LEARNING
ONLINE – AN INTRODUCTORY STUDENT HANDBOOK
Edition
2.1 – May 2003
Copyright 2003 by the University of Richmond School
of Continuing Studies. All rights
reserved.
1. INTRODUCTION
For the student taking his or her first online course, the new
environment and the combination of things that have to be done may seem
daunting. We think this Handbook will
help you better understand all of the mechanics of learning online.
Online learning is different from sitting in a classroom –
it requires a different set of skills, in terms of how you interact with your
fellow students, the material, and your instructor. But more importantly it requires different attitudes toward
learning.
It is a more intense way to learn, a more challenging way,
and a more demanding way. You will work
harder and learn more. And we will
treat you like the adult professionals you are, and hold you to a professional
standard of performance.
2. EQUIPMENT
REQUIREMENTS
You should have the following computer capabilities
available where you plan to do your course work to successfully complete an
online course in our program:
(1) a computer – it
sounds obvious, but some people sign up for online courses without owning one
or having regular access. We do not
specify minimum capacities or speeds – the more current your machine, the
larger its capacity, and the faster its processing, the faster you can work. In practical terms a capable computer that
is three or fewer years old should be quite adequate at any point in the
program.
(2) Internet
connection – a faster connection is better than a slower connection.
(3) basic software –
e-mail capability and a modern word processor.
We suggest Word 97 or later as a word processor, as this software offers
the greatest compatibility across all applications you can expect to see. Do not plan to do academic work with the
bundled home application word processors or notepads provided as the basic
software package with most computers.
Other useful capabilities include Excel spreadsheet and Access database,
PowerPoint presentations, and an Acrobat .pdf reader.
(4) a printer –
black and white is fine, and the faster in terms of pages per minute the
better. All of the material you submit
to us will be submitted electronically, but having the capability to print
source material and drafts is very useful.
3. SIGNING UP FOR A COURSE ON BANNERWEB
Banner is the University's academic computer system. Banner lets you sign up for courses, check
on your course grades, and review your transcript. To access Banner:
(1) go to
http://oncampus.richmond.edu/
(2) select Academics
(3) select Registrar
(4) on the Registrar's page is a hyperlink to Bannerweb
at the top of the page
(5) this will bring you to a red page
(6) click on the secure login
(7) the first time through it will do a dance about changing
your password - the starting argument is normally your social security number
and your birthday in month/day/year
(8) finally you get to the main
menu – click on Student Services
(9) click on Registration,
and then work through making your registration choices. Look-Up Classes To Add lets you
browse through the schedule by subject area.
When you are ready to register you first have to Select Term and
then go to the Add/Drop Classes page.
4. ACTIVATING AN E-MAIL ACCOUNT
You must activate your university e-mail account. This puts you in the system and lets you
access your Blackboard course site.
There are two parts to the process: (1) activating your account, and
then (2) forwarding your university e-mail address to your normal e-mail
address (so you do not have to dial in to the University to receive e-mail
directed to you here).
(1) Go to
http://oncampus.richmond.edu
(2) Click on
Information Services from the menu on the left of the screen
(3) Click on
Computing Services
(4) Click on Account
Activation
(5) Remember this
spot - you will need to come back to change your e-mail forwarding
(6) Click on Account
Activation Form
(7) The next screen
asks for a netid - there is a gray continue button - click on continue
(8) Next screen
enter your Social Security Account Number and birthdate - and continue on
through the following screens to activate your account - the system will give
you an e-mail address, should give you a netid (two letters, number, two
letters), and you will choose a password.
Write these down in multiple copies, leave them everywhere in the house
you could ever look for them, put them in your PDA, etc. - trying to get new
ones is a horrible process.
(9) After you
complete account activation go back in to the page that had e-mail forwarding,
click on this and forward your e-mail to your preferred home or work e-mail
address (so you don't have to go through a convoluted process of dialing in to
the University computer).
(10) E-mail your course instructor and let her or him know
you are set up.
5. SO WHO IS
TEACHING THIS COURSE, AND HOW DO I CONTACT HIM OR HER?
Your instructor is on the semester schedule on the right
hand side of the page in the next to last column. If the schedule lists STAFF, or if you are unsure of the faculty
member’s complete name (and if they are not listed in the back of the current
catalog), contact Dr. Green at 804-287-1246 or wgreen@richmond.edu for the
current instructor.
Once you know the faculty member’s name, it is simple to
find an e-mail contact address. Go to
http://oncampus.richmond.edu, and click on the search icon in the upper right
corner of the page. Select the line for
searching for people at the University on the search page that comes up, and
enter the faculty member’s name. The
system will return their e-mail address for you.
