Since the Virginia Tech Tragedy, higher ed institutions all over the US, Canada and even Australia have been revisiting their emergency preparedness and crisis communication plans.
While planning is very important, a plan is as good as its testing. That’s why many institutions went through emergency drills and other tests lately.
Back in September 2007, I blogged about such a drill conducted at Humboldt State University.
Last Wednesday, Winona State University went through its second test of the sort. Rick Rhone, University Webmaster and a regular reader of this blog, was kind enough to share in an email a screenshot and his thoughts about the drill. Rick gave me the permission to quote some parts of his message:
This was our second test in three weeks and it went pretty smoothly.
We notified the campus community via email that the test was going to be performed and gave them a general time of the Alert. From there, we notified the Campus switchboard, IT Phone Support and Campus security (who notified local law enforcement) that we are performing a test only of the web notification system.
My advice for others is to work closely with the individuals who are responsible for the Universities Emergency Procedures. We are finding out after Virginia Tech, that we were really behind the power curve as to what we need to do (from a web perspective) to be ready for this type of situation. After working on this for the last few months, I have the utmost respect for those at VT that had to perform this on the fly.
Also, if they have problems during the test, that’s not a bad thing, that’s what the test is for. We had problems the first time getting pages to publish through our CMS, we identified the problem and the second test was flawless.
We found out that a lot more people looked at our page and noticed the change immediately. I received several phone calls from people saying that it really helps.
Have you done this kind of tests at your campus? Have you recently created/updated your crisis/emergency web template? Do you have any tips to share with your peers?
I’m currently wrapping up the research around these questions for my next University Business column, so feel free to email me at karine@collegewebeditor.com or post a comment to share your insights.
You might also want to submit your template, so I can include it in the gallery of crisis/emergency websites hosted at Higher Ed Experts.