Field Survey of Printers

For many students at Texas A&M, printers are essential for studying and completing required coursework. Thus, ample access to printers is essential for supporting the needs of students on campus. In this study, the accessibility of printers on campus was analyzed by using GNSS technology, mapping the locations of printers, and determining the spatial distribution of printers on campus in relation to major student housing, study, and class regions. Technologies used include a shared ArcGIS Online Webmap and associated feature layers, and mobile phones equipped with GNSS receivers and the ArcGIS Fieldmaps app were used to capture high-quality location data of printer-equipped buildings on campus. The results were that though printer distribution generally allows for easy accessibility to students in most regions of campus, there are regions where more printers could be installed to increase said accessibility- notably the Northside housing block. 

Printers are essential for the classwork of many students at Texas A&M University, and thus the university has generally provided access to printing through a printing allowance included with a semester’s tuition as well as printers distributed across campus. Access to printing amenities allows students to have greater freedom in completing their coursework, helps many students stay organized, and makes physical copies easy to create for submittal and grading purposes. However, printers may not be distributed equally across campus, which could affect the ability of a given student to be able to print out and complete their classwork and be prepared for classes. Identifying the distribution of printers on campus at Texas A&M can both allow for university faculty to identify where new printers could be installed to increase access and availability to students and help students that use printers to identify regions to study in or to avoid when they believe they will need access to a printer to most easily complete coursework. 

To develop our map of the campus and the distribution of printers, we used Aggie Print to locate all campus buildings that contained a printer. It was decided to only test printers on the Main Campus (East of Wellborn Rd.) for two reasons: firstly, because most students work and study on Main Campus, and secondly, all student housing units beside the White Creek Apartments are located on Main Campus. Once the printer locations were found, they were divided into groups so all group members would take points. To survey points, a shared map project was created on ArcGIS Online, and ArcGIS Field Maps was used for field data collection. Data was collected by members outside of the main entrance of each building. This was decided to avoid multipath error and ensure the highest accuracy of the data collected. 

Observing the map created, a preliminary analysis shows that the majority of printers on campus are located in two clusters; one near the South Side housing block and another near the Engineering Quad. Other printer locations are generally evenly dispersed around Main Campus inside of other high-traffic buildings. The Northern region of campus generally has the sparsest distribution, with the only building containing a printer being Hullabaloo Hall.

The distribution of printers across campus generally meets the needs of most students, but certain spatial gaps do allow for certain degrees of improvement. The largest and most prominent spatial gap in the map exists in the Easternmost region of campus. Despite being populated by several residence halls, the only building that contains a printer in this area is the Hullabaloo Hall. As a result, the many students who live in this region of campus are more isolated from printing amenities than other students on campus. A solution could include installing another printer in one of the residence halls or in the ILSB. The regions of campus that most serve the printing needs of students are the regions surrounding the Engineering Quad and the Corps of Cadets dorms. Using this information, students living on the Northside housing block can alter study locations to be nearer to larger amounts of printers, such as near the Corps of Cadets or the Engineering Quad, until printers are potentially located closer to their residence.