6. PAY YOUR BILL
Payment for a class is due by the end of the first week of
classes – and it is due whether you have received an invoice or not. If you have not received an invoice or if
you are concerned that your payment may not reach the University in time,
contact Student Accounts at 804-289-8149.
We routinely bar students from classes for nonpayment each semester – it
is disruptive for both student and faculty – and the student accounts people
are serious that they want payment on time.
There is a variety of current information on payment methods in the
schedule each semester.
7. FACULTY
Our faculty are all expert practitioners, and fully
qualified academically to teach at the University level. Not all work in emergency management or
business continuity, but their specific areas of expertise match well with the
courses they are assigned to teach.
Each goes through a careful screening program to verify their
credentials and to ensure that their approach to teaching meshes with our
expectations for the program (see the sections on Focus and Competencies
below).
You can expect that our faculty will demand high standards
in your work – low quality work and low standards do not prepare you for
promotion to more senior positions and for service as a manager and
leader. You should also expect that
they will do their part to help you meet those standards.
Every faculty member in this program encourages discussion,
questioning of their values and viewpoint, and reasoned argument. You are expected to be willing to take and
defend controversial positions and to make a case for alternatives to common
wisdom. Our faculty enjoy a good
argument – one that takes a position and supports it with logical reasoning and
well developed facts. This is not a
license to say stupid stuff and expect to get by with wrong solutions; however,
you should feel encouraged to explore topics and develop solutions outside the
standard doctrines and mantras taught in training programs.
Our faculty expects that you will do the assignments each
week. Trying to get by on what you remember
from training courses or how your department operates is just that, trying to
get by. When you try to get by the
only person that suffers is you – the faculty member knows that you are not
doing the work – we have been there and done that. Remember two important things: (1) you are paying us to help you
learn – when you do not do your part of the bargain, we cannot do our part, and
(2) if you do not learn in our course it will show up in your job performance,
limiting your future. Do not waste your
money or your future - do the work.
Our faculty expects that you know how to write, and we
stress writing throughout the curriculum.
The ability to communicate well in written form is absolutely critical
to being effective as a manager, leader, and eventually executive in any
organization.
Every student will find themselves in disagreement with at
least one faculty member in the course of an academic career – whether that is
how an assignment is graded, over a class expectation, or even on procedural
issues on how a class is delivered. The
first and most important step is to talk to the faculty member – tell him or
her how you feel about the grade, the level of interaction in the class, the
assignment work load, how difficult they are to contact, etc. Every faculty member in this program is
receptive to these types of comments and will generally take action to find a
solution to the problem. You should not
feel any hesitation about calling or e-mailing your faculty member and
presenting your concerns in a rational manner.
Please note the phrase “in a rational manner” – using confrontational
language, obscenities, and personally hostile remarks does not favorably
impress anyone. If, for some reason,
you run into a brick wall, contact the Program Director, but understand that
his first question is going to be “did you talk to the faculty member?”
8. FOCUS
This focus of this program is the protection of communities
and organizations from the effects of bad events. We teach courses that deal with what disasters are and how they
impact us, with the specifics of planning and preparing for them, and with how
organizations that respond to emergency situations should be managed as public
or private entities.
We presume that adult students come to the program
with a variety of knowledge and experience that serves as the foundation for
learning. We do not expect you to
simply parrot organizational procedures and doctrine as the foundation of your
college experience. The fact that your
fire department or emergency medical services agency or county government has
always done something a certain way is not impressive in and of itself. We expect you to think critically about your
experience as you understand it and the practices of your profession as you
have practiced it, to evaluate these, and to communicate to your fellow
students the good and the bad, the strengths and the weaknesses, and the
opportunities and the threats we face.
There is a significant difference between training,
experience, and college education.
Training teaches a standard solution to a specific problem; experience
builds proficiency and judgment in applying accepted solutions through
exposure; and education addresses how to think about and analyze problems in a
variety of contexts, criticize old solutions, and develop new and better
ones. We do not teach standard
solutions to problems or regurgitate agency doctrine. Certainly some level of this may be necessary to ensure our
students understand context and current practice. However, we focus on teaching students the skills necessary to
develop better and more effective ways of approaching the problems of their
professional lives.
In this context, it is important to understand that
knowledge in general doubles every seven years. In the course of completing a degree, major programs that define
fundamental strategies in our field may disappear with a change in
administration, and new programs, organizational structures, and strategies emerge
rapidly to deal with new agendas. Knowledge imparted in the first part of your degree program may
well be obsolete by the time you graduate.
