Environmental advocates may shudder when they hear the results from two Miami University students investigating whether students prefer course reading materials to be in paper course packet form or in an online version.
Seniors Laura Chenetski and Erin Beatty conducted this survey for their technical writing class, English 313, with the help of their instructor, graduate student Melissa Andreychek.
Chenetski and Beatty were unable to report their specific findings at this time, but Chenetski commented on the general results of the study.
"From our study, we found that students overwhelmingly preferred paper course packs as opposed to on-line course reading," Chenetski said.
First-year Andrea Liptak agreed she prefers packets to online materials.
"I would take a paper copy over an online copy of a book any day, even if it costs a little more," Liptak said. "It is more efficient to be able to flip through pages than having to scroll through pages on the Internet. And honestly, who wants to wait 20 seconds for each page to load online?"
The two students surveyed more than 100 Miami students and just below 15 Miami professors. Chenetski and Beatty first conducted a student survey via e-mail to see which format of course reading Miami students preferred using SurveyMonkey.com, a free online survey Web site.
They also surveyed Miami professors to gauge attitudes of professors regarding the format of their course readings. After all of their data was collected from these surveys, Chenetski and Beatty presented their findings from the student survey to these same professors.
"After we gave the professors the information we collected, we gave the professors a post-survey to see if their attitudes regarding print versus online reading had changed," Chenetski said.
Chenetski and Beatty said they hoped to help the Oxford Copy Shop's business with their findings.
The Oxford Copy Shop, owned by Rhonda and J.C. Rupel, is in its 25th year of business. Miami students and professors are huge contributors to the shop's business, but the shop has seen a recent decline in sales of course packs with the rising use of Blackboard according to co-owner Rhonda Rupel.
Rupel said she realizes the printing business is changing.
"We are not shocked by the decline in sales with the rise in technology," Rupel said. "We still get a lot of Miami students, though, who prefer packets and think printed reading is really valuable."
Rupel said she gave Chenetski and Beatty the advertisements the copy shop sends to professors and had conversations about what the copy shop does in an effort to get more customers. By participating in Chenetski and Beatty's study, Rupel said she hopes they might find out if some change could be made to better promote their business.
"The No. 1 problem that we would like to solve is figuring out how to sell more course packs to the Miami professors," Rupel said.
