Printer Improvements

Saying that printers can be frustrating may be the understatement of the century. Some people would a prefer a visit to the dentist, spend the day waiting in line at a busy DMV, or pull an acre of weeds to fighting with a malfunctioning printer. Over the years, students have fought with issues of accidental duplication, sorting through a pile of prints that came before them, the hunt for printers in giant space where everything has the same room number, and having to abandon their printouts when they ran out of time before the start of class. Perhaps this is why the printer rage and subsequent destruction scenes in the movie Office Space remain so popular. On the other side, IT people have to deal with stolen paper, fixing print jams, piles of abandoned printouts, and a variety of other malfunctions and messages.

That situation could not stand so CIT set out to fix it

In January 2018, CIT began swapping out the old fleet of Toshiba MultiFunction Devices (MFDs) with newer ,faster models. These massive devices were not only excellent printers but also fax machines, copiers, and scanners capable of emailing documents to students. But that was only the beginning of the big change. Previously, in the summer of 2015, CIT added fast release stations to printers in the dorms. Fast release stations allowed students to print to a special cloud print queue and pick up their printouts, simply by holding their ID near card reader. The CIT Printing Improvement Team took this idea and expanded it to the Public Toshiba copiers, with a crucial twist.

The classic printing method simply printed out whatever copies people sent to the device. That system was first come first serve and, as stated above, resulted in a variety of unintended consequences including long wait times for printouts, unwanted duplicates, and the dreaded wasteful plies abandoned prints. Noting the success of third party on-demand printing solutions at other institutions, in partnership with Toshiba business solutions, we flipped the paradigm upside down by enforcing manual release printing. In contrast with the classic system, manual release printing requires the student to go to a printing device to start printing their jobs. When combined with cloud printing technology, known locally as gPrint, it became possible for a student to print to a cloud queue and pick up their printouts on any number of printers on campus. Like the dorm printers that preceded them, all a student has to do is take their ID and put it in proximity of the card reader on their printer. If a student does not have their ID, an on screen keyboard is available to allow them to manually authenticate to the printer. Students are then presented with a screen that confirms their account login, displays their existing printer balance, and shows them a list of all their jobs. Students can choose what jobs they want to print or delete. In making it so that students can go to any copier, students no longer have to wait for a others printing before them to get the printer to handle their jobs. They know immediately and at a distance if someone is standing at the printer and can make the decision to use another nearby printer if they would like. Print jobs stay in the print queue for 4 hours so if a student is unable to find a free printer and needs to go to class they can always pick it up afterwords. In locations like Milne Library, the strategy has been most effective. Students have a choice of several different devices and locations (five on the main floor and two on the bottom floor) on which they can print.

Informal polling of students prior to the implementation of this policy seemed positive but it was somewhat uncertain as to how it would be received upon full implementation. As students began the Spring 2017 semester, CIT was delighted to see that students were pleased with the new system. Where before there were groups of students hovering around printers anxiously waiting for their printouts to come out, now students would neatly queue up and quickly receive their prints. Consequently, abandoned prints were reduced dramatically as students no longer had to leave in frustration waiting for the print to finally spool. An informal check on printer waste in one week revealed that waste was reduced by more than 85% over a sample taken under the prior system just a few months earlier. Further tweaks to the existing system have brought this number down even more. Since students can now choose exactly what they want to print, there is no accidental duplication of printouts. With the combination of cloud printing and manual release, it allowed for the instant recognition of available printers and greater flexibility on the times and places where one could print.

The changes that have been employed in printing on campus have been great but are not the end of the story. Future opportunities exist for improving printing exist around every corner. As with other technical issues, CIT will be there to smooth out the technical difficulties.