The Mail

[spork]

Remarkable that anyone should suggest that it is the professor's responsibility to print out hard-copy papers for entitled students.   I insist on hard-copies, because I red-ink the snot out of them.   And because I am the professor.

Regrettable that an instructor believes that students read term papers covered with red-inked comments when the semester has ended.

[sinenomine]

My uni started charging students for printing. That led me to ditch my requirement of hard copies.

[Langue_doc]

Remarkable that anyone should suggest that it is the professor's responsibility to print out hard-copy papers for entitled students.   I insist on hard-copies, because I red-ink the snot out of them.   And because I am the professor.

Requiring hard copies is fine, if the university provides the resources to make that happen. Multiple people have agreed that there's no problem with hard copies when the libraries and computer printing labs are open. But when classes are online, those resources are not available. The post office loses mail. Getting tracking costs something like $5-$10. FedEx overnight express costs on the order of $20-50.

We are not arguing, I think (or at least I am not), about the principle of requiring hard copies. That's fine. We're arguing about the principle of requiring hard copies, sent through a third party, for an online class, during a pandemic.

+1 to the bolded above. Requiring students to not just print out their papers but also to stand in line in a post office during a pandemic is unreasonable. I would also take issue with requiring printed submissions for online classes regardless of the information in the syllabus.

[jerseyjay]

Requiring hard copies is fine, if the university provides the resources to make that happen. Multiple people have agreed that there's no problem with hard copies when the libraries and computer printing labs are open. But when classes are online, those resources are not available. The post office loses mail. Getting tracking costs something like $5-$10. FedEx overnight express costs on the order of $20-50.

We are not arguing, I think (or at least I am not), about the principle of requiring hard copies. That's fine. We're arguing about the principle of requiring hard copies, sent through a third party, for an online class, during a pandemic.

Okay, I desist.

Although for the record:
As I stated in the original post, students uploaded the assignment to Blackboard and sent a copy. If it does not reach me by the time I need to grade it, the backup is the electronic copy. And the need to send a copy explicitly only applied to people in the same metro area, not people who are abroad or elsewhere in the country. And while tracking, overnight delivery, and singing telegrams could cost quite a bit, none of that was required.

The argument that this requires queuing in the post office in a pandemic is I think the strongest (along with the getting a printer). To be honest I did not think of that because I do not think that this technically requires going to the post office because both envelopes and stamps are available at the supermarket and elsewhere, as well as online. That said, I could see how this could make somebody think they have to go to the post office, and that wasn't my intent.

[clean]

I also stated that for students who were outside of the metropolitan area that I would not require this[/u]. (As it turned out, all of my students are within 40 miles, but in my other classes I do have students all over the place.) I also stated that students who do not have printers could upload the paper via Blackboard.

[/u]

How do you handle these peoples' papers? 

they are probably saving $15 per session in gas, tolls, and parking.

Similarly, it would seem that you have saved enough to pay for that printer and ink!  I am sure that you can pick up a rheem or two of paper from your employer, as you are not copying or printing there.   However, you could save all of that money by making one single trip to the office to print, read, grade, comment, scan, upload and return electronically all properly submitted work. 

I suppose that my issues include that this is an online class.
The OP has criticized their class's ineptitude to use the mail (when they seldom seem to need or desire to use that system as there ARE alternatives that they are more accustomed to using).
That the OP thinks that it is OK to inconvenience 40 people to print, travel to a post office, apply proper postage (not just stick ample postage), so that the OP is not inconvenienced to have to travel to his/her own office IF he/she requires printed copies, as opposed to purchasing a printer. 
As the OP was able to add this to the syllabus, the need for a printer is not a surprise.
Finally, the OP assumes that the addresses that the university has (most likely 'permanent addresses') are actually where the students live.  IS it a FERPA violation to provide graded material to someone other than the student?



(On a tangent to the last, my former PhD school officemate (not retired) used to mail home exams that students didnt come to class to pick up.  On occasion a student would complain and demand that he 'never send my work to my parent's house'.  He would reply, "First, you should study more to get better grades so that your parents are not surprised. Second you should have come to one of the subsequent classes to pick up your work.  And finally, you should change your address so that university mail does not go to your parents' house.)

[clean]

Sorry for piling on.
It looks like the OP and I were preparing replies simultaneously. 

[AvidReader]

Since it was clearly stated in the syllabus at the start of class, I do not think this is a problem, though I think singing telegrams would be more fun.

However, when mamselle says that

Mail in and from the south is taking up to two weeks to places that used to be three days or four at most.

she greatly exaggerates their efficiency. My mail is taking over a month to arrive in some instances, and two full months (61 days) during one particularly memorable occasion this spring. You may still be getting papers in July.

AR.

