Academic Continuity Planning - 2

In the event of a significant Blackboard service disruption, instructors can use other UND tools and technologies to assist in meeting teaching needs until access is restored. This webpage outlines some continuity approaches, especially during critical points in the semester such as midterms, finals, grading periods, and major assignment deadlines. 

This page provides suggested solutions that can assist instructors to continue their teaching.

• Communication with Students
• Collecting Student Work
• Providing Alternative Assessments
• Midterm and Final Exams Created in Blackboard 
• Managing Grades
• Sharing Course Materials Outside Blackboard
• YuJa
• Synchronous Teaching
• Immediate Faculty Actions During an Outage 
• Course Continuity Kit
• Additional Continuity Considerations
• Roles
• Minimum Recommended Standards for Courses
• Summary

Communication with Students

If Blackboard becomes unavailable, one of the most important steps instructors should take is to communicate with students about how the outage affects the class actitivies, including due dates, exams and how they should communicate with you. Instructors should use the UND email through Campus Connection Class Roster tool as the default way to communicate with students. This will allow the instructor to view enrolled students and send notifications to selected students or the full class roster. Students should be instructed to monitor their UND email for updates, instructions, and deadline changes. 

Microsoft Teams can be used as a secondary method of communication between instructors, teaching assistants and students.

Collecting Student Work

If work must be collected outside Blackboard, instructors should provide clear submission instructions, including due dates, acceptable file types, file naming conventions, and where submissions should be sent or uploaded. 

Providing Alternative Assessments

For Short Outages 

The preferred approach is usually to extend deadlines, postpone quizzes or exams, and avoid rushed replacement processes unless absolutely necessary. 

For Longer Outages 

Faculty should rely on UND-supported alternative assessment approaches that can be implemented outside Blackboard, including: 

• assignment submission through OneDrive or other approved file-sharing tools,  
• YuJa video submissions,  
• Zoom or Teams presentations, discussions, or oral assessments,  
• poster presentations,  
• portfolios,  
• case studies,  
• simulations,  
• debates,  
• role play,  
• problem-based learning tasks.  

If work must be collected outside Blackboard, instructors should provide clear submission instructions, including due dates, acceptable file types, file naming conventions, and where submissions should be sent or uploaded. 

If a high-stakes exam is still necessary, instructors should consult UND’s existing guidance on alternative assessments and exam security options. 

Midterm and Final Exams Created in Blackboard 

For midterm or final exams created in Blackboard, instructors should retain a backup copy by using Blackboard’s Print Exam option.

Managing Grades

Your ability to calculate or submit grades through Blackboard will be delayed until Blackboard access is restored. In the interim, keep records outside Blackboard. 

If your Blackboard access has been restored, it is recommended that you download a copy of your Canvas gradebook and back up that information to PennBox so it is available to enter final grades should there be additional disruptions. 

Sharing Course Materials outside of Blackboard

OneDrive should be the default backup location for sharing files such as PDFs, Word documents, PowerPoints, study guides, and other course materials. 

If Blackboard is unavailable, students and instructors may still be able to access course syllabi through the Simple Syllabus library outside Blackboard. This should be included as an alternate source for syllabus content, course expectations, and schedule reference points. 

YuJa

YuJa should be the primary backup platform for recorded lectures, narrated presentations, and other multimedia course content. 

Course channels, media collections, and videos that exist in YuJa outside Blackboard should remain available during a Blackboard outage. Faculty and students should be provided guidance on how to access that content directly through YuJa when needed. 

Synchronous Teaching 

If a course needs to continue meeting live, faculty can use Zoom or Teams for class sessions, office hours, presentations, or discussions. 

Where Zoom meetings or Teams sites have already been created for a course through Blackboard integrations, those resources should continue to exist outside Blackboard. Faculty should be provided guidance on how to access those tools directly and how to share access information with students during an outage. 

Immediate Faculty Actions During an Outage 

If Blackboard is unavailable, instructors should: 

• contact students as soon as possible,  
• tell students where temporary materials will be located,  
• indicate whether class will meet live via Zoom or Teams or continue asynchronously,  
• pause or adjust Blackboard-dependent deadlines until alternate instructions are provided.  

Suggested message faculty could send: 

Blackboard is temporarily unavailable. Until service is restored, please check your UND email for course instructions. Course materials will be shared through OneDrive, YuJa, and other supported systems as needed, and any live class meetings will take place in Zoom or Teams if needed. Deadlines may be adjusted as necessary. Please also check Simple Syllabus, if applicable, for course schedule and syllabus information. 

