Computers and faculty workload
Published on Jul 18, 2006 at 5:28 pm.
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Filed under college teaching.
I remember all the talk about how computers were going to revolutionize the office. We’d be able to do away with paper. Everything would be electronic. Computers were going to allow us to do our jobs faster and easier. Here at the college, they made a big deal about going all electronic. This was going to be great. It would save the college a TON of money, since we’d not have all those photocopying bills, we’d not have so much paperwork to keep track of and to warehouse. It was supposed to be easier, too. We’d be able to complete what had previously been paperwork online. We could get class rolls online, and we could submit grades online. To facilitate our work, and to allow us to backup sensitive things (like grades, powerpoints for courses, exams, etc), we all got a bit of network space to store things.
Now, for reality. First, the network alotment is way too small. At first, it was pretty good, but then last year, we got an email from the person in charge saying that we were using too much space, so every faculty member was getting their network alotment cut to 100MB. I thought that I had read that wrong. They meant 100GB, right? Our person in charge of technology isn’t all that swift on technology (she used to be a typing instructor, when we taught typing decades ago). Nope. We got a clarification. She emailed us to tell us how huge this amount of storage was since it was about the same as a whole whopping 71 floppies worth of storage — far more than we’d ever need. Huh. I have some FILES bigger than 100MB!!! Astronomy is very image intensive, so the lectures for a single intro astronomy class take up about 600MB. Hell, I can go down to the big discount electronics store here and buy a flash drive that is bigger than 100MB for under $10. What gives?!?!?!?! Sure, if ALL that I had were a few Word files, then that would be fine. Even my word files are big. Why? Well, they have lots of equations and diagrams. Imagine that. Equations and diagrams for an astrophysicist. Yeah. What a surprise. They recently gave me a new computer. Shortly after I got it, I tried to write an exam. I couldn’t. They had not installed the equation writer with Word. You had to specifically ask for it. It wasn’t standard. Well, why the hell NOT for anyone in the math and sciences?????
But, on to other gripes. As for doing away with paper, …, yeah, right. For a couple of semesters, we could submit grades either online or in person to the registrar’s office. If we did in in person, we dropped of a scantron with the grades bubbled in. Now, it is all electronic. In theory. We are required to submit grades electronically. But, then to make sure that there is a paper trail, we now have to also do a screen print of what we submitted electronically and turn that in to the registrar, along with a printout of our entire grade book. We never had to do that before! And then, to add insult to injury, we have to also turn in a form that we and the department chair both sign saying that we are turning in our grades. It is called a transmittal form. I never heard of such stupidity. So, before we went all electronic, I had an option of turning in one piece of paper, or none at all if I submitted grades electronically. Now, I turn in about 20 pages per class, or more. Last spring, I turned in 95 pieces of paper for the spring teaching load. That would have been three under the old system. Yep. Lots of progress there. This will definitely do a lot to help out the college’s problem with warehousing all that paperwork.
Oh, and as for online forms…, we’ve got them now. Sometimes, though, they want us to fill them out online, and then print the screen and send the prinout through campus mail. Huh? So, why did I have to do it online? The print forms I can fill out anywhere. The online ones can only be done at the computer. That makes them tougher. Also, they did not put enough money into network servers, so the network sometimes freezes and you lose the entire form half filled out. Real efficent that is. Even worse, the computers make it easier to make or modify forms, so there are always new forms to fill out.
Oh, and let’s talk about photocopying. Now, instead of sending out an important memo to everyone, they email it. So, if you need to take the memo with you, or print it out to remind yourself, which most of us need to do. then each faculty and staff member has to print it. Well, all those printers cost more to operate per page than do photocopiers. That is particularly true, since now that we have memos by email, everyone has the great idea of sending color memos. I often try to save by printing them in B&W, but I am about the only one. Now that we’ve gone all electronic, my paper consumption has just about tripled, or more.
And now for the thing that really prompted me to post this. I just finished making up an exam. In the old days, I’d have typed up something, and then written the equations in by hand, and done drawings by hand as well. Some years back, it became easy, and nicer looking, to do the equations on the computer. Now, I even do the drawings. They really look much nicer than my freehand drawings and diagrams. However, the hand drawings took about 5 to 10 seconds. The computer ones take about 5 minutes. They look nicer, but is this really making my job easier?
Hmm. Oh, well. This is how things are going. I will admit that I rather like how professional things look today — exams, papers, lectures, compared with years ago.
-Astroprof
