To: Mr.

Brett Riley
Vice President of Administrative Services
1300 Fifth Street
Wenatchee WA, 98801

From: Jacelyn Bain

A.S.W.V.C. Member
10670 Fox Road
Leavenworth WA, 98826

Re: PaperCut System Analysis

Date: February 24, 2018

Introduction
The goal of this report is to identify the issues that students have with PaperCut and
the challenges of the PaperCut interface. I aim to address a perceived inherent
difficulty in using and navigating the PaperCut system. This report will cover a student
survey concerning PaperCut, interface functionality, as well as analyzing the student
usage of the current system and the printing information available to students.

Background
Funding
The PaperCut system was started in 2012. Currently, PaperCut is funded through a
printing fund, and there is a budget associated with that money. An annual fee also
contributes to the continuity of the PaperCut system.

Any student registered for a minimum of one class at WVC starts with $10 in their
account at the beginning of each quarter. The $10 acts as a credit for each student and
is not actual money. To limit the amount of paper students waste, any outstanding
balance, including money added by students to their PaperCut account, can’t be rolled
over or refunded at the end of the quarter.

Printing
The cost of printing for students is $0.05 per page for black and white and $0.35 per
page for colored printing. If the job doesn’t print, the student’s account will not be
charged. If they run out of funds, the document will not print.

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Account Balance
The PaperCut balance can be viewed from a link on mywvc.wvc.edu, but it only works
on a school computer. The balance can also be viewed by clicking a PaperCut icon on
the lower right hand corner of the screen on a school computer.

The remaining balance isn’t displayed when students are printing, which makes it
difficult for students to determine how much money they have in their accounts. When
students run out of funds, more money for PaperCut can only be added through a
PaperCut machine in the library.

Discussion
Survey
The following data was collected from a survey of 40 students that were on campus
about the PaperCut system. The survey was taken on Wednesday, February 28th, 2018.
It was meant to gain insight into the current usage and student opinions concerning
PaperCut and printing on campus.
Table 1

Yes No Every Once a 1-3 Never 1-2 3-5 10+ Often Sometimes Never
Day Week Times a pages pages pages
month
Do you print on campus? 35 5
Do you know what PaperCut 20 20
is?
How often do you print on 7 13 16 4
campus?
How many pages is your 13 21 1
average print job?
Do you know your current 11 29
PaperCut balance?
Do you know how to access 20 20
your balance?
Have you ever run out of 8 32
printing money?
Have you ever been close to 10 30
running out?
Do you know where the 19 21
machine is to load extra funds
onto PaperCut?
How often do you print to the 3 9 24
wrong location?
How often do you print more 1 13 22
copies than you need?

Table 1

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 Yes No

Do you print on campus?

Do you know what PaperCut is?

Do you know your current PaperCut balance?

Do you know how to access your balance?

Have you ever run out of printing money?

Have you ever been close to running out?

Do you know where the machine is to load extra funds onto PaperCut?

0 10 20 30 40

Figure 1

- 87.5% of those students print on campus (see figure 1).

- Only 27.5% of students surveyed knew what their PaperCut balance was, but 50% of
the students said they knew how to access the balance (see figure 1).
- 20% of students asked had run out of printing funds, and 25% had been close to
running out (see figure 1).

How often do you print on campus? How many pages is your average print job?

Every Day
1-2 pages

Once a Week

3-5 pages

1-3 Times a month

10+ pages
Never

0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24

Figure 2 Figure 3

On average, students will print nine pages a month (see figure 2 and 3).

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 How often do you print to the wrong location?
How often do you print more copies than you need?

Often

Sometimes

Never

0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24

Figure 4

- 30% of students said that they had printed to the wrong location before (see figure
4).
- 35% of students have printed more copies than they needed (see figure 4).

Interface Functionality

The machine used to load extra money onto a PaperCut account is easy to find if a
student knew the general area that it is in. If students weren’t aware that it was by the
reference desk in the library, a librarian would be able to direct students to the machine
with little difficulty. As the survey showed, 47.5% of students know at least the general
location of the machine (see table 1 or figure 1).

One downside to the interface is that PaperCut doesn’t display the account balance
when printing, which is inconvenient. However, the balance can be found from a link in
mywvc.wvc.edu on a school computer. The link in mywvc.wvc.edu is very small, and
unless a student was looking for it, it would be hard to find. The PaperCut balance can
also be found from an icon in the lower right corner of a school computer. The
PaperCut icon wouldn’t display the balance unless a student were to right click on it
and then choose to click on the open button which is a little difficult to figure out.

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Current Usage

According to Andrew Hersch-Tudor, Dean of Library Sciences, only 10% of students use
all of their PaperCut funds (Hersch-Tudor). It is possible that the discrepancy between
the survey results and the data from Hersch-Tudor could have been caused by the fact
that the student surveyed weren’t part of technical programs (see table 1 and figure 1).
Technical programs probably don’t have as much printing associated with them.

Information Available to Students

A potential area for misinformation on the PaperCut system is the library website about
printing on campus. The website falsely claims that student accounts are reset to a
balance of $15 a quarter (Printing on Campus web). However, there is a sheet of
information given to students when they ask about the PaperCut machine in the library.
It includes all of the information on the website, but it correctly states that credit given
is $10 (Printing on Campus). The discrepancy of information between the website and
the handout could have been caused by the old quarterly balances being set to $15,
and the information never being updated online when the policy changed.

The only place in the WVC Student Handbook where printing on campus is mentioned
is in the Computer Use Policy when it says, “Printouts are limited to academic work.
Printing limits will be determined as is necessary for each lab. These limits will be
clearly marked and enforced. Failure to comply with set printing limits may result in the
loss of computer lab access,” (p. 33).

Conclusion
PaperCut doesn’t have big problems, but it has a succession of small issues that when
added together make dealing with the system inconvenient, and sometimes
problematic, for students. While only 10% of all students may go over their PaperCut
limit, 20% of people on track to attain an Associates degree will run out of their
PaperCut credit. While that is not a majority of the students at WVC, it is a good
portion of them. Addressing the issues of the PaperCut system could lead to more
satisfied students.

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 References

Hersch-Tudor, Andrew.(2018 February 23) Interview by Tveten, D. K [Interview Notes].

Printing on Campus. Retrieved from https://commons.wvc.edu/library/How%20to/
Printing.aspx.
Printing on Campus. Information Sheet.
Wenatchee Valley Student Handbook.

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