Communications during a Blackboard outage should be coordinated through established institutional communication and incident response processes so that faculty, students, and staff receive consistent information. 

Course Continuity Kit 

Faculty should be encouraged to maintain a simple continuity kit for each course that includes: 

• a reliable communication method outside Blackboard,  
• a recent exported/downloaded gradebook,  
• backup copies of critical files in OneDrive or locally,  
• backup copies of important assessment materials when possible,  
• important video content stored in YuJa when possible,  
• a brief syllabus statement telling students what to do if Blackboard is unavailable.  

The most important preparedness step is periodic gradebook export/download, especially near midterm and final grading periods. Faculty may also wish to review and refresh their continuity kit at key points in the semester, such as before midterms and again before finals. 

Faculty may also wish to remind students to maintain their own copies of important submitted work outside Blackboard. 

Additional Continuity Considerations 

Coordination with CTS on Integrations and Security 

If Blackboard becomes unavailable due to a security-related event, TTaDA will coordinate with CTS regarding any necessary actions involving LMS integrations and third-party tools. Depending on the scenario, mitigation involving LTIs, authentication connections, API keys, single sign-on connectors, or other integrations may also require coordination with Blackboard and with broader institutional cybersecurity response processes. 

Daily Backups and Retention 

CTS performs daily automatic backups of live production Blackboard courses. These backups support recovery and retention processes, but they should not be interpreted as a simple alternate delivery environment for instruction during an outage. Externally retained archives are currently maintained for retention purposes. 

Alternate Environment Recovery 

At this time, restoring Blackboard production content into the staging environment is not considered a practical continuity option due to the technical effort, timing, and related system dependencies involved. 

Continuity Web Page 

UND may wish to maintain a continuity web page that could be published or activated during a Blackboard outage. This page could provide instructions for faculty and students, links to alternate systems such as Campus Connection, Simple Syllabus, Zoom, Teams, YuJa, and OneDrive, and guidance on where to get help and where to look for service updates. 

Course Rosters and Student Contact Information 

A key dependency in any Blackboard continuity plan is faculty access to class rosters and student contact information outside the LMS. Because most faculty rely on Blackboard’s built-in email and communication tools, UND should identify and document the practical process instructors should use in Campus Connection or another approved university system to retrieve roster and contact information and to communicate with students during an outage. 

Records Continuity 

In parallel with instructional continuity planning, NDUS CTS is developing an approach to preserve key LMS records in the event of a catastrophic disruption to the Blackboard environment. 

This work includes scheduled exports of selected Blackboard data elements in CSV format, such as: 

• course records,  
• user enrollments and roles,  
• course rosters,  
• gradebook columns,  
• student grades,  
• attempt records,  
• and submission records.  

The purpose of this effort is to help ensure institutional access to critical academic records even if Blackboard and related services are unavailable for an extended period. 

Roles 

TTaDA 

• provide faculty guidance during the outage,  
• recommend backup instructional tools and workflows,  
• support YuJa, Teams, Zoom, OneDrive, Simple Syllabus, and alternative assessment options.  

NDUS CTS / Blackboard Administration 

• coordinate outage status updates,  
• communicate restoration information,  
• work with Anthology/Blackboard on resolution,  
• advise on security mitigation, backup/recovery, and records continuity efforts,  
• coordinate as needed with institutional cybersecurity leadership on incident response actions.  

Faculty 

• communicate with students promptly,  
• shift materials to alternate tools as needed,  
• adjust deadlines and assessments appropriately,  
• maintain backup copies of important materials and grading records.  

Minimum Recommended Standards for Courses 

A practical baseline for every UND course could include: 

• a syllabus statement telling students to check UND email if Blackboard is unavailable,  
• at least one communication method outside Blackboard,  
• critical course files backed up outside Blackboard,  
• periodic gradebook exports by the instructor,  
• a simple backup plan for at least one week of instruction.  

Summary 

UND does not currently have a fully formalized campuswide contingency plan for a prolonged Blackboard outage. This draft proposes a practical framework built around tools already supported at UND: email and Campus Connection for communication, Zoom or Teams for synchronous needs, YuJa for multimedia content, OneDrive for file sharing, Simple Syllabus for syllabus access, and existing TTaDA guidance for alternative assessments and exam security. It also assumes continued coordination with CTS on the security, records continuity, recovery, and system continuity components of any significant Blackboard outage. 

 

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