“We have zero printed textbooks. We have zero printed handouts,” said Alice Carrott, director of educational support services. “We truly have a paperless school.”

The Angel system is just one part of KUMC’s shift to eLearning, which is the term used to describe the fields of online learning, Web-based training, and other types of technology-delivered instruction.

KUMC issues each incoming medical student a tablet PC laptop computer. Students can log into their MyKUMC online accounts to access all textbooks, class and campus information, training materials, and a library. Students use their tablets to take notes, complete assignments, take tests, review faculty lectures (all of which are available as podcasts), study medical texts, pay tuition, manage e-mail and surf the Internet.

MyKUMC, which includes the Angel system, contains about 20 terabytes of information, the equivalent of twice the total amount of printed material in the Library of Congress, according to James Bingham, KUMC’s associate vice chancellor for Information Resources.

Bingham said the amount of information that enters MyKUMC on a daily basis is mind-boggling. More than one million e-mail messages reach the KUMC system every day. Of these, about one–tenth are allowed to pass through. The rest are blocked by spam firewalls. Two years ago, fewer than 150,000 messages hit the spam firewalls daily. +