Therefore, we focus on teaching fundamental skills that are applicable
no matter the time and place – the ability to identify, assess, and learn key
professional knowledge; the ability to apply knowledge to the recognition and
characterization of professional problems; the ability to analyze these
problems and develop logical solutions; and the ability to effectively manage
the implementation of solutions. At the
graduate level we add the ability to formulate theory to explain the incidence
of problems, to use that theory to make logical predictions about future
problems, and the understanding of how to shape policy around those predictions
to influence future outcomes.
9. COMPETENCIES
Our program produces, as graduates, individuals competent to
perform in the day-to-day management and emergency operational workplaces. Each course has overall course objectives
related to the practices of the professions of emergency management, business
continuity, homeland defense, and voluntary agency disaster response. These objectives are measurable and define
core competencies in these professions.
We publish a complete list of core competencies for the degree program,
and you can request a copy from the Program Director. Each student is expected to be able to demonstrate a professional
level of performance in at least 50 percent of the core competencies of the
program (understanding that not every student will take every course, and thus
will not be exposed to each competency) upon graduation.
10. SYLLABUS
The course syllabus for your course is an important
document. Most of our faculty use a
syllabus that is very similar in content, but that standard continues to
evolve. The procedures and policies in
the syllabus are there because we have found it necessary to explain our course
requirements in increasing detail over the years to avoid misunderstandings. Read the syllabus. In particular understand your faculty member’s grading policies
and the standards of academic integrity on cheating, plagiarism, and copyright
violation.
11. THE SCHEDULE
The academic schedule for each semester is printed in the
annual catalog and in the newsprint schedule that comes out prior to each
semester. For planning purposes, plan
on the equivalent of 14 weekly course sessions and one week for examinations,
for a total course length of 15 sessions.
For online we do not miss classes for individual holidays; however, we
do have approximately one week long Thanksgiving and Spring breaks.
Read the schedule for your individual course. Know when assignments are due. Every semester one student in every class is
surprised by an assignment they did not know was due – in every case they are surprised because they have not read the
course schedule.
12. BOOKS
A critical issue is connecting students with their
textbooks. Our students are scattered
across the country, and our bookstore is not designed to handle a distance
population. The best strategy is to
order the course texts directly from the publisher - publishers will be in
stock if the book is in print (you should not specify a book no longer in
print) and their service is fast. The
second best strategy is to order from the major online booksellers - we used to
recommend Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com.
However, recent experience is that neither meets their advertised
shipping deadlines often enough to be considered foolproof. The worst strategy is to order through a
local bookstore - this adds at least two weeks to the process.
Each semester, approximately a month before the start of
classes, we will post a list of course textbooks and links to the publishers
at:
http://www.richmond.edu/~wgreen/books.htm
When you sign up for a course immediately go to the books
page and order your texts. You are
expected to have the course texts when the course starts. Our courses tend to have a significant
reading load – if you get behind it is difficult to catch up.
13. GETTING ONTO
BLACKBOARD
Increasing numbers of our students are familiar with and
comfortable on Blackboard. However,
those new to the program will need the basic directions. The following steps will walk you through
your first access:
To access the course:
(1) go to http://courses.richmond.edu
(2) click on LOGIN
(3) at the password box enter your University netid and use
your standard e-mail password. If you have lost your password, contact your
faculty member as soon as possible.
(4) this will take you to a page that lists in the block on
the right hand side the courses you are taking (including this one) on
Blackboard. Click on the name of the course.
(5) you are now at the front page of the course. Review the
announcements and follow the any standard directions that are posted in the
Announcements box.
14. TROUBLESHOOTING
ACCESS
Student access to course sites breaks down in several ways;
a number of these are things that your faculty member has to fix. If the semester is starting, and you have
not been able to access the blackboard site, or you can access it, but you have
not received any communications from the instructor:
(1) Take immediate
action. Do not sit there for two weeks
into the semester thinking that someone will contact you at some point to bring
you into the fold.
(2) The first
question is – have you activated your e-mail account at the University? If not, do so using the steps in section 3.
(3) The second
question is – have you forwarded your e-mail?
If you have not forwarded your e-mail, the mail the instructor has sent
you is waiting somewhere in the University’s servers for you to dial in and
rescue it from electronic oblivion.
Life is a lot simpler if you follow the directions in section 3 and
forward your e-mail.
