Carlow IT Department: Bits-N-Bytes Newsletter Fall 2005

If you use our public computer labs and you use the printers, please take note… we are changing the way you will print in the labs.

Last year alone, the Information Technology department spent over $12,000 on paper and toner associated with lab printing. There were many reports of students who printed to the printer by accident and wasted 200 or more sheets of paper because they did not know how to terminate a print job. This also wasted the time of other students waiting to print.

In order to reduce costs and more effectively spend your tuition dollars, a system has been implemented in our public computer labs for the fall that will require you to ‘release’ your print jobs using a print release station. The process is simple:

This process is a common practice at neighboring colleges and universities, as well as other educational institutions across the country. In all the schools that Carlow benchmarked against, the print quota was very similar to our 800 page limit per semester and very few schools reported that students actually spent money to recharge their limits. In fact, the results at other schools proved that ‘releasing’ a job eliminated unwanted print jobs and saved precious resources for legitimate purposes.

If you experience any problems printing in the labs, please call our Help Desk at x8700.

You will print from your lab workstation as normal

When you are ready to pick up your print job, you will go to the print release station located in each lab and swipe your Carlow ID card.

You will pick the print jobs you wish to release and the printer will print the information you requested. If you wish to delete the print job because you printed it by mistake, you can delete it easily or elect not to print the job.

Each semester, your ID Card will be given 800 page prints. When you print using the print release station, your ID Card count will be decremented until you have exhausted your print limit. At the point where you have exhausted your quota, you can pay for additional prints by placing money on your Carlow card at the I.T. Help Desk. You will be charged 10 cents per page in excess of your 800 free prints.

This summer a very excited group of faculty embarked on a weeklong seminar to learn how to use Blackboard to supplement their classes. This series of classes focused not only on how to technically implement Blackboard to supplement a class, but also on the teaching methods faculty members can use to integrate Blackboard into their classes.

For the institute, a cohort of several faculty members, representing all of the schools/divisions, went through the class together for an entire week. Some had some Blackboard experience and were excited at the possibilities, and some were Blackboard novices and were very nervous.

On the last day of the session, every member of the class, including the instructors, remarked at how much they learned about Blackboard and how much they learned from one another. They were happy to have the various schools and divisions represented because they learned so much from one another.

They graduated the class by receiving a diploma written on an actual mini-blackboard and they spent a few hours showing each other the fruits of their labor for the week – their actual class either started or implemented on Blackboard. The excitement in the room was truly astounding and the participants vowed to work with one another in the future to put future classes on Blackboard.

If you are a faculty member, and would like to participate in a future technology institute, please contact Denise King or Karen Sturgeon. We are arranging to teach a fall institute that will meet 6 times from November to February and will cover the same course material as the condensed summer session. We are also looking to arrange for another week-long institute in the spring. Both of these institutes will welcome full-time faculty and adjuncts.

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