higher education business continuity plan

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Best Practices in Business Continuity Planning for Higher Education

• by Tanecia Jackson on October 01, 2020
• last update on December 28, 2023
• Reading Time: 4 minutes

Higher education has taken the brunt of COVID-19 . As classes transitioned to the online medium and campuses emptied, universities were left to find new ways to improve current and future operations. Inevitably, business continuity for higher education institutions is now a much-discussed topic among university boards.

Playing the role of microcities, universities embrace a wide array of functions that are often deeply ingrained into local communities, the economy, and the healthcare system. Bearing that in mind, universities need to develop comprehensive business continuity plans to ensure their own short-and long-term welfare and the stakeholders’ .

Here are the best practices in business continuity planning for higher education institutions.

Prepare a Special Task Force

Establishing a special task force is critical to respond to any crisis effectively—the task force steps in when a disaster situation requires a swift and decisive response.

The task force should consist of multidisciplinary professionals. Distributed across specialist work teams, these professionals use their expertise to define the scope of a disaster and design a mitigating plan, both short- and long-term .

The work teams in a task force are led by an integration team, which manages and coordinates the work of those teams.

Example of work teams that could be included in a special task force:

• Finance and legal
• Faculty and staff
• Teaching and research
• External communications
• Internal communications
• Campus operations

Note : The exact combination of work teams depends on the size of the institution and the range of its operations.

Develop a Comprehensive Communication Plan

With multiple stakeholders involved in the operation of every university, a communication plan will help address the uncertainties that are bound to amount during a crisis.

It’s important to have regular communication with all stakeholders. A communication plan should have directions and steps for various scenarios (even those unlikely ones). The goal of every communication plan is to:

• Provide reassurance
• Give accurate information regarding the crisis
• Describe mitigating actions that the stakeholders should take

Note : Use secure and collaborative communication tools to help key decision-makers act swiftly. Consider video conferencing for a more engaging experience.

Account for Financial Issues

A plan of action regarding the financial situation of a higher education institution is one of the key elements of a business continuity plan.

You should develop both short- and long-term plans with potential financial consequences and solutions across different scenarios.

Specifically, you should prepare for:

• A COVID-19 outbreak on campus and the funds necessary to continue operations
• Stockpiling supplies (incl. services and equipment)
• IT cybersecurity needs to support social distancing while delivering online classes
• Potential staff reduction and the necessity to support critical staff

Collaborate and Partner with Other Institutions

The COVID-19 crisis has affected higher education institutions across the whole globe. This opens up a wide range of collaboration opportunities between institutions .

These collaboration efforts could include:

• Exchange of information to facilitate crisis response and risk management
• Creation of strategic partnerships to support initiatives (e.g., online learning)
• Repurposing campus space to aid the government in the fight with the crisis

Safeguard the Health and Well-Being of the Vulnerable

Some students might lack the resources to participate in online learning. The transition to online coursework could also result in a greater discrepancy between students who struggle academically and those performing well.

There can also be students for whom a return home is difficult (e.g., international students). Furthermore, some students may have on-campus employment, which can be disrupted if the campus shuts down.

Prepare a comprehensive assessment and response plan that addresses the well-being of the vulnerable. Also, consider the concerns of graduating seniors, faculty, and critical staff since they, too, are affected by the crisis.

Act Quickly but with a Future-Proof Mindset

While it’s critical to control the immediate effects, university leaders should also keep in mind that the short-term decisions will greatly impact long-term responses.

The key is to plan the resumption of in-person classes under different scenarios. For example, use work teams to prepare appropriate action decisions. These decisions should support the overarching strategy for future-proofing the university’s operations .

Analyze and reconsider how to deliver student experiences and approach admissions, testing, and graduation in the new reality.

Guard Values and Principles

During a crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic, where the disease originated in China, it’s important to have the capacity to deal with potential xenophobic responses on campus.

University leaders should actively dispel misinformation . The goal is to strengthen a university’s values and principles, for example, respect, tolerance, and understanding toward fellow students.

Be active in speaking out against stereotypes and discrimination and supporting affected groups.

Planning Business Continuity for Universities

When developing a business continuity plan for a university, keep in mind that the plan should contain guidance and information describing how to restore critical operations. However, the overarching goal of a business continuity plan is to fortify the university for the future. Long-term resilience can be achieved through a regular assessment of the plan and the introduction of necessary updates . Set aside time slots during board meetings for discussions on business continuity planning. Communicate with stakeholders using convenient and beneficial communication tools to increase collaboration.

Read: Your Guide to Creating Business Continuity Plans

Convene for Higher Education

Used by top universities worldwide, Convene is a board portal meeting and collaboration tool that allows higher education boards to lead and direct regardless of location effectively. Whether it’s to organize board or department meetings, send across curricula for approval, or gather feedback from colleagues, Convene has universities covered.

Learn how Convene supports business continuity for higher education institutions.

Tanecia is a current Chief Governance Officer at Convene with former experience working as a Cybersecurity Manager. She is a renowned advisor when it comes to corporate governance, board oversight, resource allocation, and risk management plans for organizations. In her work, she also helps shed light on strategies that can be done to ensure effective governance, while minimizing overall regulatory risk in the company’s cybersecurity projects.

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Develop a Business Continuity Plan for Higher Education

Streamline the traditional approach to make bcp development manageable and repeatable..

• Recent crises have increased executive awareness and internal pressure to create a business continuity plan (BCP).
• Higher education-driven regulations require evidence of sound business continuity practices.
• Customers demand their vendors provide evidence of a workable BCP prior to signing a contract.
• IT leaders, because of their cross-functional view and experience with incident management and DR, are often asked to lead BCP efforts.

Critical Insight

• BCP requires input from multiple departments with different and sometimes conflicting objectives. There are typically few, if any, dedicated resources for BCP, so it can't be a full-time, resource-intensive project.
• As an IT leader you have the skill set and organizational knowledge to lead a BCP project, but ultimately, business leaders need to own the BCP – they know their processes and their requirements to resume business operations better than anyone else.
• The traditional approach to BCP is a massive project that most organizations can’t execute without hiring a consultant. To execute BCP in-house, carve up the task into manageable pieces as outlined in this blueprint.

Impact and Result

• Implement a structured and repeatable process that you apply to one business unit at a time to keep BCP planning efforts manageable.
• Use the results of the pilot to identify gaps in your recovery plans and reduce overall continuity risk while continuing to assess specific risks as you repeat the process with additional business units.
• Enable business leaders to own the BCP going forward. Develop a template that the rest of the organization can use.
• Leverage BCP outcomes to refine IT DRP recovery objectives and achieve DRP-BCP alignment.

Develop a Business Continuity Plan for Higher Education Research & Tools

1. develop a business continuity plan for higher education phases 1-4 – a step-by-step document that walks you through the process to build bcp within the higher education industry..

Business continuity planning is a complex, interdepartmental project with multiple and sometimes conflicting objectives. Follow the guidelines in this blueprint to structure your process to streamline your efforts and stay on track.

2. Maturity Assessment and Business Impact Analysis – A structured tool to conduct and document a business impact analysis for your business continuity plan.

Use these tools to conduct a maturity assessment of your current BCP processes and do a business impact analysis to identify the gaps.

3. Process Workflows Examples – A best-of-breed template to help you build a clear, concise, and compelling strategy document for stakeholders.

The sample workflows help you establish steps, dependencies, and alternates for BCP. The tools contain multiple example workflows. Use the conventions in this tool or create your own to visually document business processes and track process requirements.

4. BCP Recovery Playbook and Roadmap – Provide additional details on BCP procedures and develop a project plan to reach your BCP goals.

Communication between the recovery teams is pivotal to make sure that BCP is conducted according to the plans. Leverage the tools and templates to make a communication plan and ensure that the improvement initiatives follow the best-practice guidelines.

Workshop: Develop a Business Continuity Plan for Higher Education

Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.

Module 1: Define BCP Scope, Objectives, and Stakeholders

The purpose.

Define BCP scope, objectives, and stakeholders.

Key Benefits Achieved

Prioritize BCP efforts and level-set scope with key stakeholders.

Assess current BCP maturity.

• BCP Maturity Scorecard: measure progress and identify gaps.

Identify key business processes to include in scope.

• Business process flowcharts: review, optimize, and knowledge-transfer processes.

Flowchart key business processes to Identify business processes, dependencies, and alternatives.

• Identify workarounds for common disruptions for day-to-day continuity.

Module 2: Define RTOs and RPOs Based on Your BIA

Define RTOs and RPOs based on your BIA.

Set recovery targets based on business impact, and illustrate the importance of BCP efforts via the impact of downtime.

Define an objective scoring scale to indicate different levels of impact.

• BCP Business Impact Analysis: objective scoring scale to assess cost, goodwill, compliance, and safety impacts.

Estimate the impact of downtime.

• Apply the scoring scale to estimate the impact of downtime on business processes.

Determine acceptable RTO/RPO targets for business processes based on business impact.

• Acceptable RTOs/RPOs to dictate recovery strategy.

Module 3: Create a Recovery Workflow

Create a recovery workflow.

Build an actionable, high-level recovery workflow that can be adapted to a variety of different scenarios.

Conduct a tabletop exercise to determine current recovery procedures.

• Recovery flow diagram – current and future state.
• Identify gaps and recovery risks.

Identify and prioritize projects to close gaps and mitigate recovery risks.

• Create a project roadmap to close gaps.

Evaluate options for command centers and alternate business locations (i.e. BC site).

• Evaluate requirements for alternate business sites.

Module 4: Extend the Results of the Pilot BCP and Implement Governance

Extend the results of the pilot BCP and implement governance.

Outline the actions required for the rest of your BCMS, and the required effort to complete those actions, based on the results of the pilot.

Summarize the accomplishments and required next steps to create an overall BCP.

• Pilot BCP Executive Presentation

Identify required BCM roles.

• Business Continuity Team Roles & Responsibilities

Create a plan to update and maintain your overall BCP.

• Maintenance plan and BCP templates to complete the relevant documentation (BC Policy, BCP Action Items, Recovery Workflow, etc.)

Analyst Perspective

A bcp touches every aspect of your organization, making it potentially the most complex project you'll take on. streamline this effort or you won't get far..

None of us needs to look very far to find a reason to have an effective business continuity plan (BCP).

From pandemics to natural disasters to supply chain disruptions to IT outages, there's no shortage of events that can disrupt your complex and interconnected business processes. How in the world can anyone build a plan to address all these threats?

Don't try to boil the ocean. Use these tactics to streamline your BCP project and stay on track:

• Focus on one business unit at a time. Keep the effort manageable, establish a repeatable process, and produce deliverables that provide a starting point for the rest of the organization.
• Don't start with an extensive risk analysis. It takes too long and at the end you'll still need a plan to resume business operations following a disruption. Rather than trying to predict what could cause a disruption, focus on how to recover.
• Keep your BCP documentation concise. Use flowcharts, checklists, and diagrams instead of traditional manuals.

