Trekking off that old paper trail

Have you ever been at CBS and thought to yourself: Why are things like they are? Well if you have you’re not alone. CBS has been the place of conception for hundreds of great ideas; some born out of first class teaching, others born out of the sheer frustration caused by certain aspects of student life.

One such frustration motivated former CBS-student Troels Bentsen act on a great idea that may one day effect the entire CBS community.

For Troels Bentsen, like many others, the process of handing in three or four copies of the same written project every time assessment and grading was due seemed like a great deal of wasted effort – and paper.

- It just annoys me when something is inefficient, especially when I have to do that something myself. As a CBS student, I realized what a waste of time and resources that followed in the wake of the old system, Troels Bentsen comments.

Mission aborted
Back in 2004, whilst studying BSc in Business Administration and Computer Science (more popularly known as DØK), Troels Bentsen and a few friends decided that they could improve the system, suggesting digital assignment hand-ins to replace multiple paper copies. Six months after seeking idea approval from their study board, following much research and a feasibility report, the approval was finally obtained.

Video: Students sætter valget i gang og skaber stor begejstring

Celebrations were short-lived however. The project soon ran into another obstacle – CBS IT. CBS IT was too busy implementing a new program administration system and did not have the time to attend this new proposal. The concept was shelved and forgotten.

About a year ago, Troels Bentsen took the idea down off the shelf again, dusted it down and found it as relevant as ever if not more so. Troels, now the founder of his own company, IT-Kartellet ApS, enthuses:

- We approached CBS’ management with the idea and it was well-received, despite some technical and scale issues in our proposal. It was proposed that we start the implementation at CBS Executive because that was where the need is greatest. For the executive programs it is not uncommon to see 12 taxis waiting outside Dalgas have while students – or just the taxi drivers – deliver papers at assignment time.

And in the beginning of March, IT Kartellet presented its new, improved proposal and received the green light from CBS to begin implementation.

Safety first
One of the great concerns regarding digital assignment hand-ins at CBS has been the question of security, but Troels Bentsen has addressed this in a stand-alone kind of way:

- The new system has to work by itself without all the other systems so that it can be independent and foolproof, he explains and stresses that the server itself has to be self sufficient and isolated from SiteScape, also in order to secure against power failures and system meltdowns.

Regarding other security issues, such as concerns about misplaced, stolen or tampered assignments, Troels Bentsen acknowledges that a number of security components will have to be built into the system. This includes the server, software and all the hardware used by both the study program secretariat and others. He does not, however, see this as being too great a stumbling block – and points out that millions of digital financial transactions are securely conducted every day through secure systems such as PayPal as living proof that assignment papers should also be able to be uploaded securely.
    
Blast off benefits
The benefits to a paper free system are manifold: Not very least, helping to cut down on unnecessary paper wastage and saving a few more trees. Also, it is hoped that a more automated process will cut down on the chance of mistakes occurring. With professors grading directly onto computers, the process of grade accreditation will be sped up. Overall, the new system should reduce a great deal of efficiency wastage in both man hours and resources.

For Troels Bentsen himself, the system’s making it possible to access previous students’ knowledge is the factor that gives the most value to the proposal:

- I put a lot of effort in my Master’s thesis, but the knowledge that I created is not really available for anyone else at CBS to learn from. With the new system and the ready digital archive, even students will be able to access these assignments and learn from them, he points out.

The problems with large, expensive and ultimately inaccessible archives can be overcome with a few clicks of the proverbial button. And on the thorny issue of plagiarism, it should be more than possible to implement a scanning system within the software that will be able to ‘red flag’ stolen or unaccredited texts.

Touchdown in time
In implementing the system, CBS is only – just – keeping abreast of the times and the demands of the times:

- The trend is already here. By law, the national archives already require that a copy of 10 percent of all assignments be sent to them digitally in TIFF-format. So why wait to implement the digital handling of of all assignments until some later time? Troels Bentsen asks.

The answer is one of sheer volume. For an institution like CBS, a massive procedural change of this size has to take time and detailed consideration, and rightly so; CBS Students President, Jenskumar Sivagurunathan, says the next step of the process will be to test the feasibility of the project on the DØK and CBS Executive programs. Once any implementation problems have been overcome, the idea has massive potential.

- This makes it only a matter of time before CBS students will be able to submit their assignments whenever and wherever they are, Jenskumar Sivagurunathan says.