(4) You are in touch
with your faculty member and your e-mail account is active, but you still
cannot access Blackboard. In a few
cases there is a disconnect between Blackboard and the rest of the University
system, and you may have to reload your e-mail account. However, in most cases the faculty member
has not enrolled you as an existing user in Blackboard. In a few cases, we may have loaded the wrong
student when student names are the same and we only have an e-mail address to
distinguish you. Contact your faculty
member to work through these problems.
15. GRADES
As a department we grade on the following scale (some
faculty may use a different scale, but this is the general standard):
A+ 97+
A 93-96
A- 90-92
B+ 87-89
B 83-86
B- 80-82
C+ 77-79
C 73-76
C- 70-72
D+ 67-69
D 63-66
D- 60-62
F below 60
There are several other grades you may receive for a course:
W - student withdrew with a passing average at the point of
withdrawal.
M - student withdrew with a failing average at the point of
withdrawal.
V - failure for excessive absence, defined as missing one
quarter of the assigned class sessions - this is designed for the standard
classroom setting, but your instructor may identify key indicators of absence
that are equivalent. One standard
measure is that our instructors expect participation in the discussion thread
on the course site – failure to participate for an assigned week will be interpreted
as an absence.
I - punitive incomplete - counts as an F if the student does
not immediately make up the missed work within a short period after the course
ends set by the instructor.
Y – non-punitive incomplete - allows the student to make up
incomplete work at a mutually agreed upon time.
Students can use the gradebook feature of Blackboard to see
how they are doing in the course.
However, the gradebook does some odd computations that confuse
everyone. Make sure you understand how
your faculty member is grading for his course so that you can check your
standing.
One standard area of concern among students is how their
work will be graded. Faculty members
tend to post exhaustive explanations of how they grade on the course site. Take the time to read the criteria – if you
use them as a guide it is difficult to go badly wrong.
16. WHAT DO WE
EVALUATE?
In designing courses one of the most difficult issues is to
determine what to evaluate. In general:
… participation in
discussion threads and chat sessions is a course expectation in the same way
that coming to class is an expectation for a campus class. Those that participate in discussion threads
regularly, ask questions, comment in depth on issues, and are engaged, tend to
better understand the material and to perform well in testing.
… multiple choice,
open book examinations that are well designed to test the ability to analyze
situations and apply material taught in the course to their solution clearly do
discriminate between students who have worked to master the material and those
who have not. In some cases faculty
members impose a time limit on these tests.
When you start a test, plan to complete it without leaving – if you back
out of the test, it will generally lock you out, requiring your instructor to
reauthorize your access.
… essay questions on
tests and written papers are used in much the same way as in classroom
courses. One of the features of
Blackboard is the digital dropbox – you should plan to submit all your papers
using the dropbox, as this avoids problems with e-mail systems and keeps the
course material all in one place. Be
sure to use the SUBMIT button when you use the dropbox – the other button
uploads your materials without sending them anywhere.
17. INTERACTION
Our instructors will generally establish a regular sequence
of events. For example, your faculty
member might post the week’s assignments on Sunday at noon every week; have a
quiz every two weeks posted on Wednesday of the week, etc. However, the reality is that heavy use
periods and technical failures do happen, making any schedule somewhat
approximate.
Our faculty will let you know their schedule for reading
your work and replying to it.
… not every comment
requires a reply by a faculty member – each faculty member will generally reply
to substantive comments that address the focus of the discussion, although
those replies may be in a variety of forms: additional information, follow-up
questions, comments relating various replies to each other, counter-arguments,
etc.
… your instructor
may assign discussion questions for the development of a group or class reply
with one student assigned to act as moderator and synthesizer, and reply to
what that student posts as the group response.
… too early a reply
may impose the instructor’s truth on the discussion and stifle student
interaction. When you raise an
interesting issue an instructor may post a short note telling you that the
issue is interesting and they are waiting for more student input.
… we will not reply
to every posting within a set time period – each instructor will set a
reasonable time based on the size and degree of interaction of the class.
… we expect you to
answer questions from personal experience and previous training and from
reference to the readings and other assigned materials. Your comments should show the ability to
synthesize old knowledge, experience, and new knowledge.
Because the course is online you may never see your fellow
students. We encourage you to use the
personal webpage feature of Blackboard to post information on your emergency
services background, where you are in the degree hunt, other interests,
favorite links, etc. We have found some
very unusual shared experiences and interests among students and faculty
through this simple step. We also
encourage a relatively wide ranging conversation on course subjects in the
Blackboard discussion threads – one of the powers of the discussion thread is
that you can continue to discuss an interesting issue in more depth than is
possible in the classroom without disrupting the class.