[Aster]

Regarding student access to printers on campus, I am reading a lot of alarmist hooey from many of these comments. I've worked at non-residential, commuter institutions with poor public printer access for many years. And I and many of our faculty require students to print lots of stuff out regularly. And yes, we charge students to print stuff out. We've done this for over a decade. Printing fees are super-cheap anywhere you go. Anywhere you go.

If my admittedly sub-par, open enrollment institution serving tens of thousands of first-generation students, with poor public printing access, doesn't have issues in getting students to print things out, it's probably pretty ridiculous to think that this is a problem for anyone else.

Sure, students whine and complain. But we as professional should be able to accurately discern between students whining about something, and students unable to actually do something. Printing things is in the latter category.

Students print stuff out. Often lots of stuff. For home use. For class use. For remote classes. And yes, for *online* classes. Fully online courses do not in any way mean "fully electronic". Fully online courses merely mean that you don't need to come to campus. Heck, half of the classes at Big Urban College are fully online, and we're the lead fully online institution for our region. Many online faculty require students to purchase/use print items at home.  It's a perfectly valid online instructional option. One of the leading online professors and online course developers for our institution has hardcopy printing requirements for some of her classes. It's not a problem. Quite the reverse, actually. Her use of multi-modal techniques in her online courses is part of why she is one of the most popular online instructors with her students, and why she was hand-picked by the provost to lead many of our online course training programs.

Residential students living in dormitories are perhaps the only student demographic that one might reasonably assume to not have personal printer access. This demographic will use the campus printing centers, so there's no problem for them. Everybody else? They have home printers, or can easily drive themselves to a CVS, Walgreens, Staples, Office Depot, UPS Store, public libraries, their own workplace, etc... where document printing services are offered. I mean come on people! What do you think that regular folks who don't work at universities do to print stuff out if they don't have a home printer? Duh, everybody needs to print stuff out occasionally for something. They use a local service from the bazillion local retailers in their area. These services are everywhere. I know that a lot of us are so used to free-loading print services from our campus offices that we never print from anywhere else, so we're probably the last person that a 18-year old freshpeep student might ask about this. Judging from the comments I've seen here, I probably would not ask a professor. I'd just ask an older student or run a local google search for "document printing services".

So no, asking students to print stuff out is not at all unreasonable, pandemic or not. Heck, the pandemic probably forced *more* students to purchase home printers. So that's not a problem, at all. I've run 12 remote courses in the last year with regular, sometimes weekly home printing requirements. Not a single (valid) complaint about it. Zero. Zip. And our campus printing services have been closed almost that entire time. Did I get a bit whining? Yes. Did students not print stuff out? No.

There are also several comments about "standing in line at the post office" that are rather hyperbolic. I suppose that if you only go to the post office at Christmas, or maybe during the lunch hour in a downtown urban district, you might have to stand in line, and this is actually a bit of time-suck. But for most U.S. post offices around the country, during regular working hours, if there is a line at all, it is a short one. And that's only if you require personal service. I can see that a lot of people here don't have much recent experience in using post offices regularly, or only use them for packages. A manila envelope with some papers in it does not require personal desk service at the post office. That's either plain lazy, or you have a crappy post office. Lots of U.S. post offices have fully automated stations for both weighing and paying for stamps for manila envelopes. Lots of U.S. post offices may not have the fully automated stations, but they have separate weighing stations, and/or All post offices have direct drop slips where a stamped manila envelope can be inserted without standing in line.

And that's just for non-folded documents requiring a manila envelope. If you're folding your documents up and sticking them into a regular envelope? That's 1-2 stamps and a drop in a mailbox. Whoopdee-do. This is a Nothing Burger.

Addressed Envelope + Stamp + Get off your Duff and Stick in Mailbox = Success

Professional historians obviously know this, as they may routinely have to work with mailed documents as part of their jobs. I'm not a historian, but I do mail documents occasionally, and for nearly all the time, little of the alarmist complaints posted in this thread about post offices are valid.


Heck, the more that I read here about the ignorance about post offices, the more emphatically I believe that if you are training history majors, hard skills like physically acquainting oneself with document mailing at a postal office should be a mandatory learning objective. In STEM, we routinely add the training of hard skills into our courses.

***

All that said, I do agree that you as a professor need to get yourself access to a printer. You really should not be without. And if you're requiring students to mail you stuff, you really must not be without. There will ALWAYS be a few students who are going to mess something up or have something bad happen to their hardcopies. For those students, it falls on the professor's responsibility to have alternative submission options for student emergencies. Buy a printer, borrow a printer, or go to campus and use your printer there.

[mamselle]

Whew!

It's clearly been a stressful week.

I will step back, I think maybe we all need to step back.

As clean notes, we're staring to do a forum pile-on of outraged proportions...

The point has been made and accepted.

Nothing more to see here...

Move along...

;--}

M.

[Hegemony]

I think the fact that only four students have managed to complete the assignment (by mailing the papers) shows that it is not a reasonable expectation.

