What is it about?
Traditional instructional design models assume the world is stable, but emergencies like pandemics, weather disasters, or grid failures, shatter that stability. In this paper, we argue that instead of panic-reacting with a knee-jerk move to online delivery, institutions must treat emergencies as a unique design context. It introduces a practical framework (the CATES tool) to systematically evaluate three things before changing how we teach: Infrastructure, Human Capacity, and Logistics.
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Why is it important?
This paper is important because it forces Instructional Design to rethink the instructional context as a stable context and prepares us for an increasingly unpredictable world. It stops the knee-jerk reflex to just throw everything online during a crisis, focusing instead on whether students and teachers actually have the technical, physical, and emotional capacity to handle it. Ultimately, it provides a practical blueprint to replace chaotic, panic-driven reactions with smart, resilient design.
Perspectives
This paper represents a rewarding collaboration with my co-authors, based on an ongoing dialogue we’ve shared since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and our popular paper on Emergency Remote Teaching (https://er.educause.edu/articles/2020/3/the-difference-between-emergency-remote-teaching-and-online-learning). Since the pandemic, as we witnessed subsequent natural disasters and human-created disruptions, it became clear that the field needed to move past reactive triage. Writing this was an opportunity to synthesize those years of shared reflection into a practical framework for systemic resilience.
Professor of Instructional Technology Charles B. Hodges
Georgia Southern University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Emergencies and interruptions as critical context: Instructional design and educational technology planning for crisis and disrupted conditions, The Open/Technology in Education Society and Scholarship Association Journal, July 2026, University of Victoria Libraries,
DOI: 10.18357/otessaj.2025.5.2.114.
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