Good old PR guru Anne van der Meijden already said it over twenty years ago: good external communication starts with good internal communication. Meaning that building and maintaining a fruitful relationship with a target audience starts with building a coherent group of employees first. We can apply this on the relationship between lecturers and students.

Good old PR guru Anne van der Meijden already said it over twenty years ago: good external communication starts with good internal communication. Meaning that building and maintaining a fruitful relationship with a target audience starts with building a coherent group of employees first. We can apply this on the relationship between lecturers and students.

Lecturers can – no, lecturers HAVE TO learn from their students. They are the future. For them something does not exist if it doesn’t exist digitally. Lecturers and their managers will have to learn to think in the digital world, the biosphere of future generations.

Many lecturers still demand that work has to be handed-in on paper. OK many lecturers agree with their students that concepts of a report can be mailed, that he will add comments and mail it back; but still school demands that the final report has to be handed-in on paper. Often three copies! What a waste of precious trees. And how much energy would be concerned with moving all those kilo’s across the globe? Time for the paperless office.

Saving the planet is not the only advantage of the paperless office. Perhaps the strongest driver is that it makes information more accessible. We don’t have to go to the library to find a report if it is stored digitally and made findable by librarians.

Currently in the institute where I work we try to make it possible for students to hand-in only two paper copies of a report instead of three. Students will have to hand-in the third one digitally, in order to put it in the library. This will make their work easier to find for fellow students inside and outside our institute plus next generations of students. Also these students can read it whenever they want, wherever they are. This is an especially practical feature for students who have a work-placement in another city or country, or simply because they have to be present at their work-placement during opening hours of the library.

All parties concerned within our institute agree that handing-in work digitally should be possible. But it is quite difficult to change existing procedures. The back-office is the spider in the web of the process of handing-in reports. Already two years ago they agreed with the library that storing reports digitally instead of on paper should be possible. But the procedures did not change and students still hand-in three paper copies. Hundreds of them per year, hundreds of kilo’s wasted. Many meters of shelves in the library that could have been saved.

Apparently the message was never delivered to the right person. But now a manager concerned is making work of it. However the existing procedure might be unchanged until next academic year. So, even though everybody wants the change, it takes a lot of effort to actually get it done.

This is one of the first very small steps towards a paperless office or even a paperless learning environment. Our institute – and probably many similar institutes – will have to make many of these steps before we can build and maintain a fruitful relationship with students in their digital biosphere.

Working on a blended learning environment is a good idea, it is even necessary in our digital era. But it will take many little steps as described. Besides, the blended learning environment is only the front of the organization: it connects students with their institution. The blended learning environment helps to build and maintain a relationship between institution and student. It is a tool for external communication… and good external communication starts with good internal communication. Consequently, if an institute wants to offer a blended learning environment (a blend of online and offline learning tools) it will have to begin with its own organization. Therefore a good blended learning environment starts with a good paperless office.

tagged with: paperless office, blended learning