[Aster]

I think the fact that only four students have managed to complete the assignment (by mailing the papers) shows that it is not a reasonable expectation.

The assignments are not due yet. The OP only required the postmarking be no later than May 13th. Typical college students wait until the last day to do most everything, so I would not be surprised if most of the class didn't mail the things out until May 13th.

[jerseyjay]

All that said, I do agree that you as a professor need to get yourself access to a printer. You really should not be without. And if you're requiring students to mail you stuff, you really must not be without. There will ALWAYS be a few students who are going to mess something up or have something bad happen to their hardcopies. For those students, it falls on the professor's responsibility to have alternative submission options for student emergencies. Buy a printer, borrow a printer, or go to campus and use your printer there.

As an update, for what it is worth, I have posted a note on Blackboard clarifying that students do not have to go to the post office if they feel unsafe and I apologized for not taking into account that we are in a pandemic.

And for the record, I do have access to a printer. I have one in the department, and access to others. I can pay the "multiservices" store across the street to use theirs if it is urgent. I got rid of my printer--just like I got rid of my fax machine, my record player, and my VHS machine--in part because I do not have room to put it in my apartment, but I should try to find something.

[Not having a printer is also a way to force myself to only print stuff that I think I need to print. I put everything I want to print on my USB stick and then print it out when I get to my office, by which time at least half of the material no longer seems that useful.]

It is true that there will always be some students who cannot print something out. Just like there are always some students who will not make the deadline, but that doesn't mean I should eliminate deadlines.

I suppose that I should have gone into my office to print out the papers. The problem is that the school frowns upon printing stuff in large quantities (we are not supposed to print out the syllabi for the students, either, in a normal period). Also, I cannot expect the students to submit the paper by any particular time; even today, two days after the deadline to upload the paper, only half the students have submitted their papers via Blackboard. I could probably have figured something out, but, to be honest, I just mechanically applied my normal policy to a situation with a pandemic.

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to reflect on this issue.

[Cheerful]

Whew!

It's clearly been a stressful week.

I will step back, I think maybe we all need to step back.

As clean notes, we're staring to do a forum pile-on of outraged proportions...

The point has been made and accepted.

Nothing more to see here...

Move along...

;--}

M.

+1  But I just want to add one more thing.  Doesn't seem like equitable treatment of students to permit some to send their paper online-only while others must submit via both hard copy and online.  I strive to uphold same requirements for all students (with rare, quiet, individually-arranged exceptions for extreme cases).

Notes here about steep decline of USPS align with my daily sadness about USPS.  May we see USPS restored to its former greatness soon. A fundamental institution with a history of serving all  regardless of location.

Good luck jerseyjay.  Your course, your decisions. I have much sympathy here because I strongly prefer to read paper copies.

[Cheerful]

Remarkable that anyone should suggest that it is the professor's responsibility to print out hard-copy papers for entitled students.   I insist on hard-copies, because I red-ink the snot out of them.   And because I am the professor.

Regrettable that an instructor believes that students read term papers covered with red-inked comments when the semester has ended.

Same applies prior to end of semester.  Took me years before I finally realized my plentiful, individualized comments were mostly ignored by most students (undergrad and grad).  They'd submit second papers without addressing problems I'd clearly flagged on first papers.  For final papers, some colleagues even tell students "if you want comments, let me know" and don't provide otherwise.

[Charlotte]

Residential students living in dormitories are perhaps the only student demographic that one might reasonably assume to not have personal printer access. This demographic will use the campus printing centers, so there's no problem for them. Everybody else? They have home printers, or can easily drive themselves to a CVS, Walgreens, Staples, Office Depot, UPS Store, public libraries, their own workplace, etc... where document printing services are offered. I mean come on people! What do you think that regular folks who don't work at universities do to print stuff out if they don't have a home printer? Duh, everybody needs to print stuff out occasionally for something. They use a local service from the bazillion local retailers in their area. These services are everywhere.

Ahh, brings back memories of when I was in school, living 40 minutes away from the nearest town (not by choice, I worked there and was kindly provided a room too), and my car broke down. Being quite poor after having spent all my money on tuition and textbooks, I couldn't afford to fix it. It was summer and I was taking online classes so thankfully I did not miss classes, but if I had been required to get to town to mail something it would have been very difficult. There are lots of reasons why a student may have trouble getting somewhere.

I currently have students who are disabled and unable to drive places. They are thrilled that they have the opportunity to take online classes which don't require traveling.

Not sure what kind of students attend your school, but mine tend to be like I was.... very poor and every expense a struggle.

I remember a professor told me to purchase something once and told me it would cost loss than my daily morning coffee at Starbucks. I thought to myself, "who can afford to buy Starbucks once much less daily?"

Not to mention how much a printer costs and the ink! It can be pretty expensive.

Sometimes, people can be out of touch with struggles that students face.

And some, like kaysixteen, refer to them as entitled without knowing the full situation.