18. SERVICE LEARNING
AND RESEARCH
Student work is most valuable in its broadest context when
it either contributes to the mission success of the organization of which the
student is a member or when it contributes to knowledge in our discipline. If possible, consider designing projects and
papers in your courses to achieve these objectives.
Service learning projects tie what we teach with specific
applications to the student’s work environment – in our context this can either
be paid employment or volunteer service.
These have proved to be especially successful in such areas as preparing
an organizational annual budget, developing an annex to an emergency operations
plan, writing a standard operating procedure, developing a training exercise,
etc. They put knowledge in a practical
context and give the student and our University greater visibility in the student’s
organization.
Research projects are valuable if they require the
identification of a real problem, review of appropriate literature, formulation
of appropriate methods, collection of data, and analysis and reporting of the
results. Three key issues confront
students and instructors in this process.
First, assigning real research rather than a library based term paper
requires both student and faculty to do significantly more work to produce a
useful product. Second, topics to be
addressed in the context of a 15 week course must be very narrow in scope –
something that it is not immediately obvious to students. Third, any subject that requires interaction
with human subjects (and interviews and questionnaires fit in this category)
requires the approval of the University’s Institutional Review Board – see the
following section.
19. INSTITUTIONAL
REVIEW OF RESEARCH
Federal law provides stringent protection for human subjects
of research. Failure to abide by these
requirements not only violates the law and exposes you to litigation for
damages, but also exposes the University to a loss of federal funding. This is a big deal.
Our program, both at the undergraduate and graduate level
expects that students will do serious original research. This research may require that you interact
with human subjects. Conducting a
telephone or in person interview is such an interaction. So is distributing a questionnaire. As part of the process of designing your
research you must receive the approval of the University’s Institutional Review
Board for any work that will involve these or more extensive contacts with
others.
As a practical matter this approval is not
instantaneous. Therefore, topics and
designs have to be determined, proposed in writing in the appropriate format,
and submitted in the first month of the course if they are to have any chance
of approval in time to do the project.
Do not try to circumvent the Institutional Review Board process – any
student that plans to go on to graduate school needs to know how this works,
because any serious graduate program will require exactly the same thing. Contact your faculty member early in the
course for information on the current schedule for the Board and advice on how
to complete and process the application.
A template for the application is attached to this handbook (see
Attachments 1, 2, 3, and 4).
20. WRITING
Your Emergency Management faculty are not English
teachers. However, given that we are
teaching a future generation of managers, we think it is extremely important
that our graduates be able to organize their thoughts on paper and express them
in a recognizable form of the English language. Once you graduate, your employer will routinely assess these
skills when considering them for specific assignments or promotions.
We do take the time to provide students feedback on their
writing. This does not mean we
will correct every error, but we will
try to give you clear examples to work from in finding and correcting similar
problems throughout your papers. If
you get a paper back with an offer to accept the corrected paper for
reevaluation, take the time to go through the paper carefully to ensure you
give your instructor the best possible product.
Remember that the Writing Center
is available to assist students. A
description of the excellent service they offer can be found at:
http://writing.richmond.edu/writing/owlabout.html
In using the writing center, plan
to request help early. Plan your papers
so that you can submit your work for their assistance well before it is
scheduled to be turned in for your class.
21. LIBRARY FEATURES
Often
we overlook the library because we think it is bricks and mortar facility
filled with paper. Not any longer. The University library is accessed at
http://oncampus.richmond.edu/is/library/ and contains a wide variety of tools
our students need to know about and use.
These include:
Electronic
Resources – a wide variety of indexes to source materials on virtually any
subject. Many of the indices offer full
text versions of articles.
Journal
Locator – includes a wide variety of academic journals, including in many cases
full texts of articles.
Online
Reference Sources – with the standard list of reference books – dictionaries,
encyclopedias, almanacs, etc.
We
also have a new and powerful tool available to increase the materials
available to you as faculty and to your students, NetLibrary. To activate a
NetLibrary account:
To
activate a NetLibrary account:
(1) Go to http://oncampus.richmond.edu
(2) Select Information Services and then Library
(3) Open Online Databases
(4) Pull down through the databases to
NetLibrary
(5) When you select NetLibrary the system will
ask you for your university netid and password
(6) Choose Create an Account in the bottom of
the block on the right hand side for Current Members.
(7) Complete the account information.
(8) Click on Submit.
(9) Read the Terms of Use Agreement.
(10)
Click Accept.
(11) You may be asked to create a different
username if your username if already in use.
You
can either use this same way to access the collection whenever you check in or
you can go direct to http://www.netlibray.com.
Books
are checked out by clicking on the borrow icon. This allows access for the next
2 hours - some books have a 3 day period.