No one can predict every possible disruption, but by following the guidance in this blueprint, you can build a flexible continuity plan that allows you to withstand the threats your organization may face.

Executive Summary

Info-tech insight.

As an IT leader, you have the skill set and organizational knowledge to lead a BCP project, but you must enable leaders to own their department's BCP practices and outputs . They know their processes and, therefore, their requirements to resume business operations better than anyone else.

Use this research to create business unit BCPs and structure your overall BCP

A business continuity plan (BCP) consists of separate but related sub-plans, as illustrated below. This blueprint enables you to

• Develop a BCP for a selected business unit (as a pilot project), and thereby establish a methodology that can be repeated for remaining business units.
• Through the BCP process, clarify requirements for an IT disaster recovery plan (DRP). Refer to Info-Tech's disaster recovery planning workshop for instructions on how to create an IT DRP.
• Implement ongoing business continuity management to govern BCP, DRP, and crisis management.

Overall Business Continuity Plan

IT Disaster Recovery Plan

A plan to restore IT application and infrastructure services following a disruption.

Info-Tech's Create a Right-Sized Disaster Recovery Plan blueprint provides a methodology for creating the IT DRP. Leverage this blueprint to validate and provide inputs for your IT DRP.

BCP for Each Business Unit

A set of plans to resume business processes for each business unit. This includes:

• Identifying business processes and dependencies.
• Defining an acceptable recovery timeline based on a business impact analysis.
• Creating a step-by-step recovery workflow.

Crisis Management Plan

A plan to manage a wide range of crises, from health and safety incidents to business disruptions to reputational damage.

Info-Tech's Implement Crisis Management Best Practices blueprint provides a framework for planning a response to any crisis, from health and safety incidents to reputational damage.

IT leaders asked to develop a BCP should start with an IT disaster recovery plan

It's a business continuity plan. Why should you start continuity planning with IT?

• IT services are a critical dependency for most business processes. Creating an IT DRP helps you mitigate a key risk to continuity quicker than it takes to complete your overall BCP, and you can then focus on other dependencies such as people, facilities, and suppliers.
• A BCP requires workarounds for IT failures. But it's difficult to plan workarounds without a clear understanding of the potential IT downtime and data loss. Your DRP will answer those questions, and without a DRP, BCP discussions can get bogged down in IT discussions. Think of payroll as an example: if downtime might be 24 hours, the business might simply wait for recovery; if downtime might be a week, waiting it out is not an option.
• As an IT manager, you can develop an IT DRP primarily with resources within your control. That makes it an easier starting point and puts IT in a better position to shift responsibility for BCP to business leaders (where it should reside) since essentially the IT portion is done.

Create a Right-Sized Disaster Recovery Plan today.

Business continuity management in higher education requires proactive planning

Three components of crisis management postsecondary institutes should consider:

Emergency planning This addresses the immediate response to the situation. It includes procedures and policies for effective response to chaotic situations such as natural disasters, security incidents, and student wellbeing and public health issues. The institution leads should ensure appropriate business continuity measurements, such as allocation of emergency response team, evacuation protocols, and communication plans, are in place.

Business continuity management BCM involves procedures to ensure that the institute will maintain its integrity while leaders are handling the situation. BCM includes identification of the critical systems, resources, and processes that help the institute sustain its critical operations. By enabling BCM, you will enable strategies and processes to minimize the potential impacts of disruptions.

Academic integrity The COVID-19 pandemic helped institutions realize the critical need for academic continuity planning, including the development of remote education platforms and contingency plans for exams, to provide seamless support for students and professors. Learning management platforms, content creation tools, collaboration solutions, and presentation platforms are a few examples of the tools necessary to enable academic institutes to run efficient business continuity.

Complexities within the higher education pose multiple challenges when driving an effective BCP

Technology dependency Education institutes are highly dependent on technology to fulfill teaching, learning, research, and administration requirements. It is crucial to ensure the availability and integrity of security, infrastructure, networks, databases, and servers. The presence of so much technology makes the whole business vulnerable to chaos and disruptions.

It's beyond technology While technology is crucial for effectively supporting students during a crisis, BCP strategies should also prepare for support mechanisms such as an efficient service desk for troubleshooting, online counseling services to address students' emotional needs, and online mentoring programs to assist students with an extra level of support, if the need arises.

Students' diverse technology skill set and engagement levels One challenge with BCP in higher education is that some students are not proficient in eLearning, while others are proficient enough yet less engaged than they would be in person. This challenge places a great deal of burden on educators to engage students.

Financial restrictions Financial restriction is a challenge most postsecondary institutes face. While this constraint often causes leadership to focus on other priorities, it is crucial to allocate resources to ensure a comprehensive BCP strategy.

Use-case uniqueness contributes to the complexity of implementing BCP in higher education

Universities require a tailored approach to bcp to tackle their distinct use cases.

Diverse groups Higher education institutes deal with diverse chaotic situations within departments and faculties, each with its own processes, dependencies, and technology. This diversity makes BCP fulfillment challenging.

Complexities within research sites Crisis management in research sites such as laboratories is very challenging and requires unique safety protocols. For instance, researchers must be physically in the lab, and remote platforms aren't useful in most situations. When researchers work on highly classified data, ensuring personnel, data, and student safety becomes a high priority.

Complex interdependencies Multiple facilities such as library resources, infrastructure technology, research technology, and administrative support are interconnected, making it difficult to separate these components.

Diverse engagement and communication requirements Within postsecondary institutes, three groups of people should be engaged: Staff, professors, and students. Leaders should understand the requirements of each group, get their input, and ensure their buy-in to BCP protocols. The variety of use cases and impacted people makes BCP challenging.

In this blueprint, we keep referring to business units. In the higher education context, depending on the sector, this can mean the department, faculty, or research site.

Modernize the BCP

If your bcp relies heavily on paper-based processes as workarounds, it's time to update your plan..

“Hi, it's the 1980s. We'd like our BCP back…”

Back when transactions were recorded on paper and then keyed into the mainframe system later, it was easier to revert to deskside processes. There is very little in the way of paper-based processes anymore, and as a result, it is increasingly difficult to resume business processes without IT.

Think about your own organization. What IT system(s) are absolutely critical to business operations? While you might be able to continue doing business without IT, this requires regular preparation and training. It's likely a completely offline process and won't be a viable workaround for long even if staff know how to do the work. If your data center and core systems are down, technology-enabled workarounds (such as collaboration via mobile technologies or cloud-based solutions) could help you weather the outage, and may be more flexible and adaptable for day-to-day work.

The bottom line: Technology is a critical dependency for business processes. Consider the role IT systems play as process dependencies and as workarounds as part of continuity planning.

Info-Tech's approach

The traditional approach to BCP takes too long and produces a plan that is difficult to use and maintain.

The Problem

You need to create a BCP but don't know where to start.

• BCP is being demanded more and more to comply with regulations, mitigate business risk, meet customer demands, and obtain insurance.
• IT leaders are often asked to lead BCP.

The Complication

A traditional BCP process takes longer to show value.

• Traditional consultants don't usually have an incentive to accelerate the process.
• At the same time, self-directed projects with no defined process go months without producing useful deliverables.
• The result is a dense manual that checks boxes but isn't maintainable or usable in a crisis.

The Info-Tech difference:

Use Info-Tech's methodology to right-size and streamline the process.

• Reduce required effort . Keep the work manageable and maintain momentum by focusing on one business unit at a time; allow that unit to own their BCP.
• Prioritize your effort . Evaluate the current state of your BCP to identify the steps that are most in need of attention.
• Get valuable results faster . Functional deliverables and insights from the first business unit's BCP can be leveraged by the entire organization (e.g. communication, assessment, and BC site strategies).

Expedite BCP development

Info-Tech's Approach to BCP:

• Start with one critical business unit to manage scope, establish a repeatable process, and generate deliverables that become a template for remaining business units.
• Resolve critical gaps as you identify them, generating early value and risk mitigation.
• Create concise, practical documentation to support recovery.

By comparison, a traditional BCP approach takes much longer to mitigate risk:

• An extensive, up-front commitment of time and resources before defining incident response plans and mitigating risk.
• A “big bang” approach that makes it difficult to predict the required resourcing and timelines for the project.

Project Overview: BCP

Phase 1: identify bcp maturity and document process dependencies.

Steps 1.1 Assess current BCP maturity 1.2 Establish the pilot BCP team 1.3 Identify business processes, dependencies, and alternatives

Tools and Templates BCP Business Impact Analysis Tool BCP Maturity Scorecard Pilot Project Charter Business Process Workflows Examples

Phase 2: Conduct a BIA to Determine Acceptable RTOs and RPOs

Steps 2.1 Define an objective impact scoring scale 2.2 Estimate the impact of downtime 2.3 Determine acceptable RTO/RPO targets

Tools and Templates BCP Business Impact Analysis Tool

Phase 3: Document the Recovery Workflow and Projects to Close Gaps

Steps 3.1 Determine current recovery procedures 3.2 Identify and prioritize projects to close gaps 3.3 Evaluate BC site and command center options

Tools and Templates BCP Business Impact Analysis Tool Tabletop Planning Template Recovery Workflow Examples BCP Project Roadmap

Phase 4: Extend the Results of the Pilot BCP and Implement Governance

Steps 4.1 Consolidate BCP pilot insights to support an overall BCP project plan 4.2 Outline a business continuity management (BCM) program 4.3 Test and maintain your BCP

Tools and Templates Results Presentation BCP Summary Business Continuity Teams and Roles

Blueprint deliverables

Each step of this blueprint is accompanied by supporting deliverables to help you accomplish your goals:

Insight summary

Focus less on risk and more on recovery.

Avoid focusing on risk and probability analysis to drive your continuity strategy. You never know what might disrupt your business, so develop a flexible plan to enable business resumption regardless of the event.

Small teams = good pilots

Choose a small team for your BCP pilot. Small teams are better at trialing new techniques and finding new ways to think about problems.

Calculate downtime impact

Develop and apply a scoring scale to develop a more-objective assessment of downtime impact for the organization. This will help you prioritize recovery.

It's not no, but rather not now…

You can't address all the organization's continuity challenges at once. Prioritize high-value, low-effort initiatives and create a long-term roadmap for the rest.

Show value now

Get to value quickly. Start with one business unit with continuity challenges, and a small, focused project team who can rapidly learn the methodology, identify continuity gaps, and define solutions that can also be leveraged by other departments right away.

