Scans must be:
- a single document (with multiple pages if applicable)
- black and white (not grayscale or color)—or if color is essential, make sure your scan still has a bright white background
- in .pdf format.
These procedures are important enough to me that I’ve made a tutorial to address it! I’m going to explain how to create such a file in two ways: at a printer on campus, or with an app on your phone.
On a campus printer
Any printer on campus should have a scan function available to you for 3¢ per scan. To make this tutorial, I took photos of the printer in the music office.
Press the “main menu” button to the left of the screen. 
Click Scan and Send on the right. 
“Send to myself” will send to your GMU address, and then you can forward me that email. 
Tap where it says “auto (color/gray)”. 
Select Black & White. 
If you are scanning flat, detached pages, you can use the document feeder to scan quickly. 
If you are scanning out of a book (or just don’t want to fuss with the document feeder), lift the lid and use the flatbed scanner.
On your smartphone
If you’re not on campus, the best way to scan might be by using your phone. There are two different free apps I have used successfully to do this, ABBYY FineScanner and CamScanner, and I will give you a guide for each.
Here are general guidelines for any app:
- This works best with flat pages, so you might want to still remove the pages from a workbook.
- Make sure to select the option for a multi-page document (often called “batch” mode).
- Place the document against a dark background, because the app can probably auto-crop the document for you, but only if it can detect the edges. Putting a white page against your brown desk or similar will make the page vs the background high contrast and help the computer do its job.
- If the auto-cropping doesn’t work, adjust the cropping and the corners after taking the photos, because this will un-distort the scan.
- Ensure that the lighting is not too bright or too dark.
- Be sure to select the Black and White option as a filter for your scan.
- After you’re finished, click the Share button, select PDF, and send to yourself, to me, or wherever it needs to go to arrive in my inbox.
If you still need more help, scroll down to the photo tutorial for either ABBYY or CamScanner.
ABBYY
By default, it has “autocapture” enabled. I suggest turning it off. 
It’s best to take the picture straight on. 
But even if you take it at an angle, you can fix it later… 
…by moving the sides and corners until they line up with document boundaries. 
You can make it black and white by selecting Filters. 
Choose the black and white option, and click “apply to all” to get it done to all your pages at once. 
Once you’ve got all your pages formatted properly, click save. 
Name your scan if you want to change the default name and click Done (top right). 
Send the scan to yourself or to me with the Share icon.
CamScanner
Make sure you have Batch mode enabled. 
It’s best to take photos straight on. 
But even if you take the photo at an angle, you can still fix it later. 
Click Re-Edit in the top left to get the correct scan settings. 
If needed, fix the cropping by aligning sides and corners to the document boundaries. Then, click the checkmark. 
Now, you will be able to select the B&W color mode. 
After clicking the checkmark again, you’ll be able to click the share button on the bottom bar. Share as a PDF and email it to yourself or to me.