This
gives us an electronic collection of approximately 27,000 volumes, and it
includes a reasonable holding in emergency management and disaster topics.
The
library also may have electronic reserves for your class – documents that have
been scanned and made available for your specific class use. Your instructor will give you added
information on how to access these documents.
22. SUPPORTING SITES
The program’s Academic Support System provides the following
online sources that you can use to help you both as a reference for individual
courses and as a model in building research papers:
… the Disaster
Database Project – an online database of disaster events, including the
full range of large to small, natural to human facilitated, 2002 AD to 2000 BC,
Algeria to Zimbabwe, etc.
https://cygnet.richmond.edu/is/esm/disaster/
Our goal is to eventually capture approximately 5000
events. As of May 2003 we are at 726
disasters.
… Integrated
Emergency Management Benchmark – a reviewed metasite, with links to useful
Internet sites, each link reviewed with a short content summary and a numerical
research value rating.
http://www.richmond.edu/~wgreen/benchmark.htm
Our goal is to capture and maintain approximately 1000
links. As of August 2002 we are at 454
links.
… The Electronic
Encyclopaedia of Civil Defense and Emergency Management – a living online
encyclopedia with entries ranging from the quite insignificant to the
fundamental on a wide variety of topics concerning the history and concepts of
emergency management.
http://www.richmond.edu/~wgreen/encyclopedia.htm
Our goal is to reach 1000 entries. As of October 2002 we are at 58 entries. Student entries are most welcome.
… The Electronic
Journal of Emergency Management – a peer reviewed electronic journal
designed to publish articles in the 5-6 single spaced page range to report
original research and theory development by students and faculty.
http://www.richmond.edu/~wgreen/ejem.htm
Our goal is to add at least three new articles a
semester. If you do good, original
research when you write a course paper, you should submit it to this Journal.
… Notes on the
Science of Extreme Situations – a peer reviewed electronic journal designed
to publish short technical papers documenting current practice and proposing
new subjects for inquiry.
http://www.richmond.edu/~wgreen/notes.htm
Our goal is to add at least five new papers a semester. If you do good, original observation of
current practice as part of a course paper, you should submit it to this
Journal.
… Research Topics
– a page listing topics about which we need to know more and that might be
suitable for student study.
http://www.richmond.edu/~wgreen/research.htm
If you need to know something that is not addressed in one
of the system’s sites, let the Program Director know about it. Something may not appear in time to answer your
question for this semester (especially if this is the last night before a
final), but it will be on the search list for future developments.
Design your projects so they fit within the framework of our
online journals and encyclopedia. We
have models for short studies on very narrow topics (the Electronic
Encyclopedia), technical papers (Notes), and formal research reporting
(Electronic Journal). Designing
projects so their products may fit one of these models helps us by building our
reference collection of properly researched and documented material for both
students and faculty.
Stop throwing out your work at the end of the semester. If you have designed a serious project that
required real research, the knowledge you have developed is of value. It should be published. It is good for you – publication bullets on
the resume are never bad things in and of themselves and make you more
competitive in the job market.
Increasingly undergraduates going on to good graduate schools are being
expected to have participated in research as undergraduates; graduate students
are being expected to have published in their Master’s program in good Master’s
programs.
When you identify a topic that you need to know about, make
sure it is included in the Research Topics list – this will not solve the
problem this semester, but if you had a need, someone else will in the future.
23. GRADES AND
BANNER
The University no longer publishes paper grade slips. Your grades will be available in Banner
after the end of the semester – however, there is always a week or so delay as
the Registrar’s Office needs time to upload and check the grades for every
course on campus.
24. COURSE
EVALUATION
Your course will have an electronic midterm evaluation
posted on the course site. This is for
the use of your instructor and gives you a chance to give feedback at a point
when the instructor can still modify his or her approach to better meet your
needs. The mid term evaluation, even
though done on the site, does not identify the source of comments or ratings.
We also centrally conduct end of course evaluations. These are important, and your comments are
taken seriously by both the individual faculty members and by the Program
Director. Because we do take the
comments seriously, please think about what you are saying and make your
comments constructive.
We also do a voluntary annual written evaluation of our
graduates based on all of the competencies included in our program – this data
is very important in helping us assess whether our graduates actually know what
they are supposed to know when they graduate.
We also have a formal peer editorial review process and a
teaching peer review that examines both the content and structure of courses
and our faculty’s teaching as a part of our efforts to continuously improve the
standard of online teaching.