Lightweight testing exercises

Outline recovery capabilities using lightweight, low risk tabletop planning exercises . Our research shows tabletop exercises increase confidence in recovery capabilities almost as much as live exercises, which carry much higher costs and risks.

Blueprint benefits

Demonstrate compliance with demands from regulators and customers

• Develop a plan that satisfies auditors, customers, and insurance providers who demand proof of a continuity plan.
• Demonstrate commitment to resilience by identifying gaps in current capabilities and projects to overcome those gaps.
• Empower business users to develop their plans and perform regular maintenance to ensure plans don't go stale.
• Establish a culture of business readiness and resilience.

Leverage your BCP to drive value (business benefits)

• Enable flexible, mobile, and adaptable business operations that can overcome disruptions large and small. This includes making it easier to work remotely in response to pandemics or facility disruptions.
• Clarify the risk of the status quo to business leaders so they can make informed decisions on where to invest in business continuity.
• Demonstrate to customers your ability to overcome disruptions and continue to deliver your services.

Info-Tech Advisory Services lead to measurable value

Info-Tech members told us they save an average of $44,522 and 23 days by working with an Info-Tech analyst on BCP.*

Why do members report value from analyst engagement?

• Expert advice on your specific situation to overcome obstacles and speed bumps.
• Structure the project and stay on track.
• Review project deliverables and ensure the process is applied properly.

Info-Tech analyst services: almost as awesome as puppies and kittens. * Based on client response data from Info-Tech's Measured Value Survey, following analyst advisory on BCP.

Info-Tech offers various levels of support to best suit your needs

DIY Toolkit "Our team has already made this critical project a priority, and we have the time and capability, but some guidance along the way would be helpful."

Guided Implementation "Our team knows that we need to fix a process, but we need assistance to determine where to focus. Some check-ins along the way would help keep us on track."

Workshop "We need to hit the ground running and get this project kicked off immediately. Our team has the ability to take this over once we get a framework and strategy in place."

Consulting "Our team does not have the time or the knowledge to take this project on. We need assistance through the entirety of this project."

Diagnostics and consistent frameworks are used throughout all four options.

Guided implementation, your trusted advisor is a call away..

A Guided Implementation (GI) is a series of calls with an Info-Tech analyst to help implement our best practices in your organization.

A typical GI is 8 to 12 calls over the course of four to six months.

What does a typical GI on this topic look like?

Workshop overview

Day 1: identify bcp maturity, key processes, and dependencies.

Activities 1.1 Assess current BCP maturity. 1.2 Identify key business processes to include in scope. 1.3 Create a flowchart for key business processes to identify business processes, dependencies, and alternatives.

Deliverables 1. Baseline BCP maturity status 2. Business process flowcharts 3. Business process dependencies and alternatives recorded in the BIA tool

Day 2: Conduct a BIA to Determine Acceptable RTOs and RPOs

Activities 2.1 Define an objective scoring scale to indicate different levels of impact. 2.2 Estimate the impact of a business disruption on cost, goodwill, compliance, and health & safety. 2.3 Determine acceptable RTOs/RPOs for selected business processes based on business impact.

Deliverables 1. Potential impact of a business disruption quantified for selected business processes 2. Business processes criticality and recovery priority defined 3. Acceptable RTOs/RPOs defined based on business impact

Day 3: Document the Current Recovery Workflow and Projects to Close Gaps

Activities 3.1 Review tabletop planning – what is it, how is it done? 3.2 Walk through a business disruption scenario to determine your current recovery timeline, RTO/RPO gaps, and risks to your ability to resume business operations. 3.3 Identify and prioritize projects to close RTO/RPO gaps and mitigate recovery risks.

Deliverables 1. Current-state recovery workflow and timeline 2. RTO/RPO gaps identified 3. BCP project roadmap to close gaps

Day 4: Identify Remaining BCP Documentation and Next Steps

Activities 4.1 Assign business continuity management (BCM) roles to govern BCP development and maintenance, as well as roles required to execute recovery. 4.2 Identify remaining documentation required for the pilot business unit and how to leverage the results to repeat the methodology for remaining business units. 4.3 Workshop review and wrap-up.

Deliverables 1. BCM roles and responsibilities defined 2. Workshop results deck; use this to communicate pilot results and next steps

Day 5: Next Steps and Wrap-Up (offsite)

Activities 5.1 Finalize deliverables for the workshop. 5.2 Set up review time for workshop outputs and to discuss next steps.

Deliverables 1. Finalized deliverables

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Identify BCP Maturity and Document Process Dependencies

Insights & Outcomes Define the scope for the BCP project: assess the current state of the plan, create a pilot project team and pilot project charter, and map the business processes that will be the focus of the pilot.

Participants BCP Coordinator, BCP Executive Sponsor, Pilot Business Unit Manager & Process SMEs

About Info-Tech

Info-Tech Research Group is the world’s fastest-growing information technology research and advisory company, proudly serving over 30,000 IT professionals.

We produce unbiased and highly relevant research to help CIOs and IT leaders make strategic, timely, and well-informed decisions. We partner closely with IT teams to provide everything they need, from actionable tools to analyst guidance, ensuring they deliver measurable results for their organizations.

What Is a Blueprint?

A blueprint is designed to be a roadmap, containing a methodology and the tools and templates you need to solve your IT problems.

Each blueprint can be accompanied by a Guided Implementation that provides you access to our world-class analysts to help you get through the project.

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Get the help you need in this 5-phase advisory process. You'll receive 5 touchpoints with our researchers, all included in your membership.

Guided Implementation 1: Scoping

• Call 1: Scope requirements, objectives, and stakeholders. Identify a pilot BCP project.

Guided Implementation 2: Business Processes and Dependencies

• Call 1: Assess current BCP maturity. Create business process workflows, dependencies, alternates, and workarounds.

Guided Implementation 3: Conduct a BIA

• Call 1: Create an impact scoring scale and conduct a BIA. Identify acceptable RTO and RPO.

Guided Implementation 4: Recovery Workflow

• Call 1: Create a recovery workflow based on tabletop planning.

Guided Implementation 5: Documentation & BCP Framework

• Call 1: Summarize the pilot results and plan next steps. Define roles and responsibilities. Make the case for a wider BCP program.

Frank Trovato

Andrew Sharp

Mahmoud Ramin

Contributors

• Dr. Bernard A. Jones, MBCI, CBCP, Berkeley College
• Kris Roberson, Disaster Recovery Analyst, Veterans United Home Loans
• Trevor Butler, General Manager of Information Technology, City of Lethbridge
• Robert Miller, Information Services Director, Witt/Kieffer

This content is exclusive to members.

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Search Code: 102718 Last Revised: September 8, 2023

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Business Continuity in Higher Education: A Simplified Guide to FEMA’s Recommendations

Why Business Continuity is Crucial for Higher Education

Navigating the complexities of modern threats, business continuity has become an indispensable aspect of higher education. From natural disasters to cyber-attacks, educational institutions are not immune to the myriad of threats that can disrupt operations. The stakes are high; a single event can jeopardize the safety of students, faculty, and staff, not to mention the financial and reputational toll on the institution.

This is where the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) steps in. 

FEMA provides a comprehensive “ Guide for Developing High-quality Emergency Operations Plans for Institutions of Higher Education ” to help educational organizations prepare for, respond to, and recover from emergencies. 

While these guidelines are invaluable, implementing them can be a complex and daunting task. 

Enter Regroup .

Our solutions are designed to simplify the intricacies of business continuity planning and management. With Regroup, higher education institutions can easily disseminate critical information, coordinate response efforts, and ensure the safety and well-being of their community.

By the end of this blog, you’ll have a clearer understanding of FEMA’s guidelines and how Regroup’s solutions can make implementing them a breeze.

Understanding FEMA’s Guidelines for Emergency Operations in Higher Ed

When it comes to emergency operations, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) sets the gold standard. Their comprehensive guidelines serve as a roadmap for higher education institutions to navigate the complex landscape of emergency preparedness and disaster recovery.

FEMA’s guidelines are a lifeline for organizations in the higher education sector. 

These guidelines provide a structured approach to: 

• Identifying vulnerabilities;
• Assessing risks; 
• Implementing proactive measures to mitigate the impact of unforeseen events. 

This is particularly crucial for organizations that house thousands of students, faculty, and staff, all of whom rely on the institution for their safety and well-being.

One of the key aspects of FEMA’s guidelines is the emphasis on disaster recovery. While the primary focus is often on immediate response, the guidelines also stress the importance of a well-thought-out recovery plan. This ensures not just the safety of the campus community during an emergency but also the quick resumption of normal operations afterward.

The guidelines cover a range of topics, from natural disasters like hurricanes and floods to human-made events such as cyber-attacks and acts of terrorism. They offer a multi-layered approach to emergency management, incorporating elements like communication systems, resource allocation, and coordination among various departments and external agencies.

An overview of the multi-layered approach that FEMA recommends for comprehensive emergency management in higher education settings:

• Natural Disasters : The guidelines for preparing for and responding to natural events like hurricanes, earthquakes, and floods includes risk assessments and resource allocation strategies.
• Human-made Events : Protocols for dealing with events such as cyber-attacks, acts of terrorism, and chemical spills. These guidelines focus on immediate response measures and long-term recovery plans.
• Communication Systems : Recommendations for establishing robust communication networks that can withstand various types of emergencies. This includes the use of social media, emergency alert systems, and two-way radios.
• Resource Allocation : Guidelines for the efficient distribution of resources like food, water, and medical supplies during an emergency. This also includes the mobilization of personnel and equipment.
• Inter-departmental Coordination : Strategies for ensuring seamless communication and collaboration among different departments within an organization, such as security, facilities management, and academic affairs.
• External Agency Collaboration : Protocols for coordinating with local, state, and federal agencies, as well as other organizations that can provide assistance during emergencies.
• Training and Drills : Recommendations for regular training sessions and emergency drills to prepare staff and students for various types of emergency scenarios.
• Data Protection and Recovery : Guidelines for safeguarding critical data and systems, with a focus on quick recovery in the event of cyber-attacks or other disruptions.
• Legal and Compliance : Information on adhering to federal and state laws regarding emergency preparedness and response, including the Clery Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
• Public Relations and Crisis Communication : Strategies for effectively communicating with the media, parents, and other stakeholders during and after an emergency.
• Psychological First Aid and Counseling : Guidelines for providing mental health support to students, faculty, and staff affected by an emergency.
• Post-Emergency Evaluation : Recommendations for conducting after-action reviews to assess the effectiveness of the emergency response and to update the business continuity plan accordingly.

In summary, FEMA’s guidelines offer a robust framework for emergency operations, tailored to meet the unique needs and challenges faced by higher education institutions. Adherence to these guidelines is not just a matter of compliance; it’s a commitment to the safety and security of the entire campus community.

