In the event of an emergency shutdown of UMKC’s campus or in the situation where a significant portion of the students in a class are unable to attend, e.g., widespread H1N1, the technology infrastructure currently in place allows for course instruction to shift quickly to a totally online environment. This holds true even in a situation where power outage or hardware damage renders campus-housed servers and networks totally inaccessible*. As long as students and instructors have access to the internet from any location, coursework can continue without interruption.
For each course taught at UMKC, a corresponding shell site is created on the
Blackboard server. Students enrolled in each class have access to the
corresponding Blackboard site, as do the instructors. Should the need arise,
course documents can quickly be uploaded to those sites for students to retrieve
and view. Built-in discussion boards, announcements, and an internal messaging
system would support student-faculty communication, and other Blackboard tools
would allow student assignment submission, administration of tests, and similar
course functions to continue online. Wimba Classroom, closely integrated with
Blackboard, permits students and faculty to “meet” online and conduct
synchronous classroom sessions, complete with audio, video, application sharing,
group web browsing, and a whiteboard.
* Blackboard’s application and database servers are housed in a remote location with backups stored offsite. Oracle Data Guard is used to provide a standby database in a third location distant from both the servers and the backup storage; this database can be switched into production at a moment’s notice. Users authenticate to Blackboard does not depend on Kansas City. The servers for Wimba Classroom can be utilized independently of Blackboard and are housed in Washington D.C.