Our client, Travis Dunn, identified the supply stations at Owen as a possible area for improvement. Not only are they poorly organized, but there is no effective maintenance and the areas lack a sense of general community responsibility.
Of our 303 ideas, we individually identified our favorites and placed them into 4 buckets: Education, Responsibility, Organization, and Innovation. Given individual behavior constraints and our lack of finances and time to implement, our top 3 ideas are from the “Responsibility” and “Education” buckets. They are as follows:
1. Signs at stations, which include rules for maintenance and contact information to report problems
· Students may want to help solve the problem, but there is a lack of information
· By identifying the primary contact, students may take personal initiative
2. Ask the students to maintain the stations
· No one has specifically asked the student body to maintain the stations
· Instill a sense of responsibility in the students and empower complaining constituents
3. Monitor the printing per student, per mod and advertise in the OSGA newsletter
· Ensure students are accountable and responsible with their printing
· Printing is the primary reason supply stations are utilized
Each top idea presented above by Dunder Mifflin contains the goal of maintaining the stations and making them useful and satisfactory. We welcome any feedback you may have – thanks.
This is definitely an area in which Owen could use some improvement! It's certainly frustrating when you're late to turn in a paper or running to an interview and you can't find a stapler or paper clip! Because I believe that most students/other users will ignore signs, I do feel there is some merit to the third idea of monitoring student printing. Not only will this help cut down on amount printed and encourage paper saving with double side printing, but it will give ownership to students and drive more success because of peer pressure. Just to clarify, your goal is to make sure the supply areas are both well stocked and organized, right? Maybe part of the third idea would be to put some procedures in place for restocking so that it doesn't all fall to OSGA but is shared by more clubs or Owen employees or students.
ReplyDeleteI don't think monitoring people's printing can be done and what would the penalty be?
ReplyDeleteI like idea 3. Another thing that I have noticed is that some printers default to two-sided printing and others don't this could help in paper consumption for sure.
ReplyDeleteWhat about something that incentivizes the students to pay attention to the signs? I agree with jennifer we need a PENALTY...
ReplyDeleteI like the problem you are solving as we are indeed wasting a lot of papers in Owen and the printing area is a mess with out of order staplers...etc.
ReplyDeleteHowever, i dont think monitoring number of pages on each student is something we should do as that goes against our priority of learning at Owen. We can take some simple action as setting the printers to 2 side printing for both Owen's computer and personal computers.
Also could you guys be more specific on what actions should be taken? As for now i feel like the ideas are more about the outcome than the actions you want to take.
Hope it helps.
The Net Impact crew talked with the IT team last week, and the paper print count for the building in October was over 311,000 pages printed. It's a huge problem. I really like the idea to share information with folks about their consumption, but how do you make sure information translates into action?
ReplyDeleteAll 3 are good suggestions. How can you cut back on wasteful printing though? Will you impose fines or just educate students?
ReplyDeleteI like the idea of keeping stations stocked with supplies. That's a no brainer since we are all printing resumes/coverletters/assignments and need staplers and paper clips.
I think #2 is simple and might actually work. Just a simple note reminding us to maintain the staplers or printing station could be enough to help keep this area a bit neater. As long as the message was good, I think this could be effective.
ReplyDeleteI like Idea 1 - as long as the signs were simple and permanent. This could also be combined with Idea 2.
ReplyDeleteI love Idea 3. I think it would be great to create some accountability with Owen students. The printers are vastly over-used and it would be good to bring attention to this problem.
I think instilling in the students the sense of responsibility will work better than monitoring or punishment! Signs can be part of the campaign to educate students to save paper and maintain the station.
ReplyDeleteI like Angela's idea about making the signs part of a campaign. If these signs were to not only educate students, but provide facts about paper usage - whether it be the 311,000 pages we used in October, how many trees the average student uses while at Owen, etc - I think it would achieve more impact.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, students are going to have to continue to print drafts of papers, and all the articles they've been assigned. I'm not sure that making students feel guilty will be enough, as a lot of our behavior is difficult to change.
