With the advent of bad weather questions always arise regarding how off-campus class cancellations due to inclement weather and other events affecting sites will be handled. To prepare you (and your students) for these events the Office of Distance Education is providing the standard procedures below. Please note that site closures and class cancellations due only to inclement weather will be posted on the Inclement Weather Cancellations & Closures page. The site is not for notification to students of routine class cancellations which are the responsibility of the faculty instructor. This link is also available via the announcements section of the distance education homepage (www.distance.appstate.edu).

• When an extension site has a delayed opening, Appalachian extension courses may resume, at the instructor’s discretion, at the time the facility opens. They will end at the scheduled time. Faculty are responsible for communicating their plans to their students.
• If Appalachian State University is closed due to inclement weather, classes are assumed to be cancelled at all sites that day/evening. Faculty who are scheduled to teach at off-campus sites (if they are open) and wish to hold their classes despite the university closure are responsible for notifying both their students and the site that they will be holding the class as scheduled.
• If an off-campus site/facility is unexpectedly closed for any reason, Distance Education classes will not be held at that site/facility that day/evening. Distance Education often makes arrangement to have sites open for the ASU classes during the site's calendared closures.
• When ASU’s Office of Distance Education has been informed that a site is closed, the closure notice will be posted to the Site Closure/Class Cancellation web page (http://extension.appstate.edu/cancellations.php). Faculty may also wish to check the host facility/site’s website/posting or the local TV/Radio stations for the latest closing information specific to that site.
• Faculty and students should check (and refresh) the webpage (http://extension.appstate.edu/cancellations.php) during the day for the latest updates on site closures. Due to the number of courses and faculty, phone calls and emails regarding such closures will not be sent to individual faculty members. Faculty who are unable to access the web may call Distance Ed. at 262-3113 to inquire about their specific site (in the event that the phone is not answered, voicemail is monitored and calls will be returned promptly).
• If the off-campus site is open but the faculty member wishes to cancel his/her specific class (due to travel or other prohibitive conditions) the faculty member must notify the Distance Education Office a minimum of 3 hours prior to time for class and contact his/her students. The faculty member should contact the Distance Education Office (main number is 262-3113), so that the message is certain to be received (program managers are often away from the office and the receipt of messages left for them may be delayed). The faculty member is responsible for contacting his/her students in whatever way he/she conveyed to the students at the beginning of the term. The Distance Education Office will notify the site and will post the cancellation to the website, but the contact to students is expected to be made by the faculty member.

Faculty members can prepare for class cancellations by taking the following steps:

1. Convey the pertinent information above to students on the first class day and as needed throughout the term.
2. Inform students about the procedure the faculty member will use to notify them of a class cancellation. Many cohorts have established phone trees which make communicating with them quick and easy.
3. Contact the Office of Distance Education at 828-262-3113 if they have any questions or concerns about distance education class cancellations.