Marson, J; Van Hoorebeek, M --- "Electronic Submission and the Movement Towards a Paperless Law Office in a Modern University" [2004] LegEdDig 19; (2004) 12(4) Legal Education Digest 4

Electronic Submission and the Movement Towards a Paperless Law Office in a Modern University

J Marson & M van Hoorebeek

[2004] LegEdDig 19; (2004) 12(4) Legal Education Digest 4

38 Law Teacher 1, 2004, pp 27–40

Modern universities have increasingly moved assessment of students away from examinations at the end of the term to continuous assessment, and in particular essays, which are often more approachable to students who may have some disability which impairs their success in stressful examination situations and enables students to give more researched and in-depth responses to assessment than may have been available in examinations. This prevalence of essay-type assessment has increased the need for submissions from students throughout the academic year and placed an obligation on them to produce essays, which are often only accepted in word-processed printed form and often require the student to physically submit the essay to a school office, which then passes it to the relevant module leader.

This paper considers this issue of how paperless submission may affect a law school — from the students’ perspective initially and then considering how the law school would be able to utilise this movement to electronic submission, and finally the viability and necessity for a paperless law office. It contains empirical evidence from students studying a law module and considers their perceptions and views of moving to electronic submission. Finally, it considers the importance of the study and its relevance to modern, technology-enabled universities before outlining the data subjects and considering the findings.

This study into the movement towards a paperless law office investigated the students’ perceptions of electronic submission of assessed work. The project aimed to gather information on these students’ willingness or not to submit their essays via disk or e-mail. Due to the evidence which was sought, an empirical study was necessary, with the data collected to be quantitative.

This research project involved non-law students studying a law subject as part of their social science and business undergraduate degree programs. They were chosen because of the nature of this type of teaching, which exacerbated the situation noted above by requiring a further office to be involved in the process of admitting, handling, and distributing the essays submitted as part of the relevant module.

The students are the end-users and recipients of the teaching and assessment provided by universities, and they have ever greater choice in the university where they wish to study and the course which they choose to take. The initial considerations of the practical issues surrounding electronic submission were to assess the students’ access to the mechanisms to enable electronic submission to take place. It appeared strange to the authors for the continued requirement of students to print out their essays and submit these to a school office as this incurred expense to the students.

Even beyond the costs of printing, there was evidence from the students, and anecdotal evidence of quite extreme situations from staff at the print units, that many students had faced problems in getting work printed out in order to get it ready for submission. These problems were varied and ranged from having the network at the university break down, which made access to the printers or work saved on the computers impossible to access, to students not giving themselves sufficient time to print out the work and missing deadlines due to the volume of printing on the university printers on submission dates.

Most of the students participating in this study were full-time and young and therefore they often did not have problems in getting to the university to submit work. However, 28 percent of the respondents noted that they did have problems, particularly the older students, who may have had commitments outside of the university, and part-time students, who had jobs and were not at the university every day.

Many universities still require students to visit the school office to submit their essays. Despite the majority of respondents being young students who spend much of their time on the campus, it was still noted that nearly 30 percent of these students had experienced difficulties in getting to the school office to submit work on time. This often resulted in these students experiencing pressure when deadlines for assessed work were set.

The students are increasingly being considered as the ‘customers’ of the universities and have faced inconvenience and expense with physical submission of assessed work, which was a substantial aspect of the argument for, and the study of, the paperless law office. These student difficulties have also created problems for the universities in the administration of the essays. In order for the system of electronic submission of assessed work to be available and successful, the students need to have confidence in submitting work in a way which is likely to be alien to what they have been used to in most modules undertaken to that point. The students were questioned as to their perceptions of confidence in submitting their essays electronically. Twenty-one percent of students stated that they would be ‘very confident’ in submitting work in this manner, with 56 percent responding that they would be ‘somewhat confident’ using electronic submission.

In anticipation of this scepticism by the students, the question was asked whether the students would still like to retain the option for physical submission, so that those students who did not want to produce word-processed work or who wished to submit their work physically to the university retained that option without being discriminated against. It was clear that the students were willing to try this new method of submission. It therefore became necessary to consider if this mechanism was a viable proposition because there were tangible grounds for such a move which would benefit all the players involved in the system.

Many of the students had studied the use and theory of information communications technology which they had experienced in the practical courses they undertook in workshops. Therefore, they were frustrated that, when it came to the submission of their work, this had to be done physically to a school office by essentially transferring the work from the electronic to the physical form to assist the university because an alternative was not made available.

The technology already exists in most universities for the students to use e-mail and the Internet to share information and files: software such as ‘First Class’ enable senders of e-mail to check if the mail has been received, saved, moved, or the attachment file downloaded, and enable senders to obtain a receipt on delivery. Software is also available which would enable the lecturer to check for plagiarism and for authenticity and word counts, which may be difficult in the physical submission of essays.

There are benefits in electronic assignment submission for both the university and the students. For the university, it is the reduction in the costs and time of administration by office staff; the utilisation of the available technology; being a leading university in this area — which may be a factor considered by students who may wish to study away from the physical location of their chosen university; being able to access more students and potentially increase access to this customer base; making the university more family friendly and giving the students the opportunity to study when it is most suitable for them.

For the students, the advantages include the increased synergy between the theoretical and practical elements of the education system at the university they have been exposed to. Many courses include technology to enhance the students’ learning experience, which can encompass the use of research tools such as Westlaw and Lexis-Nexis in classrooms and lecture theatres, as well as teaching and revision materials in electronic systems such as Blackboard, and more contacts with the university using the available technology to keep students aware of happenings at the university, thereby making their experience more pleasant and rewarding.

The findings from this empirical research were that, in principle, students would welcome the choice and flexibility that paperless submission would provide. The evidence has demonstrated that cost savings for the students are possible and administrative staff would be freed up by not having manually to accept and receipt course work from students. The main disadvantage of paperless submissions would be for the tutor marking several essays and having to read large amounts of text on a VDU and requiring a computer to do this. However, it may be considered that the benefits outweigh the disadvantages.

This research study has demonstrated through the collection of empirical evidence the willingness of students at a modern university to use this form of submission, because they see both the benefits to themselves and the usefulness to tutors and administrative staff — increasingly important factors due to time pressures and the volume of work with which academic staff are being faced.