The Six-Step Planning Process: A Deep Dive into Business Continuity in Higher Education

Creating a business continuity plan is a dynamic process that evolves with your institution. The planning process is a critical component of any business continuity strategy, and it usually involves six key steps:

Step 1: Risk Assessment

The first step in creating a business continuity plan is to identify potential risks and vulnerabilities that could disrupt operations. This could range from natural disasters to cyber threats.

Example : A university identifies that its campus is located in a flood-prone area. The risk assessment includes evaluating the likelihood of a flood event and its potential impact on campus facilities, including classrooms, dormitories, and administrative buildings.

Step 2: Business Impact Analysis

Once the risks are identified, the next step is to assess the impact these could have on your organization. This helps prioritize the areas that need immediate attention in your business continuity plan.

Example : The university conducts a business impact analysis to determine how a flood would affect various functions. They find that a flood could lead to the cancellation of classes, displacement of students living in dormitories, and loss of valuable research data.

Step 3: Strategy Development

Based on the risk assessment and business impact analysis, the next step is to develop strategies to mitigate those risks. This could involve backup systems, alternative communication channels, and emergency response teams.

Example : Strategies could include installing flood barriers, creating an emergency flood response team, and establishing off-site storage for critical research data.

Step 4: Plan Development

This is where the business continuity plan starts taking shape. All the strategies developed are documented, and protocols are established for each type of risk identified.

Example : The university documents its flood response strategy in its business continuity plan. This includes specific protocols for evacuating students, securing research labs, and shifting to online classes during flood events.

Step 5: Training and Testing

A business continuity plan is only as good as its execution. Therefore, training and testing are crucial. This involves running drills and simulations to ensure everyone knows their roles and responsibilities during an emergency.

Example : The university conducts a flood drill involving students, faculty, and emergency response teams. They also run a simulation to test the effectiveness of their off-site data storage and backup systems.

Step 6: Maintenance and Review

The final step is to regularly review and update the plan. This ensures that it remains relevant and effective, adapting to any changes in risks or organizational structure.

Example : After the drill, the university reviews the outcomes and identifies areas for improvement. They update the business continuity plan accordingly and schedule regular reviews and updates.

The business continuity plan is not just a paper, but a living, breathing strategy that requires ongoing attention and refinement. Its importance cannot be overstated; it serves as the backbone for ensuring the institution’s resilience and ability to recover from disruptions swiftly.

How Regroup Simplifies Business Continuity in Higher Ed

Navigating the complexities of business continuity in higher education can be a daunting task. 

That’s where Regroup comes in, offering a streamlined approach to management that simplifies the entire process. With its user-friendly interface and robust features, Regroup takes the guesswork out of emergency preparedness and response.

Regroup’s Role in Simplifying Business Continuity

Regroup’s platform is designed to make management of emergency situations more efficient and effective. The system allows for real-time communication, ensuring that everyone from faculty to students is on the same page during a crisis. This level of management not only streamlines the response but also minimizes the impact of any emergency on the educational process.

Management Features and Benefits

When it comes to management, Regroup offers a suite of features that are second to none. From automated alerts to detailed analytics, the platform provides the tools necessary for comprehensive emergency management. These features enable higher education institutions to allocate resources more efficiently, communicate more effectively, and ultimately, ensure the safety and well-being of everyone involved.

Resilience Through Regroup’s Solutions

In the face of an emergency, resilience is key. Regroup’s platform is built to adapt to various types of crises, from natural disasters to cyber-attacks. This adaptability ensures that institutions can bounce back quickly, minimizing downtime and disruption. The resilience offered by Regroup’s solutions also extends to data protection, with state-of-the-art encryption and backup systems in place.

Practical Examples: Implementing FEMA Guidelines and Functions with Regroup

Emergency preparedness and effective communication hold paramount importance in higher education. To illustrate this, we’ve gathered real-world examples showcasing how Regroup Mass Notifications has aided various educational institutions in overcoming challenges related to FEMA guidelines for emergency operations and disaster recovery.

Challenge: Pandemic Communication at Emily Carr University of Art + Design

At Emily Carr University, Regroup played a pivotal role in streamlining communication during the COVID-19 pandemic. The platform’s ability to send notifications via multiple channels ensured that students and staff were always informed about the latest updates and safety measures. Source : Emily Carr University Case Study (Page 2)

Challenge: Reaching a Diverse Community at Regis University

Regis University faced challenges in reaching its diverse community during emergencies. Regroup’s platform provided a solution that allowed for quick and efficient communication. The university now uses Regroup for both emergency alerts and routine notifications, ensuring that everyone stays informed. Source : Regis University Case Study (Page 2)

Challenge: Weather-Related Emergencies at Spartanburg Community College

Spartanburg Community College needed a reliable system for weather-related emergencies. Regroup’s platform not only met this need but also provided additional features like two-way communication, which has been crucial for the college’s emergency response strategy. Source : Spartanburg Community College Case Study (Page 2)

Challenge: Tornado Alerts at Southwestern University

Located in a tornado-prone region, Southwestern University required a communication tool that could alert those on campus of potential weather threats quickly. Regroup was chosen for its quick post-programmed templates for fast, accurate messaging and its robust reporting features. Source : Southwestern University Case Study (Page 1)

By addressing the unique challenges faced by each institution, Regroup Mass Notifications has proven to be an invaluable asset in emergency operations and disaster recovery. Its versatility and reliability make it the go-to solution for educational institutions looking to keep their communities safe and informed.

The Future of Business Continuity in Higher Education Organizations

As we’ve explored, business continuity is not just a buzzword but a lifeline for higher education institutions. With the ever-present risk of natural and human-made disasters, having a robust business continuity plan is no longer optional—it’s a necessity.

The future of higher education is intertwined with advancements in technology and policy changes. As we move forward, the role of solutions like Regroup will become even more integral in ensuring that educational institutions are not just surviving but thriving in the face of adversity.

Resilience is the cornerstone of any successful business continuity strategy. It’s not just about bouncing back; it’s about bouncing forward, better prepared and more robust than before. As we look to the future, the focus will be on creating more resilient systems that not only withstand disruptions but also adapt and grow stronger.

Take Action Now: Secure Your Institution’s Future with Regroup

Don’t wait for a crisis to strike. Take the first step in fortifying your institution’s resilience and operational continuity today. Click here to learn more about how Regroup can tailor a business continuity solution that meets your unique needs.

The Concept of Business Continuity

Q: What is the concept of business continuity?

A: Business continuity is focused on defining how business operations should function under abnormal circumstances during a crisis. It involves being prepared and having a plan in place to ensure that your business can continue to operate no matter what challenges you face.

The Role of Disaster Recovery

Q: How does disaster recovery relate to business continuity?

A: Disaster recovery is the aspect of business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) which focuses primarily on accessing data easily following a disaster. This includes immediate response to a disaster and continues until regular operations can be resumed. It safeguards your data, allowing you to regenerate your systems and get back on track.

Synergy Between Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery

Q: What is the synergy between business continuity and disaster recovery?

A: Both business continuity and disaster recovery deal with preparation for, and response to, situations that threaten to disrupt normal business operations. However, they cover different aspects and therefore require different approaches. Disaster recovery is the aspect of business continuity planning and concentrates on accessing data easily following a disaster. This includes immediate response to a disaster and continues until regular operations can be resumed. It safeguards your data, allowing you to regenerate your systems and get back on track. They are closely interlinked and hold equal importance in any business organization.

Business Continuity Training

Q: What is business continuity training?

A: Business continuity training is a session that educates the team on the processes and resources needed to maintain operations during a disruption. It’s a ready solution for organizations to ensure they are prepared for any event.

The Importance of Planning

Q: Why is planning crucial in business continuity?

A: Planning is the step that helps you prepare for various disasters and events. It involves creating a business continuity plan that outlines the strategy and actions your organization will take to ensure smooth operations and services during and after a crisis.

Crisis Management

Q: What is crisis management?

A: Crisis management is a subset of business continuity that focuses on handling the immediate fallout of a crisis or disaster. It includes leadership roles and is often integrated with broader business continuity planning and disaster recovery processes.

The Role of Google and HPE in Business Continuity

Q: How do Google and HPE contribute to business continuity?

A: While not directly related to business continuity, platforms like Google can offer cloud-based solutions that aid in data recovery. HPE (Hewlett Packard Enterprise) provides edge computing solutions that can be crucial in disaster recovery.

The Importance of News Updates

Q: How important are news updates during a crisis?

A: Staying updated with news during a crisis is essential for real-time information, which can be crucial for decision-making and ensuring the safety of your organization.

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Building Bridges in Higher Education Business Continuity

March 31, 2022 by Sahara Shrestha

Business continuity helps organize a business’ response to disruptions and emergencies But business continuity programs don’t come together as easily as that statement does, and this is especially true for larger organizations like colleges and universities.

The best way to build a successful business continuity program, especially for the planners in higher education , is by creating a collaborative environment. Having a collaborative program can really benefit a business continuity program and a good business continuity program should be a synergistic effort amongst many departments.

A partnership between the continuity planner on campus internal departments, and external entities generates the collaborative approach needed for an efficient business continuity management program.

Creating Business Continuity Plan

The COVID-19 crisis has been a perfect stage for demonstrating the value of a strong continuity program. The pandemic forced all colleges and universities to radically change the shape and scope of operations, and adapting was a collective effort between all departments. Continuity planning played a big role in how smooth that transition was for many, putting a focus on short-term planning and setting a long-term planning goal.

The business continuity plans (BCP) guide the restoration of normal day-to-day functions when crises threaten to upend operations. One BCP can’t cover all operations across all departments, however. Departments, especially in higher education, have unique operations and needs, and a general BCP can’t capture all of these nuances. A continuity planner can’t do all the lifting at a higher education institution.

Collaboration allows a business continuity program to thrive, and institutions can bring in ideas, processes, and platforms to facilitate that piece of the operation.

Ingraining Collaboration

Higher education institutions have many departments and collaboration between all departments is crucial during a crisis. Continuity planning is the same, and collaboration should be a central point in the thinking, exercises, and technology used for business continuity.

Continuity planners and their institutions should socialize the idea of a team-based planning approach to make the process go smoothly. Everyone at an organization benefits from strong continuity planning, and that’s exactly how the idea can be sold. Continuity keeps operations going even when it seems impossible, and the value in that is easy to see.

The process of planning needs work for the people who are putting their time into the effort. Technology is the key to making that a reality. Moving on from paper and spreadsheets immediately pushes a more open program out to other departments, one that can seamlessly work with them and accurately capture their operations within plans.

Expanding the role of technology can make a program even more efficient and bake collaboration into the process. The right platforms can automatically push escalations and ensure departments across campus participate, for example. To build a truly collaborative business continuity program, something has to make planning widely accessible, and technology can fill that gap.

