Saturday, September 26, 2009

Are You Prepared for an Emergency?

You probably have noticed a flurry of activity at NOVA this semester as the college increases its ability to continue with operations in the event of an emergency. Evidence of this activity can be seen in our new Emergency Preparedness website at http://www.nvcc.edu/about-nova/emergency/

If you are a faculty member, your preparations most likely have included refreshing your Blackboard skills. Comparative data between F08 and F09 demonstrate that the Technology Applications Center (TAC) offered 8 Blackboard workshops the first three weeks of F08 but 78 workshops during that same time frame in F09. Our training enrollment numbers show similar growth. While TAC enrolled 20 participants for the first three weeks of F08, we had 478 people attend our workshops the first three weeks of F09. Because some people might have attended more than one of our workshops, those numbers could be duplicated headcounts.

Will you be ready to continue teaching online in the event of an emergency? You might want to check out TAC's online Blackboard tutorials at http://tac.nvcc.edu/blackboard/faculty/ Likewise, please be sure your students know how to use Blackboard. We have tutorials for them at http://tac.nvcc.edu/blackboard/student/

TAC will collect baseline data regarding faculty Blackboard skills on Oct. 1, with our official F09 review of Blackboard usage data scheduled for Nov. 1. More information on NOVA's Academic Recovery Plan can be found on the TAC site. http://tac.nvcc.edu/

Stay tuned for our "Go Online in a Hurry" handbook, the NOVA Go Kit. In the meantime, to be prepared, stay informed. Please also follow NOVA's Emergency Planning blog at http://novaemergencymanagement.blogspot.com/

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