25. ANNUAL PROGRAM
EVALUATION BY GRADUATES
Each year, three months after graduation in August, we ask
our graduates to help us evaluate the knowledge they have gained in the program. This evaluation is a multiple choice
instrument that asks questions about every core competency for the
program. We evaluate the results to
determine (1) how well our graduates as a group retain information taught, (2)
how well core competencies are being stressed throughout the program and
reinforced in classes, (3) and to what degree knowledge retention and student
satisfaction coincide. We are the only
program at the University that does this evaluation, and we think it is
absolutely critical to our ability to deliver a quality program. Your participation after you graduate is
greatly appreciated.
26. CAN I ACTUALLY
GET A JOB DOING THIS?
Yes – our graduates are hired by state and local government
and by businesses. There are a number of
things that you can do to make yourself more competitive in a job market
glutted with instant experts after 11 September 2003. The following are some thoughts based on my experiences, and
those of others, that may be of some use to individuals thinking about a career
in emergency management.
(1) Get a college degree. An Associate’s is better than
nothing, a Bachelor’s is better than an Associate’s, and in the next twenty
years a Master’s will be better than a Bachelor’s. Degrees in emergency
management, followed closely by degrees in any of the emergency services
disciplines, obviously are a good thing, but political science, public
administration, or management are also good. Any degree is better than no
degree. And working on a degree is better than not working on one.
(1)(a) If you do
look at additional education, look for the most demanding program, not the
easiest or cheapest. There are any
number of programs where you can get a university degree based on Federal
Emergency Management Agency independent study or field delivery courses. These are excellent courses, but they are
training courses designed to teach you how to do things a standard way. Education is about learning how to analyze
situations and solutions and find better answers, not merely repeating the
doctrine of the day. The easiest
solution gets you a degree quickly, but it does not give you the skills you
need to be successful in the long run of a career.
(1)(b) Understand
that in some organizations college degrees are considered a waste of time that
should have been spent doing the important job of serving the citizens. It should be obvious that an organization
that does not value better educated and better prepared managers is not a healthy
place to work, and is almost certainly one stuck in the 1600s after having been
drug forward screaming and kicking from the year 1000. There are some jobs you do not want because
you will never be able to make a meaningful contribution …
(2) Not all emergency management jobs are in emergency
management agencies; not all business continuity jobs are in private industry.
I worked as an emergency manager for a state health department. State
transportation departments often have large, technologically advanced,
emergency management programs. Positions
exist at the federal, state, and local levels in a surprising variety of
agencies.
(2)(a) Be willing to
move. If the emergency manager in your
jurisdiction is 15 years away from retirement and the office is a one person
shop, you do not have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that it will be a
long wait.
(2)(b) Conduct your
job hunt globally. Use all of the
available tools, including regularly looking for position announcements online
at target agencies on the Internet, using the Sunday newspapers at any large
public library (which will often provide you national coverage), networking
with friends in different parts of the country you met through online courses
here, using professional association job sites, etc.
(3) Get an e-mail address, some good basic stationery, and
simple business cards (black and white with name, address, phone, and e-mail is
fine). Do not use your work address for job hunting. And do not use your work business cards for job hunting – have a
card (or several different ones) that lets you best target specific potential
employers with your related credentials.
Plan to keep the e-mail address you get forever – changing e-mail
address to get free service every month almost guarantees you will never get
the job announcement for the ideal job that was sent to your address of two
months ago by a friend. And don’t get a cute e-mail address –
wonderstud@whatever.com or cutensexy@whatever.com might impress your friends,
but it is death in the electronic job hunt.
Your name works real well. If
you have an e-mail account at work, do not use that for job hunting.
(4) Take Federal Emergency Management Agency Independent
Study courses. They are free, provide a good basic grounding in the doctrine
and terminology of the discipline, and may count toward professional
certification.
(5) Volunteer. In public safety volunteering has a long
tradition of serving as a stepping stone toward paid positions. Remembering
that emergency managers are multi-discipline and multi-task in their
orientation, try to build a broad range of experiences that will give you a set
of skills applicable to many different problems. Being a hazmat guru or the best paramedic in the business may get
you in some doors, but it does not get you in every door and can be seen as
being one dimensional. So find
opportunities:
(5)(a) Every major religious denomination has a disaster
response program – an excellent way to learn about Voluntary Organizations
Active in Disaster and to learn about the nitty-gritty of recovery operations.
(5)(b) The Red Cross is always looking for volunteers – Red
Cross training really only applies to Red Cross activity, but you can learn
about sheltering, mass feeding, and emergency disaster assistance.