Collaboration and Business Continuity

Business continuity programs don’t work if they leave departments out of the process. For colleges and universities, this statement is especially true. Fortunately, collaboration can quickly plant itself into the operation through a change in thinking, exercises, and technology.

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Business Continuity in Education & Acing Your School’s Disaster Response

• February 10, 2023

Imagine that you’re a school administrator finishing up a busy day of meetings with board members, reviewing curriculum changes, and approving facilities plans. As you start to shut down your computer, a message appears. Your systems have been hacked, exposing the data of thousands of students, faculty, and staff, and the attackers are demanding a staggering ransom. While this scenario might seem farfetched, it’s become reality for many school leaders around the world, and it’s the reason why business continuity in education has never been more important.

To establish a solid system of business continuity, academic institutions must first understand why it’s needed. In this article, we’ll explore the types of threats schools face and explain why a business continuity plan is one of the strongest tools you can employ against them.

Why Education Is a Target for Cyberattacks

Let’s begin with ransomware, which is one of the most dominant threats to every school. Modern cyber-criminals have good reasons for setting their sights on the education sector. Schools have not only a moral obligation but also a legal responsibility to protect student data. With accounting systems, student records, payroll, and financial data all at risk, hackers are willing to bet that schools will be willing to put up a substantial payment to restore their data.

Recent history has shown that schools will indeed pay when they feel it’s necessary. In 2021, a school district in San Antonio, Texas, paid more than half a million dollars to prevent hackers from releasing sensitive data. The district has since faced significant criticism, but it’s far from the first academic institution to make a desperate choice, and it’s unlikely to be the last.

Types of Threats in Education

Ransomware is only one part of the picture.

At a time when everything is stored digitally, data in higher education has become incredibly valuable, and the risks have grown in kind. From community colleges to elite private universities, all schools need to be prepared for a wide variety of adverse situations, including:

• Malware attacks and viruses
• Human errors like accidental file deletion
• Phishing attacks
• Misconfigured data migrations or overwrites
• Hardware failures
• Application crashes

Additionally, there’s the risk of physical damage to infrastructure through events like fires, floods, and tornadoes, which pose a hazard not only to your data but also to students, staff, and visitors.

All of these concerns should inform your institution’s business continuity planning. Weaknesses in any one area could spell disaster for an ill-prepared university.

Why Business Continuity in Education Is Essential

Whether a school experiences a cyber-attack or a natural disaster, the consequences can be far-reaching. Business continuity planning helps protect academic institutions from significant hardships in an increasingly more threatening landscape.

Ransom Attacks

Colleges and schools across the country have experienced a surge in ransomware attacks in recent years. While not every school has agreed to meet the attackers’ demands, many find themselves feeling pressured to pay in order to protect and restore their data.

Consider these alarming statistics from a recent study conducted by Sophos :

• 66% of higher education institutions experienced a ransomware attack in 2021 compared to 44% in 2020.
• 50% of higher education organizations paid ransom demands to restore their data, but only 2% recovered all their data after paying.
• Recovery rates for education are slow, with 9% of organizations saying that their recovery periods ranged between 3 and 6 months.

These statistics represent the real-life experiences of schools throughout the United States that have suffered as a result of ransomware. For instance, in the summer of 2022, the Cedar Rapids school district paid an undisclosed ransom to prevent hackers from releasing stolen data. Public school districts are notoriously underfunded, and ransomware attacks can put a significant burden on their budgets and on local taxpayers.

Ransomware attacks on colleges often operate on a larger scale. In 2021, a massive cyberattack affected hundreds of organizations , including California State University, Stanford University’s School of Medicine, and Yeshiva University in New York City. The hackers in this case stole private information from students, faculty, and staff, and in some cases shared screenshots of private data online. These hacks can cause schools long-lasting reputational damage and put them at risk of regulatory penalties.

Experts warn that college ransomware attacks are on the rise as hackers deploy more targeted attacks in hopes of securing larger ransom payments. In 2022, 44 universities and colleges reported experiencing ransomware attacks, and this number likely only represents a fraction of the actual incidents. Many organizations never report cyber-attacks and attempt to resolve them quietly without the public’s knowledge to avoid damage to their reputation.

Closure Risks

In late 2021, Lincoln College in Illinois received a ransom note stating that school administrators no longer had access to student enrollment, admissions, and fundraising data. The college paid a ransom through its cyber insurance policy, but doing so didn’t grant staff immediate access to their files. Instead, they struggled for months to fully recover. Ultimately, as a result of the attack, they permanently  closed their doors in May 2022 .

Lincoln College isn’t alone. A total of 48 colleges closed in 2022 , a notable uptick from 35 colleges in 2021. The closures are a result of a combination of factors, including the COVID-19 pandemic, cyber-attacks, reduced enrollment, and lost funding. Experts anticipate that closures will continue to rise, particularly among small schools that serve specific student populations. These schools, which tend to enroll fewer than 1,000 students, are the most at risk of being shuttered by an unexpected disaster.

A 2020 study by U3 Advisors found that the majority of colleges have increasing debt levels and decreasing revenues, which places them in an especially vulnerable position. The study also revealed that approximately 560 schools in higher education are at serious risk of closure or consolidation within the next several years even without taking into account the impact of COVID-19.

Even a single ransomware attack or extended period of downtime could be enough to force a small college to permanently close its doors, which is why schools of every size need to take continuity planning seriously.

How to Create a Business Continuity Plan for Colleges

Colleges and universities must have detailed plans for preventing, responding to, and recovering from a multitude of disaster scenarios. The foundation of this planning is a  business continuity plan (BCP). A BCP for colleges is much like the kind you would create for any other organization. It’s a comprehensive document that outlines all the systems and protocols for mitigating the impact of a disruption.

Consider Departmental Specifics

At a college, some departments may require their own specific continuity planning. For example, Alabama Crimson Tide’s multimillion-dollar football program may have completely different continuity objectives than its admissions department. However, even when department-specific plans are in place, there should still be a single college-wide BCP that provides a continuity framework for all other units to follow.

Incorporate Key Categories

A BCP is often a lengthy document that encompasses every aspect of disaster prevention and response. While every BCP should be developed according to the specific needs of the institution, these are some of the core categories that should be included in every plan:

• Plan objectives:  Identify what the plan aims to achieve and what its areas of focus are. You may need separate plans for disaster planning and IT-specific concerns.
• Key contacts : Establish who wrote the plan, who maintains it, and which stakeholders to inform first when it’s time to activate your recovery plans.
• Risks : Conduct an assessment of all likely disaster situations that pose a threat to a university’s operations, systems, or people.
• Impact : Analyze how each risk will negatively impact the organization.
• Prevention : Describe implemented systems and protocols for preventing disruptions from occurring.
• Response : Detail immediate steps for mitigating a disaster situation, assessing the damage, and getting people to safety.
• Recovery : List the procedures for fully restoring systems and operations.
• Contingencies : Compile a list of secondary resources, equipment, or locations that staff can utilize if primary means are destroyed or inaccessible.
• Communication : Outline how recovery personnel will remain in contact and communicate important status updates to all affected parties, including students, staff, parents, and visitors.
• Recommendations : Suggest improvements and solutions for weaknesses that your team has identified in the existing continuity planning.
• Plan review schedule : Create a timeline for reviewing the plan and making updates on a regular basis throughout the year.

Each of these categories serves a unique purpose within your BCP and allows you to develop the best possible system for protection and recovery. The risk assessment and impact analysis are arguably the most important components of a business continuity plan. Without them, you’ll never truly know which disaster scenarios to prepare for or how they would disrupt the school. Let’s dig a little deeper into these two categories.

Assess the Risks

It might seem logical to assume that all colleges face the same risks, but it’s critical for each institution to conduct an individual, specific assessment. While many institutions share the same common risk types, such as cyberattacks and power outages, some schools are naturally more prone to experience certain disruptions than others.

For example, schools located along the southeastern U.S. coastline will be more at risk of hurricanes, while universities in southern California will be more at risk of earthquakes. Other types of threats may seem more benign, but they can still cause significant disruptions. Consider large-scale political demonstrations and student sit-ins and how they might affect your school’s ability to operate. Each school will have its own unique risks, which is why it’s important to assess them all individually.

Understand the Impact

An impact analysis helps a higher education institution understand exactly how each threat would negatively affect operations. Negative outcomes can manifest in some ways that are obvious and others that are more unexpected. These are some of the most common impacts that your BCP should address:

• Anticipated length of the outage or interruption
• Cost of downtime, idle staff, and wages
• Cost of recovery and repairs
• Effects on classes, enrollment, and other operations
• Long-term effects on school funding and reputation

A thorough impact analysis will consider all these factors and how they translate into actual monetary costs.

Regardless of whether a university is public, private, for-profit, or non-profit, continuity planning is a matter of survival. Like any organization, schools must focus on continuity and the bottom line. A failure to understand the impact of a major disaster could spell doom, especially for an already struggling college.

How to Reduce Damage from Disasters

Schools may be facing unprecedented threats on multiple fronts, but there are ways to minimize the risks at your institution. Taking some fundamental steps will lower the chance that the effects will be insurmountable when a disaster arrives.

Perform Frequent Data Backups

When it comes to protecting your school’s data, backups have a vital role to play. Without them, institutions leave themselves open to the risk of prolonged downtime when data loss inevitably happens. Data loss and downtime are costly , often to the tune of millions of dollars, and higher education organizations have a lot at stake.

Consider the impact of a ransomware attack that blocks access to all student applications and records within an admissions department or the loss of financial aid applications and award statuses. Even a single accounting spreadsheet that somebody accidentally deletes can derail an entire department for days.

A recent study found that education institutions lost $3.56 billion to downtime caused by ransomware in 2021. The longer this downtime lasts, the more expensive it becomes. Using a reliable data backup solution  helps ensure that you can restore your data and get systems back up and running as quickly as possible. With high-quality data backup services, schools can also back up their files every few minutes to prevent gaps in their data restoration.

Prepare for Natural Disasters

Natural disasters pose a risk to both people and IT systems.

In preparation for a hurricane or blizzard, schools often cancel classes and close administrative offices. While this itself is an operational disruption, it’s also smart planning. Closing campuses leading up to a weather event ensures the safety of staff and students by allowing them to stay home or evacuate.

Behind the scenes, schools also take other precautions. In the event of a hurricane, for example, colleges face the risk of severe flooding and the potential for damage to IT infrastructure. They can keep their critical data secure by storing backups off-site, away from the physical threat of the storm, and using hybrid cloud backups . These backups store data in two locations: on campus for the fastest possible recovery speeds and in the cloud for added protection against on-site events.

