Abstract:

The COVID-19 pandemic forced educators and students online in early 2020 and over the following two years, Emergency Remote Teaching (ERT) constituted the primary medium of instruction in the majority of classrooms. Now, as the threat of COVID-19 is receding and students return to the face-to-face classroom, instructors have an opportunity to apply new techniques learned during their pandemic teaching in the old-fashioned classroom.

In the academic year of 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic struck, I made approximately 12,750 (usually double-sided) copies for use in my Language for Specific Purposes lectures in Automotive Engineering. In this talk, I will outline how through the continued use of a Learning Management System (LMS) after the end of ERT, combined with the newly acquired knowledge of instructor and students to accessing online materials, it was possible to almost completely eliminate paper handouts from my tertiary level language teaching classrooms at an Austrian university.

In a pilot study to ascertain the practical feasibility of making the classroom paperless, a group of undergraduate students and a group of postgraduate students were instructed at the beginning of the semester that handouts would only be available through the course’s LMS and should either be printed in advance or accessed electronically during lectures when directed. At the end of semester, a survey containing both multi-items scales and open-ended questions was conducted to ascertain student perceptions of not receiving handouts in paper form. This included questions related to student preferences on how to receive class materials, access to the LMS, as well as perceived issues related to organisation of materials, motivation and learning.

Overall, student respondents (n = 47) reacted very positively to the move to a paperless classroom and even in some cases suggested that materials stored electronically rather than in physical form helped them to organise their learning better. In addition, once the environmental and cost savings have also been taken into account, it would seem that implementing a paperless classroom should be considered whenever possible by instructors, as we now have the knowledge and the tools in place to make it so.

Keywords:

Paperless classroom, learning management system, new media, save-a-tree, post-COVID.