Contingency Plan for Online and Face-to-Face Courses
All instructors are encouraged to have a contingency plan devised and ready to implement any time there is a disruption to the routine operations of courses.
Disruptions may include: planned or unplanned events such as campus closings, power failures, hurricanes, or other unforeseen outages when technology becomes unavailable.
While relying on Blackboard and email to communicate with your students is a good first step, you should have a secondary ‘backup plan’ as well. We cannot guarantee that services will be available 100% of the time.
CFCC has taken several steps to help mitigate potential disruptions in service including the following:
- The Blackboard Server is hosted at an off-site/off-campus Data Center in Virginia. Data Centers are specifically designed to have redundant power supplies and data connections, and are designed to be resistant to weather-related conditions.
- myCFCC and CFCC Login Servers are now hosted at an off-site/off-campus Data Center in the Triangle Area. Data Centers are also designed to have redundant servers so technical failures are minimized.
- Blackboard can be accessed from both the myCFCC portal and directly from http://online.cfcc.edu.
- WebAdvisor can be accessed from both the myCFCC portal and directly from http://reg.cfcc.edu.
WebAdvisor has a built in ‘Email These Students’ feature that allows you to email one, several, or all your students. This can be accessed by going into your Roster and selecting “Email these Students.”
The following systems are housed on the CFCC Campus and are vulnerable if the CFCC campus has any power, data, or technical failures: Groupwise Email Server, WebAdvisor, What’s My Password (Password Resets).
Also Note: The Pearson MyLab Products are not controlled by CFCC and we have no influence or control over their access. It is safe to assume that Pearson has their own contingency plans to mitigate service disruptions, but access to CFCC resources does not guarantee access to Pearson resources.
To help lessen the impact of a potential outage the following items are recommended:
- Faculty should inform students of their Contingency Plans and under what situations they are to be enacted.
- Faculty should inform students to check their myCFCC Email on a regular basis.
- Faculty may wish to collect an alternate email address or phone numbers for students to be used in emergencies (see note below).
- If Blackboard is unreachable or there are access problems, establish an alternate means of submitting assignments, such as email.
- Also consider an alternate method of completing assignments (ex: student can write a summary of the chapter if they cannot take the review quiz in Blackboard).
- Acknowledge emails within 24/48 hours and inform students that unless they received a confirmation email from you they should assume you did not receive their email.
- Keep a backup copy of critical course documents that can be shared via email in the event Blackboard is unreachable.
- You may wish to keep these documents off-site in case the campus or campus-systems are unreachable.
Note: IT Services has advised that sensitive information, such as Student Records, including address/contact information cannot be stored on equipment that is not controlled by CFCC; please do not make an electronic copy/backup of student data to keep at home.