I love the mindset behind all of these ideas. I think posting contact information (like help numbers) and simply asking students to take care of the areas are great ideas. I've frequently had the thought that I'd like to call/email to report a supply issue but did not know the contact information. To build on your "ask" idea - maybe it would be helpful just to have more signage in the actual areas. On my part, if I were standing right by a station and read a sign about cleaning up after myself there, I would feel even more accountable than from reading an email communication or an ODN announcement. You may have already planned on putting signs right there... Regarding printing monitoring - I'd love a bit of clarification on what you mean by this suggestion - what would you plan to do with the data on paper/printer usage?
ReplyDeleteThanks for posting!
Obviously we could use a little help in reducing our printing waste at Owen. We are not being very green! I think signs go a long way, and simple laminated signs with the request to print on both sides, print multiple slides per page, and to point to a stack of "unwanted paper" that have at least one clean side would be great. Students will see a daily reminder of the importance of paper saving (perhaps we keep a running tally of the number of trees used each year). Also, students can utilize this pile of "Scrap" paper for note taking or printing on the other side.
ReplyDeleteI really like your first idea - this would be really helpful when the printers jam like they did last week! I also like the idea of monitoring printing, but think you might get some negative feedback from other students. We actually had this idea on our original list and when discussing it with people I often heard "I pay a lot of money to go here, I should be able to print whatever I want."
ReplyDeleteI also really like Krystal's ideas about signage and the unwanted paper bin. Using our waste as scrap paper could help a lot, but it might make the printing stations even more cluttered.
I like idea 3 to monitor student printing but some of the questions that arise in my mind are: I am not sure how you plan to monitor each students printing? One way would be to track the username the printing command was initiated from. What will happen after student reaches his / her page limit and needs to print? Will it be automatic or will someone need to be made responsible to check each students usage?
ReplyDeleteI think putting a sign at the area would be good. At least you could help notify to fix it (if you are not hurry) so save time for the next person. I doubt how you can improve by monitoring people's behavior,like Rajeev said, that would be very hard. I suggest put this notice on OSGA news letter often to instill a little bit sense of responsibility.
ReplyDeleteA few years ago, my company started to count the printing per employee to reduce paper waste. The count system will also monitor whether they contribute to paper reduction (use two-sides printing or multiple-page printing on a paper). Managers announce the worst 10 paper-wasters and top 10 paper-savers every month. This system greatly contributed to paper reduction. So, I think the 3rd idea will work.
ReplyDeleteYou're on to something with idea 2. It's the best of the ideas, in my opinion, but only if you develop a system to encourage maintenance (or punish the lack thereof), and only if you find some creative way to really make it a "movement," of sorts. If you just tell students "hey, it's on you guys to keep this stuff clean," I suspect you'll get a lot of complaints regarding how much we pay in tuition and how busy we are and don't-you-guys-have-staff-for-this-stuff.
ReplyDeleteThat's all I'd suggest -- find a way to make it a movement.
We can also have the IT track the usages per student.
ReplyDeleteWhat is a "supply station"? You may get more buy-in for your idea if you clearly articulate your stated problem and goal. After reading #3, it seems that a supply station = a printing station; but I'm still not certain. However, I do think that the printing stations are terribly kept. It would be nice if we had a dedicated faculty member, or student ops assistant (which may be your idea) to help smooth-out the Owen printing experience.
ReplyDeleteHave you thought about maybe giving each station a neon color...so that if the neon green stapler (spray paint or paint with nail polish), for instance, ends up in the library corner, everyone will know it is out of place and should be put back at it's "home station"? I think that might help solve some of the frustration issues...and it would be nice if coupled with the ask of students to maintain the stations.
ReplyDeleteI think trying to solve this problem is agreat idea. However, I don't think it is feasible to monitor each students usage. How would they be held responsible? Will there be a limit on the amount of resources a student uses each Mod? If so, aht happens if they exceed this limit?
ReplyDeleteNicely thought through. Not much to say to this - you seem to have the pros and cons well thought out (in addition to the dynamic that led to the problem). My vote goes for print quota. Print free up to a certain amount and then pay for all printing after that. (Consider that your tuition pays for printing anyway - why subsidize the wasteful people.) Also, I've been told that most people on campus know that Owen is one of the few places with free, unmonitored printing. If so, your solution to intervene with the Owen population may not solve the problem if it's the outsiders that are causing it. Some in the administration have been afraid of student backlash if they impose quotas or monitoring. You are the only ones in a position to make this happen.
ReplyDelete