http://www.thenational.com.pg/020409/nation6.php
By KEVIN PAMBA
DIVINE Word University (DWU) in Madang aims to be a paperless university by next year as its contribution to fight global warming.
It had been progressively reducing the use of paper with information and communication technologies (ICT) and by next year, the paperless university policy would be fully operational, DWU president Fr Jan Czuba said last Friday.
He said all academic and administration activities would be done through the use of ICT while the use of paper would be limited to unavoidable circumstances only.
There is no way back. The paperless university policy will be implemented next year, Fr Czuba told staff at the close of the week-long staff induction programme.
He said the university had a moral obligation to help fight global warming and it must reduce the use of paper, printing, photocopying and the waste that was produced.
The new policy would require lecturers, tutors and students to carry out all academic work through the networked computers via chat lecture rooms, laboratories and auditoriums that had progressively been fitted with the ICT capability.
Students had already been accessing the networked computers with email and internet access and they each received a free 128 megabyte flash drive upon enrolment.
DWU hoped to go one step further to provide one laptop per student from next year if fundraising went well.
Fr Czuba said the university had invested in ICT and staff had been given the opportunity to acquaint themselves with the new technologies during the past three years and there was no turning back.
Fr Czuba said staff who still needed assistance to bring themselves up to speed with the ICT use must do so this year through in-house training within their departments and faculties.
He said DWU had embarked on developing itself with the highest quality and best ICT
facilities as part of its strategic plan that staff must make use of.
In keeping with the push to invest in ICT, DWU is opening the department of mathematics and computing studies which is enrolling its first 25 students this year.
The new department will be launched by Higher Education, Research, Science and Technology Minister Michael Ogio, on Friday while also launching the DWU academic year. It complements the department of information systems which offers diploma and degree in ICT education