Online learning during disasters and emergencies

Some years ago I enabled a couple of colleagues from The Sheffield College to attend a workshop at Penn State University, funded by the Sloan Foundation. The workshop produced these excellent guidelines on managing the workload of on-line tutors [85 kB PDF], and my colleagues returned from it full of praise for the skillful way the workshop had been run and the quality of the contributions.

Hats off to the Sloan Foundation for funding a workshop next month in New Orleans concerning the use of Asynchronous Learning Network (ALN) technologies to permit continued delivery of university courses during disasters and other emergency situations. I have included, for information, the full invitation in the continuation post, with Ray Schroeder's permission.

Funded by a grant from the Sloan Foundation, I am coordinating an invitational workshop on the use of ALN technologies to continue the delivery of the curriculum through disaster and emergency situations that disrupt deliver through the physical campus.  The workshop will be held in New Orleans at the height of the hurricane season (September 20-22). This workshop has two goals:

1. To develop a series of online workshops on institutional preparedness for continuing the delivery the curriculum in the wake of an emergency situation - such as hurricane, tornado, earthquake, hazardous spill on campus, epidemic, pandemic, terrorist attack, etc. The workshops developed at this session are to be prepared for delivery by the Sloan Consortium as an ongoing series of online workshops to assist universities in developing their own plans.
2. To develop a Sloan-C emergency  response center for higher education. The goal of the center will be to facilitate the continuation of the delivery of the curriculum through ALN technologies for institutions which are affected by such emergency situations as listed above.

We are seeking a group of participants who are interested in working to achieve these two goals. Travel, accommodations, and related expenses will be covered by the conference which will be held at the Wyndham New Orleans at Canal Place hotel.

Others participating in the conference will be the Sloan Semester steering committee and staff, representatives of half a dozen New Orleans colleges and universities, representatives of the Louisiana government and Board of Regents, experts in the field of emergency preparedness in higher education, and representatives of interested corporate entities.

Please reply to Ray Schroeder, schroeder.ray@uis.edu by August 25 if you are interested in participating in this workshop. Please include in your reply any relevant experience, background or perspective that you will be able to contribute to this workshop.