[BCM] [JCUS] [E3] [BIA] [DP] CBF [1] Teaching and Learning Delivery

CBF-1 Teaching and Learning Delivery

Teaching and Learning Delivery is a core Critical Business Function (CBF) of James Cook University Singapore (JCUS).

It encompasses the operational activities required to prepare, schedule, deliver, support, and complete teaching activities so that students can continue progressing through their programmes.

From a Business Continuity Management perspective, identifying Teaching and Learning Delivery as a single high-level CBF is insufficient for detailed Business Impact Analysis.

A disruption rarely affects every component of teaching in the same way.

For example, a campus-access disruption may prevent face-to-face lectures while digital teaching remains available; an authentication outage may affect online learning even though classrooms remain operational; or the absence of specialist academic staff may disproportionately affect laboratory or practical sessions.

The CBF should therefore be decomposed into its constituent Sub-Critical Business Functions (Sub-CBFs). Each Sub-CBF represents a distinct operational process that contributes to the end-to-end delivery of teaching and learning.

For JCUS, the proposed decomposition begins with academic teaching requirements and timetable preparation, progresses through preparation and delivery of different teaching modes, and concludes with attendance, learning support, disruption management, and completion of teaching activities.

This decomposition provides the operational foundation for subsequent BIA activities, including determining dependencies, impacts over time, Maximum Tolerable Periods of Disruption (MTPDs), Recovery Time Objectives (RTOs), Minimum Business Continuity Objectives (MBCOs), minimum resource requirements, and continuity strategies.

Implementation note: The Sub-CBFs below are a proposed BCM decomposition based on the operating requirements of a university environment. Validate them with the relevant JCUS academic and administrative process owners before formal adoption.

