Maintaining Your Classes in an Emergency
On October 5, 2010, Provost Garrett sent a memorandum to all USC faculty members, titled Maintaining Your Classes in an Emergency (PDF). This memo outlines seven key points to help faculty members fulfill their duties to students in the event of an extended emergency situation, such as that caused by a flu pandemic, earthquake, or other crisis.
Information Technology Services is committed to providing support and services to help faculty maintain their classes during an emergency. A list of key Blackboard services and guidelines is included below.
Blackboard
According to Provost Garrett's memo, faculty members should activate all their courses in Blackboard with an instructor of record and a syllabus.
Faculty who are not familiar with Blackboard should enroll in the Blackboard online workshops for instructors that are offered by the Center of Scholarly Technology (CST).
- To view a complete listing of Blackboard online workshops, visit http://cst.usc.edu/events/bbworkshop_online.
- To schedule a customized Blackboard training workshop for your academic unit, contact blackboard@usc.edu. Training workshops can be arranged for groups of 10 or more.
- USC's Blackboard learning management system is available at blackboard.usc.edu. Contact your academic unit's class scheduler to obtain Blackboard sites for your courses.
- To access Blackboard self-help materials, training videos, and other guides, please visit www.usc.edu/its/blackboard/support/bb9/#guides.
- For 24/7 Blackboard support, contact ITS Customer Service Center at 213-740-5555 and choose Option 3, or send an email to blackboard@usc.edu.
Plan B Assignment
Instructors should be prepared to give students a "Plan B" assignment if courses are canceled for one to three weeks during an emergency. If you would like help designing an assignment that engages students in active learning, has a service learning component, or employs collaboration, communication, social networking, or multimedia technologies, please contact the CST at cst@usc.edu or the Institute for Multimedia Literacy at iml@cinema.usc.edu.
Learning Environments
During flu season, ITS frequently cleans and disinfects the equipment located in the general-assignment classrooms, auditoria, computer centers, and labs.
University Preparations for Swine Flu
You can find out about USC's preparations for the swine flu at http://emergencyprep.usc.edu/h1n1/.