DSU cancels classes after Web failure

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Dickinson State University experienced an Internet outage Wednesday, causing interactive television classes to be canceled at DSU as well as Bismarck State College.

Marty Odermann-Gardner, director of extended campus at DSU, said Internet services were down from about noon until about 4:15 p.m.

DSU student Chandra Christmann was attempting to wrap up this semester’s affairs when the Internet was down.

“I had a final to open up today but I couldn’t access it,” Christmann said. “I have until Sunday but I just wanted to get it done and over with. I have classes on Web CT that I couldn’t access.”

Odermann-Gardner said 10 ITV classes were canceled throughout the day due to the outage.

“Bismarck State College as well as Dickinson State University were both affected by this,” Odermann-Gardner said. “There was an outage and they worked well and very quickly to get us all back.”

Online classes would also have been blocked out during the outage, Odermann-Gardner said.

“We had to make some calls for those night classes so students wouldn’t be driving in,” she said.

Odermann-Gardner said ITV classes have an online component so instructors can send information to students to make up the work.

“I cannot verify how many colleges were affected,” she said. “Normally we might have just e-mailed the students, but we couldn’t e-mail when the Internet was down.”

DSU updated their Web site with a notice of the outage prior to it being fixed.

“The person who does the Web updates went home and did it from his home in order for it to be up there,” Odermann-Gardner said, adding the person also did a notification of students from his home. “Technology is great one way or the other and there’s work-arounds and the university is very nimble at finding those so we are able to connect with students and get the information out.”

Tags: news, local, dsu, internet