Table D1: Sub-Critical Business Functions & Processes for CBF-1

Sub-CBF Code	Sub-Critical Business Function	Description of Process / Activity	Example (JCUS Context)
1.1	Determine Teaching Delivery Requirements	Identify the teaching activities that must be delivered for the relevant study period, including lectures, tutorials, workshops, practical sessions, laboratories, and other scheduled learning activities. Derive requirements from approved academic programmes, subjects, enrolments, and academic calendars.	Before the start of a teaching period, JCUS determines the classes and learning activities required for the subjects being offered.
1.2	Confirm Subject and Class Offerings	Confirm which subjects and classes will operate during the academic period and identify the expected teaching format, frequency, and delivery requirements.	JCUS confirms which subjects will be delivered during the trimester and the classes required for enrolled students.
1.3	Determine Student Teaching Demand	Establish expected student numbers and class demand using enrolment and registration information so that appropriate teaching capacity can be provided.	Use enrolment information to determine whether additional tutorial groups or teaching capacity are required.
1.4	Allocate Academic Teaching Staff	Assign appropriately qualified academic personnel to lectures, tutorials, laboratories, workshops, and other teaching activities, including consideration of substitutes or deputies where required.	A lecturer is assigned responsibility for a subject while tutors or other academic personnel are allocated to individual class groups.
1.5	Develop and Maintain Teaching Timetable	Develop the operational timetable showing when classes will occur, their delivery mode, teaching personnel, and required facilities. Maintain the timetable when academic or operational circumstances change.	JCUS schedules a lecture for a defined time and location and updates the timetable if the class must be relocated or rescheduled.
1.6	Allocate Teaching Rooms and Facilities	Allocate classrooms, seminar rooms, laboratories, or specialist facilities according to class size, teaching method, accessibility, and equipment requirements.	Allocate a practical class requiring specialist equipment to an appropriate teaching or laboratory facility rather than a standard classroom.
1.7	Prepare Teaching and Learning Materials	Develop, review, and prepare lecture materials, readings, exercises, practical instructions, and other resources required to deliver scheduled teaching.	An academic prepares lecture slides, readings, and tutorial exercises before the relevant teaching week.
1.8	Publish Digital Learning Materials	Make approved teaching materials and subject information available through the designated digital learning environment and ensure students can access the resources required for learning.	Upload lecture materials and weekly learning resources to the relevant subject site before or during the scheduled teaching period.
1.9	Prepare Teaching Technology and Classroom Resources	Confirm availability of classroom technology, computers, audiovisual equipment, network connectivity, specialist software, and other resources required for delivery.	Before a technology-dependent class, check the availability of required classroom equipment, network connection, and software.
1.10	Deliver Face-to-Face Lectures and Classes	Conduct scheduled physical teaching activities in accordance with approved academic requirements and timetables.	Students attend a scheduled lecture or tutorial at the JCUS campus and receive instruction from the assigned academic staff member.
1.11	Deliver Online or Remote Teaching	Conduct teaching using approved digital platforms when the subject is designed for online delivery or when remote delivery is activated as an alternative arrangement.	If physical access to campus is temporarily unavailable, an appropriate lecturer may deliver remotely using approved digital teaching arrangements.
1.12	Deliver Hybrid Teaching Activities	Coordinate teaching where students or academic staff participate through a combination of physical and digital arrangements.	Deliver a teaching activity from an available teaching location while authorised participants join remotely.
1.13	Deliver Tutorials, Workshops, and Interactive Learning	Conduct smaller-group learning activities involving discussion, problem-solving, group work, demonstrations, or other interactive teaching methods.	A tutorial group works through subject exercises with an assigned tutor, either on campus or through an approved alternative arrangement.
1.14	Deliver Laboratory and Practical Teaching	Conduct teaching activities that depend on specialist facilities, equipment, controlled environments, physical materials, or supervised practical work.	A practical subject requires students to use designated laboratory or specialist teaching facilities under appropriate academic supervision.
1.15	Provide Academic Consultation and Learning Guidance	Provide subject-related guidance, clarification, and consultation to students outside formal class delivery, as required, to support learning continuity.	A student requiring clarification of subject material receives guidance from the relevant lecturer or tutor through an available consultation channel.
1.16	Monitor Student Attendance and Participation	Record and monitor attendance or participation, as required for academic, programme, regulatory, or student-support purposes, and identify significant exceptions requiring follow-up.	Record attendance for a designated class, and refer significant non-participation through the appropriate academic or student-support process.
1.17	Monitor Teaching Delivery and Class Completion	Confirm that scheduled teaching activities have occurred and identify cancelled, interrupted, or incomplete classes requiring corrective action.	Identify a class cancelled because the lecturer becomes unexpectedly unavailable for rescheduling or alternative delivery.
1.18	Manage Academic Staff Unavailability	Respond when assigned teaching personnel become unavailable by identifying substitutes, reallocating duties, rescheduling classes, or implementing another approved arrangement.	If a lecturer is unexpectedly absent, JCUS determines whether another qualified academic can deliver the class or whether to reschedule it.
1.19	Manage Teaching Facility Disruption	Respond when classrooms, laboratories, or other teaching facilities become unavailable by reallocating rooms, moving activities, rescheduling, or changing delivery modes.	Replace a classroom affected by a building-services failure with another suitable teaching room with available capacity.
1.20	Manage Digital Learning or ICT Disruption	Coordinate continuation of teaching when learning platforms, networks, authentication, classroom technology, or related ICT services become unavailable.	If a digital learning service becomes unavailable, academics use approved alternative communication or teaching arrangements until normal service is restored.
1.21	Communicate Teaching Changes to Students and Staff	Provide accurate and timely information about class cancellations, relocations, rescheduling, alternative delivery arrangements, and the restoration of normal teaching.	Advise students that an affected class has moved online or been relocated to another teaching room.
1.22	Provide Accessible and Alternative Teaching Arrangements	Implement appropriate alternative arrangements for students who cannot participate through the normal delivery mechanism because of an approved accessibility, disruption, or continuity requirement.	Provide alternative access to learning material or an appropriate teaching arrangement when the normal method is temporarily unavailable to affected students.
1.23	Prioritise Teaching During Major Disruption	Determine which teaching activities should continue first when available people, facilities, or technology cannot support the full teaching timetable.	During a prolonged campus disruption, JCUS prioritises time-sensitive or progression-critical teaching, while temporarily deferring or rescheduling lower-priority activities.
1.24	Recover Missed or Interrupted Teaching	Identify teaching activities that were not completed during a disruption and implement catch-up, replacement, revised timetable, or alternative delivery arrangements.	Reschedule a practical class cancelled because a specialist facility was unavailable once an appropriate facility becomes available.
1.25	Reconcile and Confirm Teaching Completion	Confirm that required teaching activities have been delivered, recovered, or formally addressed, and maintain appropriate records of significant deviations.	At the end of a disrupted teaching period, review affected classes to confirm that required replacement teaching has been completed or appropriately resolved.
1.26	Return Teaching Operations to Normal	Transition from temporary continuity arrangements to normal teaching operations in a controlled manner, including communicating restoration arrangements and resolving outstanding activities.	After campus access is restored, remotely delivered classes transition back to the approved normal delivery arrangements according to the revised timetable.

End-to-End Process Structure

The 26 Sub-CBFs can be grouped into six operational stages to make the decomposition easier to apply during the BIA.

Operational Stage	Sub-CBFs	BCM Purpose
Teaching Planning	1.1–1.6	Determine what must be delivered, to whom, by whom, when, and where.
Teaching Preparation	1.7–1.9	Ensure materials, platforms, facilities, and technology are ready.
Teaching Delivery	1.10–1.14	Deliver physical, digital, hybrid, and specialist teaching activities.
Learning and Delivery Support	1.15–1.17	Support students and monitor whether planned teaching is occurring.
Disruption and Continuity Management	1.18–1.24	Maintain priority teaching when people, premises, or technology are disrupted and recover missed activities.
Completion and Normalisation	1.25–1.26	Reconcile outstanding teaching and transition from continuity arrangements to normal operations.

This structure is important because different stages may have materially different continuity requirements.

For example, a temporary interruption of timetable preparation several months before a trimester may have a different impact profile from the loss of teaching capability during a live teaching week.

Similarly, loss of laboratory capability may have greater continuity implications for a practical class than for a lecture that can reasonably be transferred to an approved remote-delivery method.