(5)(c) If you are an amateur radio operator, join the
Amateur Radio Emergency Service and get active in emergency communications. If
you are not, consider earning an amateur license.
(5)(d) The Civil Air Patrol and a variety of community based
teams do search and rescue, an excellent way to learn about large incident
management and extended operations.
(5)(e) If you have a volunteer fire background, consider
broadening it to include volunteer emergency medical services – and vice versa.
(5)(f) Look around for other opportunities. For example, I
lead a volunteer run online electronic emergency operations center which is on
the cutting edge of how the Internet is being used for emergency management.
There are a wide range of animal rescue, stress management, young lawyers,
massage therapy, funeral directors, etc. groups that do an equally wide variety
of disaster tasks. Browse Volunteer Match or idealist.org on the Internet to
see what is out there.
(5)(g) Contact your local or state emergency management
office and see if they have a volunteer or reservist program.
(6) When you volunteer, look for organizations that have
leadership opportunities. Volunteering is a good thing – volunteering where you
can gain the specific types of experiences you will need to manage an emergency
management program is even better. Emergency managers worry about budgets,
emergency operations plans, standard operating procedures, personnel position
descriptions, employee supervision, developing and teaching training classes,
etc. You have a leg up on the competition when during the interview you are
asked “have you ever done so and so” and you can answer “yes” and pull a copy
of the budget, plan, syllabus, or whatever, out of your briefcase and drop it
on the table.
(7) Join the professional associations and go to meetings.
Most states have state emergency management associations, typically with an
annual meeting. The U. S. national association is the International Association
of Emergency Managers. The specialist organization for technology people is
SALEMDUG. If you are involved in volunteer organizations, your state has a
state Voluntary Organizations Active in Disasters organization. Many major
metropolitan areas have business continuity professional associations. And after you join, and go to a meeting,
contact the leadership and volunteer to help. Your offer may be ignored, but if
it is welcomed, you will be on your way to becoming a known person. Just being
a member is worthless on a resume – being a committee member or chair means
something. It may take years to get there, so start working today.
(8) Find out what training your state offers. Contact the
state training officer, obtain a calendar, and find out about the course
application procedures. Start working on the Professional Development Series
and the Advanced Practices Series.
(9) Start working on professional certification. About half
the states in the US offer emergency management certification. If your state
does, find out what the requirements are and start working on them. If your
state does not, check out other state programs - Virginia, for example, will
certify anyone who meets requirements. There are national level certifications
as well – the Certified Emergency Manager by IAEM – and specialist
certifications, the Certified Technologist in Emergency Management by SALEMDUG
and the Certified Crisis Operations Manager, both administered by the
University of Richmond. In business
continuity there are three major certifications, including the Certified
Recovery Planner hosted at the University of Richmond.
(10) In this process, if you find out that a jurisdiction is
conducting a disaster exercise, offer to help in any capacity they need help.
Often there will be a need for observers and evaluators to do very specific
things that do not require a broad background – jump at the opportunity to
participate.
(11) Always remember that everything you do is preparation
for the job and that everything you say and how you act conveys to potential peers
or employers your suitability to be part of the team. Be humble. Keep an open
mind. Don’t be an expert. And learn from everything you do.
(12) A special word
about military experience – emergency management agencies were once heavily
populated by retired military personnel.
Military experience as your only background is seen in many areas as
being a negative – it is related to the old days of Civil Defense, duck and
cover, a bomb shelter in the backyard, Cold War thinking, etc. As a retired Air Force officer with a strong
civilian background in the field, I know that is all rot, but a word to the
wise – build as strong a civilian set of current credentials as you can to go
with the military background you might have as a Readiness (I still think “disaster
preparedness”) or Chemical Corps veteran.
How the war on terror will influence this is yet to be seen.
Published by the Emergency
Services Management Degree Program
at the School of Continuing
Studies at the University of Richmond
for the use of its students.
Editor - Walter G. Green III,
Ph.D.
Attachment 1 – IRB Application:
APPLICATION
FOR APPROVAL OF RESEARCH
INSTITUTIONAL
REVIEW BOARD FOR THE PROTECTION OF RESEARCH PARTICIPANTS
Name: your name Date: today’s
date
Position: Student
Address: your
mailing address
Title of Study: your
project title
Anticipated Completion Date of Research: month of semester end
Category (Check one):
UR Faculty Research
[ ]
Student Research
[xx]
Student Classroom Exercise [ ]
Outside Investigator Using UR Facilities or Data [
]
Does this study involve any procedures likely to produce
physical or psychological stress or harm?
Yes [ ]
No [xx]
Do any aspects of this study make it difficult to preserve co