Plan for Degraded Service in Addition to Full Recovery

Keep in mind that instant recovery from a major disaster is an unrealistic goal for any school, no matter how prepared. Your continuity planning needs to outline how critical functions should continue at a degraded service level.

First, identify which operations are most vital. In other words, determine which functions cannot be disrupted under any circumstances. Then identify what’s needed to keep those operations running at a minimum level, such as technology, equipment, personnel, and electricity.

Each operation, and indeed each unit of the college, will have its own requirements. To make full recovery a reality, you must have proper planning to keep these essential functions active while your systems are impaired.

Quickly Initiate Emergency Responses

The moments immediately following a disaster will almost always dictate the speed and success of the recovery. If steps aren’t taken quickly to assess the situation and mitigate the damage, then recovery efforts will stretch out longer. Schools with solid business continuity planning can activate disaster-response protocols right away, which substantially increases the odds of a full recovery.

Effectively responding to various types of disasters is challenging without a detailed emergency response plan. Designated recovery teams should know exactly what to do after a disruption, whether it’s people-focused (i.e. seeking safety for students) or IT-related (i.e. restoring a backup after data loss).

Take Advantage of Business Continuity Resources and Tools

Schools play a central role in students’ academic and social development, and business continuity is just one piece of a complex puzzle that ensures students receive the best possible experience in a safe environment free of disruptions or delays. If your school needs to implement strong continuity planning and systems, the experts at Invenio IT are happy to help.

Looking for a better data backup solution to protect student and staff information?  Request a free demo  of advanced data backup solutions that can protect against data loss, ransomware, and downtime. Or reach out to our business continuity team to learn more about disaster recovery and creating a BCP that works best for your school.

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Business Continuity: How Solid Is Higher Ed’s Plan B?

Ricky is editorial director for the CDW family of Tech magazines. He's a writer, technology enthusiast, social media lover and all-around digital guy.

While no one expects higher education to have a crystal ball and predict the future, IT and administrative leaders must be prepared for worst-case scenarios. Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic revealed that while many colleges had some business continuity plans in place, the formality and maturity of those plans left much to be desired.

In an analysis of higher ed’s preparedness following COVID-19, Susan Grajek, vice president of communities and research at EDUCAUSE, and D. Christopher Brooks, director of research for the EDUCAUSE Center for Analysis and Research, found that “only 42 percent of institutions have a formal IT business continuity plan that includes the policies, resources, and procedures necessary to enable the continuation or speedy recovery of vital technology infrastructure and systems and of normal business operations following a natural or human-induced disaster.”

MORE ON EDTECH:  How University Faculty Embraced the Remote Learning Shift.

The main takeaway from COVID-19 is that higher education has to be prepared to shift at a moment’s notice to its Plan B. If your college or university hasn’t focused on world-changing “what if” business continuity scenarios before, you must start now.

To get started down a path toward better business continuity, here’s a list of the most common best practices for higher ed institutions and their IT staff, according to EDUCAUSE’s IT Business Continuity maturity index:

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Business continuity at the university of iowa.

Attention KualiReady Plan Managers: Please make sure all KualiReady plans are up-to-date and have been marked “Complete”. If you need any assistance updating your plan's status please contact Risk Management at [email protected] . 

For purposes of planning at the University of Iowa,  business continuity  is defined as the continuity of critical functions following an incident that overwhelms normal everyday operations. Continuity planning is a separate, though complementary, activity from  disaster recovery , which historically applied to information technologies related activities. Continuity planning is also distinguished from  emergency preparedness , which focuses on immediate response efforts to protect human life and property. Business continuity can be thought of as the big picture, with some details, that can be documented prior to a disaster to ensure that the University of Iowa can continue to perform all operations necessary to meet its threefold mission of education, research and service. In order to assist departments in creating flexible business continuity plans, the University of Iowa has a subscription to  Kuali Ready .

If you would like to view the recording of the Kuali Ready Training from March 13, 2020 please contact Risk Management at  [email protected] . 

Business Continuity Planning Tool, Kuali Ready

Kuali Ready is a continuity planning tool originally developed by the University of California at Berkeley specifically for use at institutions of higher learning. Kuali Ready, allows units to easily create departmental continuity of operations plans, which empower departments to continue mission-critical functions when faced with adverse events. The application incorporates planning and emergency preparedness best practices, while focusing on the unique business operations of higher education. This UI Continuity Planning Tool is accessible to The University of Iowa community through the following link:   https://uiowa.kuali.co/ready

There are some great new design features which went live on December 1st, 2016. Departments will now be able to navigate their department’s plan, add document attachments, easily create PDFs and more! To access the redesigned and more user friendly UI Continuity Planning Tool, Kuali Ready please use the following link:  https://uiowa.kuali.co/ready . If you have any questions about accessing or using the UI Continuity Planning Tool, Kuali Ready, please do not hesitate to contact the Department of Risk Management at  [email protected] . 

Business Continuity Goals

• Reduce disruption to normal operations following a disaster by conducting education and planning in advance.
• Increase knowledge of institutional interdependencies and reliance on shared resources.
• Increase rapid decision making abilities at both the departmental and institutional level during and immediately following a disaster.
• UI potential losses could be human life loss or bodily injury; short or long-term research; academic interruptions (suspended classes); or financial revenue from a multitude of sources (athletic events, performances, etc.).
• Cross-training of individuals to ensure personnel coverage for critical functions
• Off-site back-ups and/or separation of risks
• Contracting and purchasing options where other academic institutions may be able to temporarily remotely support UI functions
• Plan to move select personnel to an alternate facility following a disaster
• Designate who can work from home during a disaster and who must be available at assigned physical locations
• Protect institutional reputation by demonstrating a commitment to uphold The University of Iowa's tripartite missions of education, research and service.
• Discover and eliminate errors such as faulty assumptions before they cause loss of resources.
• Recognize the need for written documentation of policies and processes, thereby reducing reliance on key individuals who may be unavailable during or following an incident.

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How IT principles of disaster recovery and business continuity planning provide a powerful model for higher education.

Technology without compromise.

I’ve been very fortunate to work with inspiring thought leaders across various industries within the enterprise software space, supporting incredibly knowledgeable customers with demanding requirements. Each new sector I encountered surfaced with unique challenges to overcome, bringing with it a tremendous opportunity to learn and adopt best practices to add value to the next industry I met on my journey. My experience within the IT space was no exception.

Professionals in IT use terms such as  resilience  and  fault-tolerance . They regularly measure and report on  uptime  and  service levels , working tirelessly to evolve and support the technology infrastructure that their organizations rely on to conduct business and deliver on their commitment to their customers. While I learned a lot from these teams, what has taken root as a guiding principle for enterprise software is what I now refer to as  Technology Without Compromise : Deliver the best of what technology can offer, without compromising strict standards of reliability, security, auditability, privacy, and data recovery in the case of unforeseen events. As a vendor, this is documented more formally in a  Business Continuity Plan  encompassing supported policies, disaster recovery plans and procedures, and global standards, delivered as a package to IT partners at customer sites, to help them understand how the service they rely on will be there when they need it.

Recently, we submitted our  Business Continuity Plan  to one of our customers to support the procedures and guidelines that make up the Academic Continuity Plan for their university. As we walked through the details with their IT team, it made me think; do our customers have the support they need to build their Academic Continuity Plans? What can we do to help them share and learn from best practices among their peers within the Higher Education community?

ACADEMIC CONTINUITY

Much like their counterparts in commercial enterprises, academic institutions take great care in ensuring they can deliver the services their customers (students, faculty, and staff) depend on continuously. An extended disruption can cause a multitude of problems for the institution, including reputational impact and general dissatisfaction if students cannot complete their degrees or prerequisite courses as planned, causing other cascading financial, employment, and academic planning impacts.

There is also the risk of considerable financial impact to the institution itself if students disengage and are no longer enrolled due to the disruption in Academic Services. With almost half of the revenue for public higher education coming from student tuition, it is imperative that students remain enrolled.

When preparing a Continuity Plan, whether it is for Business or Academics, ensuring the safety of the individuals impacted is paramount. As in any Disaster Recovery scenario, once personal safety is ensured, lines of communication recovered and restored, impact and damage assessed, the path back to ‘normal’ operation is on everyone’s mind. While the full restoration of services could be a long journey, reducing the impact of the disruption can mitigate some of the adverse effects on the institution, its students, faculty, and staff.

Here at DigitalEd, we initiate our Business Continuity Plan for anything that causes an extended disruption of services. As we communicate the results of our Impact and Damage Assessment of the service disruption to our customers, our teams work on recovery and restoration activities, executing against our documented priorities, and engage with our partners to either mitigate the impact of the service disruption, or find a path to an alternative quickly. In either case, the priority after all safety and security precautions are confirmed, is to restore the value our service provides our customer.

Can we mirror these basic principles when considering Academic Continuity? Sure we can! In fact, that is the approach many of our partners have taken, modelling the structure of their Continuity Plans to long-standing  Disaster Recovery paradigms adopted from IT professionals .

The scope of your Academic Continuity Plan can evolve as you develop your ecosystem of service partners, and establish a global understanding of essential services across the academic institution. Generally, the services you prioritize for continuity are determined by the outcome of a  Continuity Impact Analysis  exercise, where you collaborate with your stakeholders to decide what services should be included to mitigate the negative impact of a disruption to the academic experience.

MÖBIUS CUSTOMER STORIES

Our customers have used variations of these principles when faced with the challenge of ensuring continuous delivery of education for their students. They have found success under extreme circumstances such as school closings due to natural disasters and globally imposed quarantines, but also in the more localized scenarios where students are unable to take part in their education in person but do not want to fall behind and impact their academic progress.

When the  University of Canterbury  was impacted by a 6.3 magnitude earthquake in Christchurch, they faced a dramatic loss of 25% of its first-year students and 30% of their international students. 4  Within the Mathematics department, the university used Möbius to offer the full academic program for their students, aiming to avoid any disruption to their classes and offer academic continuity to these students.

A more recent example comes from ISU Mongolia, where students used Möbius from home as a result of COVID-19 precautionary measures: “Recently our school closed due to the coronavirus spread in China. We started doing online schooling for the last 2 weeks. It works perfectly with my students.” B. Yadamsuren, ISU Mongolia.  Note: Further to the current global COVID-19 crisis, the   Online Learning Consortium   has provided guidance for the academic community. 5

The University of Waterloo has taken a different approach to Academic Continuity, enabling the infrastructure and processes for online learning continuously, and incorporating continuity principles into their standard curriculum, wherever possible. With the students participating in the Co-operative Education  program at the university, they are offered the opportunity to continue taking courses while on their work terms, continuing to fulfill academic requirements, taking prerequisites, or participating in classes that may not be offered when they are scheduled to return to campus after their work term is complete.

