by Sheri Prupis, director of Teaching & Learning with Technology
Instructional designers and LMS administrators from across Virginia’s Community Colleges gathered at Piedmont Virginia Community College recently for a working retreat focused on building a system-wide playbook for academic technology outages. Led by PVCC’s Instructional Designer and eLET Chair, Andrew Hahn, and Dr. Sheri Prupis, Director of Teaching & Learning with Technology, VCCS System Office, the group — representing most VCCS colleges — spent the day developing a Continuity of Teaching and Learning Plan designed to ensure that when tools like Canvas experience disruptions, faculty and students across the system have clear, consistent guidance for what to do next. Participants worked collaboratively across three focus areas — preparing before an outage, responding during one, and recovering after — producing draft frameworks, templates, and decision tools that will form the foundation of a formal VCCS policy.
Members of the Canvas work group
A strong theme emerged across all working groups: communication is the top priority. The retreat surfaced broad agreement on the need for a consistent syllabus statement about outages in every VCCS course, a dedicated outage information page with clear guidance on where to find alerts and access assignments, and pre-approved formal language colleges can use when notifying students and faculty — including updates even when there is no change in status.
Participants also identified key gaps to address, including the need for clear authority and accountability structures, faculty file management standards that keep course content accessible outside of Canvas, and expanded communication pathways that reach SSDL and dual enrollment students. This work is just beginning — the team is committed to making sure faculty and student voices are central to shaping a plan that truly meets their needs. A first draft will be presented to constituency groups across the VCCS in the fall, and input from those conversations will be essential to ensuring the final Continuity of Teaching and Learning Plan reflects the real experiences of the people it serves.
