Teaching disruptions affecting campus access, technology, materials, or communication can happen at any time. Academic continuity doesn’t necessarily mean continuing without interruption or moving online; the right response depends on your situation and guidance from the University, division, faculty, department, or program.
This resource offers proactive, practical strategies for preparing for—and responding to—a disruption. It does not require redesigning your course (see CTSI’s Resilient Course Design resource and/or general Course Design resources). We know this takes time alongside your existing responsibilities, so we recommend folding these strategies into your regular course planning and tackling them in small steps. Choose what suits your context and check with your division or academic unit if you have questions.
If you do one thing: talk to your students. You can do this proactively at the beginning of the term, or by talking with them as soon as possible after a disruption occurs. Acknowledge that any disruption adds stress on top of everything else they’re already managing, let them know their well-being matters to you, and tell them you’re working to keep their learning on track with as little disruption as possible. A short, direct conversation or message reassures students that their instructor has them in mind, not just their coursework.
A few things to keep in mind while you review these strategies:
- Disruptions take many different forms. What you can do is set up communication contingencies, so you can stay in contact with the people you need to, whatever happens.
- Continuing your course after a disruption usually means trade-offs. You won’t be able to do everything, but you can decide on your top priorities and focus your continuity efforts on those.
- Any member of your team, including you, may become unavailable. We encourage you to build in redundancy, so no single person bears responsibility for the entire course.
- Backup plans take real preparation to work when you need them. While the ideal is to set them up in advance in partnership with your academic unit, you might be reading this in the middle of a disruption. This guide gives you both proactive and reactive options.
Gather Your Information Sources
Effective continuity planning starts with staying informed. Bookmark key information sources, review how you receive urgent updates, and identify the people and channels you can turn to for guidance specific to your teaching context.
- Identify your division, faculty, department, or program for guidance specific to your teaching context. Proactively ask about their communication plans, as well as any local newsletters and/or join any groups that might be relevant to you.
- Bookmark University and divisional sources so you have quick access to authoritative information and consistent messaging during a disruption:
- U of T Campus Status for the current operating status of the Mississauga, St. George, and Scarborough campuses and information about active alerts.
- ITS System Status for the status of institutional IT services and information about information technology service disruptions.
- UTogether for broader University-wide updates, information, and resources.
- Share these resources with students early in the term (for example, in an announcement or in your introductory module) so they know where to look during a disruption. Reshare these resources as applicable. These are good reminders for everyone.
- Review your UTAlert settings and consider opting-in to SMS or app-based alerts in addition to your official University email address and encourage your students to do the same.
- Sign up for the CTSI newsletter in advance so you receive disruption-specific strategies and updates from CTSI as they happen.
Plan How You Will Communicate
Plan communication in two parts: how you and your teaching team coordinate internally, and what and how you will keep students in the loop. For students, communicate clearly, share what you know even if it’s incomplete, and reassure them that more information is coming.
- In the case of a Quercus outage, consult with your academic unit about how to access and store an up-to-date course email roster (e.g., emailed directly from your Registrar and stored in your University OneDrive, accessed via a central department SharePoint, etc.).
- Encourage students to review their Quercus notification settings and consider adding a secondary email account as a backup.
- Use Quercus Announcements to inform students of any important course changes. Note that any notifications from Quercus are subject to students’ notification settings.
- Encourage students to keep copies of important course information and their own submitted work. This is important generally but especially if they need to resubmit. When using cloud storage solutions like University OneDrive, students should enable the option to keep a local copy in case of cloud service disruptions.
- Agree on one teaching team member to consolidate and send communications during a disruption, so students receive a single consistent message instead of conflicting updates from different people.
- Send students a short message as soon as a disruption affects your course, even if you don’t have a full plan yet, so they know you’re aware of the situation and when to expect more details.
- For solo instructors, consider pairing up with another instructor to serve as each other’s Quercus communication backup, enrolled using the Designer role, which has no access to grades.
Build Redundancy into Your Teaching Team
Early conversations with your team about roles and responsibilities can avoid confusion when a disruption happens and ensures essential course functions don’t depend on any one person.
- Review how to add or remove users in Quercus so your teaching team has the right access before a disruption happens.
- Create a document, stored outside Quercus (for example, in a shared University OneDrive folder), listing each team member’s name, role, and contact information.
- Set up shared access to your communication tools (for example, a Teams chat group or email group), so the whole team can use them without setup delays.
Keep Essential Course Information and Materials Accessible
Rather than creating backup copies of every file in your course, focus on ensuring students can access the materials they would need most if your usual course platform were temporarily unavailable, such as your syllabus, activity supports, and assessment instructions.
- Store current source files for your syllabus, course schedule, instructional materials, and other essential course information in your University OneDrive.
- Your own materials, such as your syllabus, course schedule, and instructional materials, are your intellectual property (IP). Storing them in your University OneDrive keeps them backed up and accessible if your usual platform is unavailable, but where you store your own work is your choice.
- Student information and any files containing student work are subject to University privacy and records management requirements (see Privacy & Handling Personal Information for Faculty & Staff). Consult with your academic unit before creating any local backup.
- When creating backup copies, save them in accessible formats so they’re easy to access if you need to share them under time pressure. Where appropriate, make essential course materials accessible to other members of the teaching team so that access does not depend on one person.
Safeguard Your Grades and Assessment Plans
Grade and assessment disruptions create stress for all involved, especially when students lose access to campus, technology, or other resources they need to complete a planned assessment. These strategies can help, but connect with your academic unit before making any assessment-related changes.
- Consult with your academic unit about supported processes to back up your grades. If you elect to export the Gradebook, store the exported file in your University OneDrive and consult your academic unit about records retention policies.
- Consider where flexibility in deadlines, workload, format, or timing might be possible while still supporting the course learning outcomes.
- State a grace period or extension policy in your assessment instructions before a disruption occurs, so flexibility doesn’t have to be decided in the moment.
- Consider including a plan for alternate assessment submission in your assessment instructions from the start (for example, you’ll notify students to use email submission if Quercus is unavailable). You do not need to have every detail worked out, but students will know that your expectations will adapt to the situation.
Prepare for an Alternate Modality for Your Class Sessions
If you, your students, or your teaching team lose access to campus or your usual course technologies, having a backup ready lets you keep the most important learning activities running, rather than trying to reproduce every element of the course in another format.
- Go through your course schedule and flag any activity that depends on a specific room or platform (for example, an in-person lab, a proctored exam, or small-group breakout rooms). For each one, consider a realistic substitute.
- Post slides and notes before each session (not just after), and record sessions if you use lecture capture, so students who miss a disrupted session still have that day’s content without you needing to do anything further.
- Create a recurring virtual meeting in Zoom or Teams and share the link with students by email in advance, so it is ready if your usual meeting space becomes unavailable.
- Run a short test session early in the term to confirm the backup meeting works, and students know how to join.