What these schools and many like them have in common, is that they are considering various scenarios that may constitute academic disruption, and planning for these possibilities as part of the value they offer their students, making continuity of the academic experience a critical component of the service they provide.

LOOKING TO THE FUTURE

We have learned a lot from our customers, and continue to evolve our guiding principles to align with their needs and priorities. Our role within the greater education technology ecosystem is as a partner and enabler, allowing our customers to open up learning to their students from anywhere, on any device, with the flexibility to move payloads to maintain service levels when the circumstances call for it. Our multi-cloud infrastructure enables us to deploy instances globally, and we have further leveraged other cloud-native technologies for service resilience and fault-tolerance, such as automatic migration to other cloud locations and environments in the event of an extended outage, if that becomes necessary.

If you and your team have not yet established an Academic Continuity Plan, chances are your colleagues in IT have a great starting point for you to consider – you’re likely not as far away as you think! You may find that they have general provisions for access to services in the event of a disruption that students, faculty, and staff depend on, that go beyond emergency and safety alone. I also suggest you look to your peers for inspiration; Pace University , the University of Oregon , and  Cornell University are just three of the many institutions that have published their plans online, and offer different perspectives on how to approach Academic Continuity Planning.

Ask us how our current customers use Möbius as part of their continuity strategy, and how we can help you build and support your Academic Continuity Plan.

• https://www.umass.edu/emergency/sites/default/files/UMass%20Amherst%20Guide%20to%20Academic%20Continuity%20Planning%20121814.pdf
• https://medium.com/kuali-ready/the-benefits-of-continuity-planning-for-higher-education-691027698963
• https://www.pace.edu/security-emergency-management/emergency-procedures/business-continuity-planning
• http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/5726614/Canterbury-Uni-invites-staff-to-resign
• https://onlinelearningconsortium.org/response-from-olc-qm-upcea-and-wcet-regarding-the-coronavirus-covid-19/

The Importance of Business Continuity Planning in Higher-Ed

Continuity planning is crucial in determining the survival of a business. Whether it is a wide scale natural disaster or a smaller challenge like an hour-long power outage, unexpected events are bound to happen — and no matter the scale, they will have at least some form of impact on a business. Continuity planning is not about preventing these events, rather preparing for them so that, when they happen, business operations are still able to continue.

The importance of business continuity planning is just as present in higher education; in fact, this kind of continuity planning comes with its own challenges that are completely unique to institutions of this nature. An institution of higher education must operate as a business, a school, and a research facility all at once, so disruption to any of these branches could be at best inconvenient, and at worst disastrous. This alone could be explanation enough as to why a business continuity plan is important, but in this article we will delve deeper into the specific and extended benefits of business continuity planning in higher education.

What are the core objectives of business continuity planning?

As mentioned earlier, you cannot prevent adverse events from happening; however, you can identify the risks associated with certain types of events and map out paths to recovery, along with potential costs. Thus, the core objective of business continuity planning is to build resilience . Why is a business continuity plan important? Because it is a proactive way to mitigate risks, rather than waiting for disaster to strike and scrambling for reactive recovery solutions. Business continuity plans are not concerned with trying to prevent or even predict the future, but they provide you with a way to recover and overcome, whatever happens.

5 Benefits of a business continuity plan in higher education

With that core objective in mind, there are a lot of other benefits of a business continuity plan that naturally follow.

• Protecting your finances

When operating any business or similar organization, the bottom line is something that can never be ignored. There are a number of costs associated with most adverse events, for example:

• If there is a water leak in one of your buildings, expensive equipment may be permanently damaged
• In the case of a power outage or cyber event, important data may be lost
• Most events covered in a continuity plan disrupt operations, and thus can be costly depending on the length of that disruption

When you compare the costs of certain risks with the cost of putting together campus-wide continuity plans, you will see that the latter is much lower.

• Having peace of mind

Even without the financial benefits, the immeasurable benefit of having peace of mind should be evidence enough of the importance of business continuity plans. As an institution of higher education, nothing should be more important than the safety and security of your students, staff, and faculty. When all essential personnel are aware that plans are in place to protect them as individuals as well as the institution as a whole, they will have greater confidence in leadership and pride in the institution.

• Ensuring compliance

There are already a number of laws in place in higher education that are related to various aspects of a continuity plan. These include laws concerning student safety and data protection, for example. Comprehensive continuity plans will help your institution to remain compliant with a number of different laws and regulations. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is reasonable to assume that there may be even more stringent continuity regulations in the future, particularly in higher education.

• Minimizing disruption

As discussed previously, there are financial advantages to minimizing disruption of operations in higher education, but there are also other non-financial benefits. For instance, less disruption minimizes valuable time away from research and instruction. For example, an important research project may be set back weeks or months, and if important data is lost, it may even need to be necessary to start again. In fact, prolonged disruption can negatively impact a wide number of efforts towards accomplishing the mission of the institution as a whole.

• Protecting the institution’s image

While safety and security always come first, a side benefit of continuity planning is the effect it can have on the brand or overall image of the institution. As an institution of higher education, people should be able to look to you as a leader in various communities. When you have continuity plans in place, you are much better positioned to live up to those expectations.

Business continuity management for higher education

Regardless of the status of continuity plans in your institution, we know that the process of collecting and consolidating continuity plans can be exhausting and overwhelming. And we want to help you with that. What are the benefits of a business continuity management system like Kuali Ready? Our software is both easy-to-use and adaptable to the specific needs of your institution. Through simple, question-based forms and ongoing status reports you are able to get all of the answers you need without taking too much time away from other essential parts of your job. Read more about Kuali Ready or request a free trial today.

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The leader in business continuity education and certification across many industries, DRI International offers team training designed to fit the needs of every organization, from private corporations to the public sector and everywhere in-between.

DRI International offers colleges and universities the opportunity to familiarize their students with information on business continuity professions and certifications recognized by private and public sector organizations around the world.

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* DRI's three levels of certification are associate certified, certified and master certified. Certifications beginning with "A" are associate, "C" certified and "M" master.-->

Certification is a two-part process; verification of knowledge and confirmation of experience.

A DRI International certification is the most widely recognized and respected business continuity certification in the world. DRI only certifies professionals that have demonstrated both knowledge and experience in the business continuity and/or disaster recovery profession.

Learn more about how to unlock your DRI digital badge and display your DRI certification to enhance your online professional profile today.

Maintaining your DRI International certification carries two requirements; an annual maintenance fee as well as Continuing Education Activity Points (CEAP).

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Course Title: Higher Education Initiative Business Continuity Management Course ID: BCLE 1500 Duration: Semester

Description

Upon completion of the course, you should be able to: - Define acronyms and terminology in the business continuity industry. - Recall the roles of the business continuity planner and executive management team in developing, testing and maintaining business continuity plans. - Recognize the business continuity planning stages and requirements. - Identify and explain trends in the business continuity field. - Design effective business continuity/disaster recovery efforts for case study activities through the application of knowledge gained in this class and associated materials. - Sit for the DRI Qualifying Examination required for certification.

Introduction and overview of the Professional Practices for Business Continuity Practitioners: 1. Business Continuity Management (BCM) Introduction 2. Program Initiation and Management 3. BCM Project Management 4. Risk Assessment 5. Business Impact Analysis 6. Business Continuity Strategies 7. Developing the Plans 8. Test, Exercise, Audit and Maintenance Programs 9. Awareness and Training Programs 10. Crisis Communication 11. Coordinating with External Agencies 12. Qualifying Examination Review

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Best Practices in Corporate Continuity Planner for Higher Education

• by Tanecia D on October 01, 2020
• past update the December 28, 2023
• Reading Time: 4 daily

Higher education has taken that brunt of COVID-19 . Than classes transitioned to the online mid and campuses emptied, university were left go find new habits to improve current and future operations. Inevitably, business continuity required higher education institutions is now a much-discussed topic among university boards.

Performing and role of microcities, universities embrace a wide row away functions that are frequency deeply ingrained into local associations, the economical, and which healthcare system. Bearing ensure in care, universities need up evolve comprehensive business continuity site to ensure their own short-and long-term prosperity and the stakeholders’ .

Here belong the best patterns in business continuity planning for higher education institutions.

Prepare a Special Task Force

Establishing a special task force is critical to respond to any crisis effectively—the task force steps in when a disasters situation requires a swift and decisive response. Yale University's mission is till create, protect both disseminate knowledge. Each technical, division, and main managerial unit interior the University ...

The task force ought consist of multidisciplinary professionals. Distributed across specialist work teams, save professionals use my expertise to define one scope von a disasters and design a mitigating schedule, either short- the long-term .

Which work teams in a task force are led by an integration team, which manages and harmonize the work of those teams.

Case of work teams that could be included in a special task pressure:

• Finance and legal
• Faculty and staff
• Teaching and research
• External communications
• Inhouse communications
• Campus operations

Note : The exact combination of work your depends on the size of of institution and the range of its operations.

Develop a Full Communication Plan

With multiple stakeholders involved in the operation on every university, a communication plan will promote web the uncertainties the are bound to amount during one crisis. This objective of the Business Continuity Plan a to establish policies, procedures, and frame recovery of critical University functions. The plan will ...

It’s important in have scheduled communication with all awareness. A communication plan should have directions the steps for other scenarios (even those less ones). The aim of every communication layout is until:

• Provide reassurance
• Give pinpoint information regarding the crisis
• Describe mitigating actions that the stakeholders should take

Note : Use secure real collaborative communication tools to help key decision-makers act swiftly. View video conferencing for a more charming experience.

Account for Financial Issues

A plan of act regarding the treasury situation of a higher schooling institution is on of the key parts of a business continuance plan.

You should develop both short- and long-term plans with potential financial consequences and solutions across varied scenarios.

Concrete, you should prepare for:

• A COVID-19 outbreak on campus and the funds necessary to continue operational
• Accumulation supplies (incl. services and equipment)
• IT cybersecurity needs to support social distancing while deliver online classes
• Potential staff reduction and the essential to support critical staff

Collaborate press Partner with Extra Institutions

The COVID-19 crisis has affected superior education institutions cross aforementioned whole globe. This open up a wide ranges of collaborating time between establishment .

These association efforts could include:

• Exchange of information to relief crisis response and hazard leadership
• Creation of strategic partnerships into product initiatives (e.g., online learning)
• Repurposing student outer to aid the gov in of fight with the economic

Safeguard the Condition also Well-Being are the Fragile

Some students might lack the resources to participate in internet learning. The transition to online coursework could also ergebnisse in a greater discrepancy between students who struggle academically and those acting well.

There can also live students for whom a return home is difficult (e.g., international students). Furthermore, some students may have on-campus employment, which could be disrupted if the campus shuts down. Business-related Continuity Planning | Emergency Management

Prepare a comprehensive assessment and response planner that addresses the well-being of the vulnerable. Also, consider the concerns of graduating selected, faculty, and wichtig staff since they, to, are affected per the alarm.

