A Sloan Semester Postscript Lessons Learned Now What

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A Sloan Semester Postscript Lessons LearnedNow
What?

• Eight Strategies the Higher Education Community
  Should Consider in Preparation for the Next (and
  Inevitable) Disaster and A Challenge to Sloan C
• Bruce Chaloux, SREB
• August 4, 2006

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Since the Fall Term, 2005

• National, regional and state discussions about
  disaster planning/recovery
• SREB hosted a Webinar Series on Emergency
  Planning
• Focus on state efforts P-20
• What happened (and didnt) in Louisiana
• What states/institutions should be doing

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http//laepscor.org/sreb/
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Emergency Planning

• Heavily focused on IT and facilities
• Backing up systems
• Establishing communications
• Knowing where resources are located
• Developing Command and Control protocols
• Planning for the next disasternow
• But little focus on academic planning

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Academic Planning

• Just as Essential as IT/facility planning
• Need to put it on the radar screen
• Learn from lessons of Sloan Semester
• Build on online learning strategy
• Establish just-in-time systems
• Plan for the next disasternow
• So, Eight Strategies for Consideration...

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Strategy One

• Develop academic emergency plans as facility/IT
  plans are being formulated
• Faculty Component
• Administrative Component
• Student Component
• Focus on re-establishing or continuing academic
  activities/services

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Strategy Two

• Develop a plan for re-establishing institutional
  Web sitesfast
• Clear evidence from Sloan Semester that academic
  communities turned (attempted) to their web sites
• Have a back-up hosting site
• Develop a system for approving messages

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Strategy Three

• Develop student continuation plansonline
  learning should be a key component
• Migrating courses to online format
• Course continuation strategies
• Course sharing arrangements
• It is difficult to develop online courses or to
  undertake faculty training in a crisis

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Strategy Four

• Develop a set of guiding policies and obtain
  policy commitments. Include
• Admission to another institution
• Tuition and fees
• Financial Aid
• Credit transfer/recognition
• Course completion/extension of terms

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Strategy Five

• Establish and have ready online repositories of
  coursesjoin now
• Electronic Campus
• Sloan C
• State initiatives

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Strategy Six

• Design an academic buddy system
• Partner with another institution(s)
• Student services/support
• Faculty (joint course development)
• IT back-up/sharing
• Strengthen relationships
• Sloan C, NUTN, ADEC, others

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Strategy Seven

• Once you have developed a disaster
  recovery/continuation plan, dont hide it!!!
• Make it known to the community
• Review and revise regularly
• Provide access to it in an emergency

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Strategy Eight(targeted at national groups)

• Establish an emergency, back-up site
• Default 9-1-1 site in case of disaster
• House plans and strategies
• Available at all timesongoing, regularly updated
  and easily accessible
• Provide access to resources and services from
  national, regional, state, institutions

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Sloan C Challenge(Thanks to Sam Smith for his
admonition that we not get too conservative)

• Why dont we (Sloan C) become the national
  emergency, back-up site
• Sloan911.com or Sloan411 or ???
• Establish, collect and promote the site among
  national, regional, state groups and institutions
• Partner with vendors/providers (many of whom
  offered assistance at no charge) to host the site
  
• Collect institutional plans, institutional web
  site backup sites, and other essential
  just-in-time information that can be at the
  ready
• Provide access to resources and services from
  national, regional, state, institutions

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Sloan C Challenge(Continued)

• Extend the Sloan Semester infrastructure
• Have courses ready to roll
• Institutional subscriptions to services
• Processes for ongoing updates
• Define (broaden) emergencies and use of Sloan
  Semester (911 or 411)
• SREB ready to continue hosting/ providing
  structure and back office
• Should we create THE national emergency backup
  site and system

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A Closing Thought and Question

• We did more right than wrong in Sloan
  Semesterthe key was
• We focused on the STUDENT
• We established rules to benefit them
• We pushed institutions to agree to keep the
  focus on them
• We sought to lessen the academic red tape on
  them
• Why cant we do this NOW in our regular, normal
  operations???