Title: The experiences of New Orleans college administrators, faculty and students during and following Hurricane Katrina

Authors: Sandra J. Hartman, Olof H. Lundberg

Addresses: Department of Management, University of New Orleans, New Orleans, LA 70148, USA. ' Department of Management, University of New Orleans, New Orleans, LA 70148, USA

Abstract: We provide a preliminary report on the Hurricane Katrina-related experiences of New Orleans-based college administrators, faculty and approximately 300 business students. What can be learned about the issues centring upon the role of the university in a disaster situation? We draw upon the work of Donahue and O|Keefe (2007), which emphasised the need for universities to fulfil a support function while, at the same time, retaining emphasis upon the academic mission. Our emphasis is on the role of online instruction as a vehicle for meeting both sets of needs. We discuss the academic aspects of online teaching with examples from an online course.

Keywords: online learning; online instruction; disaster management; Hurricane Katrina; natural disasters; e-learning; electronic learning; business students; university role; support function; academic mission; emergency management; higher education.

DOI: 10.1504/IJIL.2009.026646

International Journal of Innovation and Learning, 2009 Vol.6 No.6, pp.593 - 605

Published online: 22 Jun 2009 *

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