Act Quickly but with a Future-Proof Mindset

While it’s critical toward controls the immediate effects, university leaders should also maintaining in mind that an short-term rules will greatly impact long-term responses.

The key is to plan the resumption the in-person classes at different scenarios. For model, use work organizations for prepare appropriate action decisions. These decisions should product the overarching strategy for future-proofing the university’s operations .

Analyze and reconsider method to deliver student experiences and approach admissions, review, also graduation is this modern reality.

Protection Key and Principles

During a extremity such as that COVID-19 pandemic, location of diseases originated in China, it’s important to have the capacity to deal with potential xenophobic ask up campus.

University leads shouldn actively dispel misinformation . The goal belongs to strengthen a university’s values and principles, for example, respect, tolerance, and understanding toward fellow students.

Be active in speaking out against stereotypes and discriminatory the supporting affected groups.

Design Business Continuity for Universities

When design a business continuity floor for a university, maintaining into mind that the flat shoud contain leadership and information describing as for restore critical processes. However, the overarching goal of a corporate continuity flat is the fortify the university for the future. Long-term resilience can being achieved through one regular assessment about the plan and the introduction of necessary updates . Fixed aside time slots during board meetings used discussions on company continuity planning. Communicate with key using convenient and beneficial communication cleaning to increase collaboration.

Read: Your Guide to Creating Business Continuousness Plans

Convince for Higher Education

Used by top universities worldwide, Convene is a house portal meeting both collaboration tool that allows greater education boards to leads and direct whatever of position wirksamkeit. Whether it’s to organize board or department getting, send across curricula for approval, or gather feedback from colleagues, Convene has universities covered.

Learn select Convene supported business continuity for higher education institutions.

Tanecia is adenine current Chief Governance Officer at Convene with former experience working as a Cybersecurity Managing. She is a respected advisor wenn it arriving to corporate governance, board oversight, resource assign, and risk direktion plans for organization. In her employment, i also helps shed slight on strategies that sack be done to ensure effective governance, although minimizing overall regulatory risk in the company’s cybersecurity projects.

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Business Continuity Plan in the Higher Education Industry: University Students’ Perceptions of the Effectiveness of Academic Continuity Plans during Covid-19 Pandemic

Applied System Innovation

The Covid-19 pandemic is one of the most disruptive, life-changing events that had brought the world to a perpetual standstill in 2020. Schools and institutions of higher education were impacted badly, resulting from the lockdowns and movement restrictions imposed by the governments of numerous countries. Students and faculty found themselves in virtual classrooms, with many caught unaware of what they needed to do, having to learn new things at lightning speed and feeling a sense of despair. While many online learners had frustrations and concerns regarding their online learning experience, there were those who had a good learning experience. The students’ observations and perceptions of the difficulties and opportunities they encountered in their online learning experience were assessed through grounded theory using textual thematic qualitative analysis of their reflective feedback. The findings reveal that most students had a good online learning experience and found that the aca...

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With the announcement of COVID-19 as pandemic, and the call for social distancing, academic institutions reacted by shutting campuses and calling for the shift to virtual online delivery. In HCT, we conducted this study in an effort to sustain success in these global challenging times of crisis that is informed by strategic foresight.HCT called for an all-online delivery starting March 22, 2020 after a two-day pilot in the preceding week. HCT readiness is a result of orchestrating: an ecosystem perspective on digital transformation, a forth-looking institutional strategy that has technology utilization as a major pillar, an education technology strategy, and a comprehensive set of intelligent learning tools.Forward-looking scenarios were designed based on two critical uncertainties: (1) COVID-19 longevity and (2) socio-economic disruption. These scenarios are: Divine Mercy, Recovery Mode, New Norm, and Survival of the Fittest. Subsequently, the features of each scenario are assessed...

Education Sciences

Andrea Tick

The pandemic and subsequent ‘lockdowns’ dramatically changed the educational landscape of higher education institutions. Before-COVID-19, traditional universities had choices in pedagogical practice, which included a variety of teaching delivery modes. Overnight, a single mode of delivery became the only option for traditional higher education institutions. All services migrated to digital platforms, leading to a period of “emergency eLearning”. The full impact of this sudden shift to digital platforms on all cohorts of students is still unclear. A measure of disruption to the normal student learning experience, especially for those attending traditional universities, was inevitable. Moreover, this disruption was varied depending on the University’s country and the country’s lockdown logistics. This international, comparative, quantitative research project investigated and explored higher education students’ perceptions of emergency eLearning during the COVID-19 pandemic. Experience...

Perspectives in Education

Mncedisi Maphalala

Journal of Information Technology Education: Research

Rebecca Reynolds

Aim/Purpose This article aims at the critical present: to serve a constructive purpose in the current COVID-19 crisis by presenting practice driven pedagogical strategies for online learning and teaching. It acknowledges the multitude of challenges faced by educators through the delivery of online instructional strategies for schools. Background The development of information technology enables online learning and blended learning to be increasingly popular in extending students’ learning opportunities. Technology-enabled learning approaches make students’ learning more flexible and personalized. In Hong Kong, one of the first few cities where the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak was first reported, school classes have been suspended since the end of Lunar New Year on February 3, 2020. Methodology This research used a qualitative method of multiple case analysis to explore how three educators from primary, secondary, and tertiary institutes employed various strategies to offer learning and teaching as usual. Naturalistic inquiry was used to observe, describe, and interpret the “lived experiences” of the three educators and the perceptions of stakeholders. Contribution Since early February 2020, school classes have been suspended amid the COVID-19 pandemic in Hong Kong, one of the first cities where the coronavirus outbreak was first reported. This timely article overviews effective practices with the use of online learning technologies to support academia from around the world to achieve teaching and learning in an online environment. Findings Results indicate that meaningful cognitive activities rely on teachers’ leading role to build a blended approach that combines the advantages of asynchronous and synchronous methods in order to facilitate social interaction among students. Furthermore, our research has revealed that educators are likely to perceive three non-teaching challenges on a rapid blended transition of the learning – digital divide, data privacy, and professional leadership. Recommendations for Practitioners The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the learning of a generation of students and driven a sudden shift to online learning. Our case study recommends a blended model of asynchronous and synchronous learning as an effective pedagogy that allows learners flexibility, autonomy, and opportunities for learners to socialize with each other, which can be applied at any education level. Impact on Society Technological advancements have made online classes possible, but how feasible is it to believe that a near overnight transition can lead to effective learning and teaching? The current article strongly acknowledges the multitude of barriers that stand in the way of feasibility, capacity building. and delivery of inclusive online instruction for today’s school districts, administrators, curriculum and technology directors, teachers, parents, and students.

International Journal of Distance Education and E-Learning

Sajid A Yousuf Zai

The world is in the fright condition and facing the threat of COVID-19 and Pakistan is not an exceptional in this situation. By the decision of National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC), all the universities and institutions were closed for formal academic activities and starting online classes from March, 2020. This was an astounding paradigm for the regular students of the institutions as well as for the faculty. Hence, this study has been conceded to find out what the faculty and students got what they lost individually and scholastically and what are their suggestions for the improvement and uniformity of the online learning system throughout thecountry. The purpose of this study was to explore the role of HEC during COVID-19 to implement the immediate online learning and its impact on students learning. This research was based on qualitative research in which data were collected from the literature available online. Various contemporary articles, papers, reports, blogs, news...

Southwestern Business Administration Journal

Cynthia Mayo

Business Review

Dr. Shumaila Naz

Whitepaper - Disruption in and by Centres for Teaching and Learning During the COVID-19 Pandemic Leading the Future of Higher Ed

Nadia Naffi , Ann-Louise Davidson , Guy Wallace , Azeneth Patino , Edem Gbetoglo , Nathalie Duponsel , Céleste Savoie , Isabelle Fournel

This white paper illuminates how Centres for Teaching and Learning, and equivalent entities addressed and plan to address trends and issues in digital learning in the context of educational disruption caused by COVID-19. We begin by presenting an overview of the traditional role the CTLs and equivalent entities have played since their inception in educational institutions. We then describe how this role evolved into academic first responders in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. The paper continues with a thorough discussion about the challenges the centres faced since the eruption of the pandemic in March 2020 and the ones they anticipate in the coming semesters. It also lists concrete examples of actions they took to face these challenges. In addition, we provide detailed information on one major action taken by all; that is, publicly sharing an abundance of resources to support faculty and students during the online transition. This discussion spotlights resources relevant to equity. The last section of this paper shares lessons learned and recommendations from the centres to the centres in addition to commentaries by experts and researchers from the field with ideas and approaches geared to the current mandate of the centres to help them better face what is coming. The appendixes contain 1) an inventory of tech companies that modified their services in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic to support online learning, 2) the methodology used to conduct the research, 3) the methodology used to prepare the Panorama of Publicly Shared Resources to Support the Transition of Courses Online During The COVID-19 Pandemic, 4) an inventory of publicly shared resources to support the transition of courses online, and 5) an inventory of resources that share ways to achieve equitable learning experiences for students.

Electronic Journal of e-Learning

Jayaron Jose

The delivery mode of the lessons was transitioned from face-to-face to online/e-learning in response to the Covid-19 lockdown across the Middle East, particularly in Oman. The University of Technology and Applied Sciences, Al Musannah (UTASA), also adopted this approach, which brought forth both opportunities and challenges for the academic community, including teachers and students. However, no systematic studies were conducted across various departments at the university to gain insights into the implications of full-time online/e-learning. Therefore, this study was designed to comprehend the perceptions of cross-sectional UTASA students regarding the effectiveness of e-learning, encompassing their experiences and satisfaction with participating in it. The study employed a combination of quantitative and qualitative data collection methods, utilizing a survey questionnaire and a descriptive question. The participants included both male and female learners (N = 212) from department...

Journal of Education Culture and Society

Khandakar Kamrul Hasan , Debarshi Mukherjee

Aim. The global pandemic of the COVID-19 outbreak and the subsequent nationwide lockdown have put the endeavours of both academicians and students to the test. The disruptions are even visible in andragogical approaches across higher education institutions both nationally and internationally. Two government-funded universities in India and Bangladesh have decided to explore avenues to switch to an alternative e-platform overcoming the challenges of traditional classroom teaching. The business management faculties of both universities exercise blended learning modules using a design thinking approach. Methods. This exploratory case study involves university students and teachers reflecting the knowledge delivery mechanism in a collaborative online workspace called Virtual Classroom. The authors have adopted the case method to identify evidence-based practices to improve learning gain. This case is motivated by the profound idea of learning continuity where the agenda of teaching-lear...

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