During this class, Allyson and Jill have been investigating the feasibility

of going paperless on the Hamline University campus. In March, we

surveyed 18 students in our professional writing class to find their opinions
of the feasibility of a paperless classroom on campus. We first examined
where students live, on or off campus, and how that related to what printer
they might use, personal or campus printer. The other category covers
students who said both or work in the survey. In figure 1, you can see
that students primarily use printers on campus, regardless of living on
campus or not. This tells us that the paper and printing used be students
living off of campus still contributes to the amount of paper the University
purchases and uses every year.
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
Live on campus

Live off campus

Figure 1. Comparison of students who live on or off campus with where they
use printing materials.
In our survey we also asked students how much paper they use in an
average week. Figure 2, below, shows the responses we received from the
survey. Sixty-one percent of responders estimated their paper use in one
week to be between 10 and 20 sheets of paper, where 22% claimed less
than 10 sheets, and 17% were above 20. This tells us that students follow
the same trend we have found in our research in terms of paper usage.
Research says that the average worker uses 10 sheets of paper a week, form
our survey we can see the majority of our sample follow the same trend.

20 or above; 17%
Less than 5; 22%

5 to 20; 61%

Figure 2. Reported sheets of paper used in one average week.

The following figure shows the data from our survey question on if Hamline
should go paperless in the classroom. In Figure 3, it shows 44% of students
said yes the university should, 39% said no, and 17% that said yes but to
have some classes that need to be paper. This shows that our project is
feasible but that there need for a larger sample. It also shows that there is a
desire to have paper in certain classes. When looking at the data, the
immediate thought is that the transition would not be done right away but
over a period of time. It would start with the classes that use the least need
for paper and gradually move towards the more complex classes the
students are worried about. This would help the students feel more well
informed on how the process works and what it means to go paperless in the
classroom.

17%
44%

39%

Yes

No

Other

Figure 3. Student responses to should Hamline go paperless in the

classroom.