Our Paperwork Habit and 21st Century Realities

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Henry Chigozie Duru

I don’t know whether I’m the only one observing our seemingly unseverable love for papers and paperwork even at this stage of the 21st century when technologies have more than made it possible for us to dispense with some of our paperwork, thus saving time, cost and easing our work process and making it more efficient. Of what gain is the digital word processing and storage technology to us when postgraduate students have to continue printing copies and copies of their work from the proposal stage to the final defence stage? In some other climes, students write and complete their thesis/dissertation without having to print anything. This is where we should be, especially given our poor waste management capabilities that make it even ill-advised to continue generating avoidable paper waste.

Of what gain is the electronic payment system to us when students still have to present hardcopy receipts to validate their payment; when they still have to queue up in front a bursary office window to have these hardcopy receipts signed and stamped? The idea of electronic payment system is to dispense with such queues, make for maximum ease and efficiency in record keeping and eliminate incidents of forgery which hardcopy receipting is always open to. But it appears we’re comfortable with leaving our system vulnerable to forgery by making presentation of hardcopy receipts our primary evidence of payment. We are at ease, it seems, with making administration more cumbersome and more time wasting by insisting on paperwork after digital payment. Truth be told, a student who has paid his/her fees using an electronic platform should ideally have no business queuing up for the so-called confirmation of payment (even at the expense of his/her lectures) and neither should he/she continue to endure the hard labour of carrying about hardcopy receipts in order to be admitted into an examination hall. Today, it’s no longer tenable or helpful for PG students to always undergo paperwork-based fee clearance after electronic payment. At every stage of defence and even at the point of collecting their final result, they’re still expected to attach this paper! Is it too difficult to let go of this cumbersome paperwork? In fact, the sheer quantum of paperwork involved in PG matters is tiresome if not ridiculous at times. Some of these forms can be dispensed with, some can be collapsed into one to make things easier for staff and students.

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The bottom line here is that, leveraging digital technology, we can have an integrated system for digital management of students’ academic and financial records. The management can effectively monitor students’ academic and fee status while any student can log on to the portal to view his/her status at anytime. It’s simply all about thinking beyond the confines of tradition and what we’re used to. Through this we will do away with the usual crowd that beseige the finance office and reception hall of the PG School building on daily basis, even in this COVID-19 era. We will eliminate the awkward sight of crowd of students common at the window of the bursary office opposite the Faculty of Arts extension.

Then coming to what happens with students’ research projects/theses/dissertations. From time to time, we task students to print 4 or 6 copies of their final work only for these to soon constitute surplus paper garbage to be gathered and burnt to create space for future copies that will soon face the same fate. What an embarrassing waste! What’s wrong with asking them to submit only one hardcopy and a softcopy? At the PG level, students are asked to submit 4 CD plates whereas one will be enough for the department, faculty, PG School and the university library. It’s a matter of copying the digital content and passing it on to the next user. Better still, there can be a portal where the certified works are uploaded for all the concerned units to access them. That’s how it’s done in foreign universities.

PG students can be saved the cost and labour of producing several copies of their works if only we can think beyond our habits and get examiners to read softcopies. Such copies can be shared via CD plates or email. Better still, through a central portal every staff member attending a defence can access (via phones, laptops, tablets etc) all works being presented. Even students can do the same – of course no one would dispute that it’s very important that students should be able to also read and follow when the works of their fellow students are being criticised. It’s part of the training. (Someone told me that it was recently suggested that every student coming for our Faculty Defence should print 20 copies of their work to enable lecturers have access and make inputs during examinations. I only hope this is a joke. We should not be taking the world backward. At more reputed universities, students defend without hardcopies while we’re bent on increasing hardcopies here!).

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We can replicate the above stated digital system in other areas of university administration. PG Board and Senate meetings must not involve large files of paper documents. We can do better as drivers of innovations in the context of the 21st century digital culture. We should save time and cost and make administration less cumbersome.

Our Habit is Our Greatest Enemy
While all sorts of excuses may be activated as to why the foregoing suggestions may be difficult to realise for now, the truth is that the greatest obstacle to their realisation is the same old obstacle that hinders every change – tradition and habit. These two invariably breed lethargy and fear of trying. As a fresh journalist many years ago, I started learning how to write directly on computer since it was becoming the emerging culture in the profession. It was initially very cumbersome due to my deeply ingrained pen-and-paper habit. But today the reverse has become the case; I now find it hard writing on paper! I know a friend, a voracious reader, who due to a long time habit, now finds it hard reading a hardcopy book. Habit eases and hinders everything.

People complain of data cost vis-a-vis the meagre pay we receive once anything involving digital technology is suggested. However, all what I suggested can be done without the Internet, at least in the interim. All that’s needed is an offline local area network (LAN) with coverage throughout the campus. One will only need Internet when they want to access the servers from their homes. In a newspaper firm I worked with in Lagos, for instance, movement from one editorial office to the other (across various floors of a very large building) has become effectively dispensed with as every editorial personnel, graphic designer and printing press worker can access the servers from their respective offices as well as share documents. This way, much of the traditional paperwork has been eliminated. Journslists of today now maximise digital technologies. They equip themselves with high-end smartphones that effectively serve as their all-in-one workshop; they use this singular gadget to write reports, conduct research, record interviews, take photos and edit them, do all sorts of word processing before sending to their office, thus saving time, cost and dealing less with paper. That’s the world we’re in today. Needless to say, our universities and their personnel should do better than they’re doing towards smarter administration.

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Better Mentorship to Students…
I don’t know whether we’ve ever given thought to the quality of mentorship we give to our students by making them get stuck to hardcopies as a matter of habit. Are we mentoring them to function efficiently in the world of today or are we training them to become “yesterday’s humans” in today’s world? A friend who last year completed his master’s degree in journalism at Griffith University, Dublin, told me how he initially battled with writing some of his examinations using computer. They were expected to answer essay questions on MS Word, format them as specified and convert to PDF before submitting. This involves not just writing, but also producing illustrations and charts. A current master’s student in UNIZIK told me of a job interview she attended in Lagos that involved exactly the same degree of computer word processing tasks. This is where the world is now, and by training our students to work using digital technologies, we are training them for today’s reality. For example, personally I have adopted the policy of reading undergraduate projects in softcopy ONLY. No hardcopy will be accepted from any student. It’s not for convenient sake – for indeed it’s very much inconveniencing to me for now – rather it was born out of the motivation to help the students and help myself. I must become efficient in applying the most current tools and conforming with the best practices in the work I claim to be an expert in. And the students must be accordingly guided to make them optimally competitive in the technologically driven world. After all, what is worth doing is worth doing well.

I am Henry Chigozie Duru

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