumbersome than available hardware

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Issues we encountered

• Charging students with new Student Activities and
  Technology Fee while limiting printing
• Student employees
• Had to find a way for student employees to print
  to departmental printer while working
• Faculty/Staff printing to lab computers

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Resources

• iPrint
• http//www.novell.com/products/netware/printing/qu
  icklook.html
• pCounter
• http//www.pcounter.com.au/web/
• Calvin iPrint web pageshttp//www.calvin.edu/it/s
  ervices/studentnetworkservices/printing/
• Dawn Bush (dcbush_at_calvin.edu)

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Questions?