Key Dependencies of the Sub-CBFs

The decomposition also exposes dependencies that should be analysed during the BIA rather than treating CBF-1 as a self-contained function.

People

Teaching delivery depends on appropriately qualified academic staff, tutors, programme leadership, and administrative support.

Specialist subjects may create greater dependence on particular personnel or competencies.

Premises

Physical delivery depends on safe access to suitable classrooms, seminar rooms, laboratories, and specialist facilities. The required facility depends on the nature of the teaching activity.

Technology

Digital and hybrid delivery can depend on:

learning platforms;
network connectivity;
authentication and identity services;
classroom audiovisual technology;
computers and specialist software;
telecommunications; and
remote-access capabilities.

Information

Critical information may include:

teaching timetables;
class lists;
student enrolment information;
teaching materials;
subject information;
academic calendars;
contact information; and
records of completed or disrupted teaching.

Internal Dependencies

CBF-1 has particularly important relationships with other JCUS Critical Business Functions, including:

Supporting / Related CBF	Relationship to CBF-1
CBF-3 Student Enrolment, Registration and Academic Progression	Provides information concerning enrolled students and academic participation requirements.
CBF-4 Student Records and Academic Results Management	Provides essential academic and student information.
CBF-5 Critical Digital Learning and Academic Platforms	Supports digital learning content and online teaching.
CBF-6 Critical ICT Infrastructure, Identity and Connectivity	Enables network, authentication, and digital access.
CBF-7 Student Safety, Welfare, and Critical Support	Supports students affected by disruptions or other critical circumstances.
CBF-8 Campus Safety, Security, and Essential Facilities	Enables safe access to physical teaching facilities.
CBF-12 Critical University Communications and Crisis Information	Supports large-scale communication during significant disruptions.
CBF-13 Library and Essential Academic Information Resources	Provides resources required for teaching and learning.
CBF-14 Critical Research and Specialist Laboratory Operations	May share specialist facilities, personnel or equipment with practical teaching activities.

Incorporate these relationships into dependency mapping and continuity strategy development.

Using the Sub-CBF Catalogue in the Business Impact Analysis

The principal value of decomposing CBF-1 is that JCUS can conduct the BIA at a level where meaningful recovery requirements can actually be determined.

Each Sub-CBF should therefore be assessed against at least the following BIA considerations:

BIA Consideration	Question for JCUS
Impact over time	What happens if this process cannot be performed for 2 hours, 1 day, 3 days, 1 week, or longer?
Time sensitivity	Does the criticality of the process change during particular points in the academic calendar?
MTPD	At what point would continued disruption create unacceptable consequences?
RTO	By when should the process be resumed to avoid reaching the MTPD?
MBCO	What minimum level of the process must be maintained or restored during disruption?
People	What is the minimum number and competency of personnel required?
Technology	Which applications, systems, and connectivity are essential?
Information	What information must remain available and trustworthy?
Premises	Does the process require a physical teaching or specialist facility?
Suppliers	Which external providers are essential to the process?
Alternative arrangements	Can the activity be performed differently during disruption?
Backlog	How much deferred work can accumulate before recovery becomes difficult or unacceptable?

This process-level assessment is particularly important for Teaching and Learning Delivery because not every teaching activity necessarily requires the same recovery solution.

For example, a conventional lecture may potentially be relocated or delivered remotely. A specialist practical activity may require equipment, facilities, and supervision that cannot readily be replicated remotely.

Consequently, the two activities may belong to the same CBF while requiring very different continuity strategies.

Relationship with Risk Assessment

The Sub-CBF catalogue also provides a more precise basis for applying the JCUS Threat Register developed during Risk Analysis and Review.

For example:

Threat Scenario	Potentially Affected Sub-CBFs	Continuity Question
Campus inaccessible	1.6, 1.10, 1.13, 1.14	Which teaching activities can move to alternative facilities or remote delivery?
Lecturer unavailable	1.4, 1.10–1.15, 1.18	Is suitably qualified replacement teaching capacity available?
Learning platform outage	1.8, 1.11, 1.12, 1.20	What learning material and teaching can continue without the primary platform?
Network or authentication failure	1.9, 1.11, 1.12, 1.20	Which teaching processes become inaccessible, and what alternatives exist?
Fire affecting teaching facilities	1.6, 1.10, 1.13, 1.14, 1.19	What alternative teaching capacity is available?
Public transport disruption	1.10, 1.13, 1.14	Can affected teaching be delayed, relocated, or delivered remotely?
Pandemic/widespread illness	1.4, 1.10–1.15, 1.18, 1.22, 1.23	Can teaching continue with reduced staff and physical attendance?
Cyberattack	1.8, 1.9, 1.11, 1.12, 1.20, 1.21	Can teaching continue while affected systems are isolated or recovered?

This allows risk assessment to move beyond the general statement that a cyberattack or campus closure would "affect teaching."

Instead, JCUS can identify exactly which processes are exposed and which dependencies or vulnerabilities create the disruption.

Relationship with Business Continuity Strategy

The decomposition of CBF-1 should subsequently inform the selection of Business Continuity Strategies.

Potential strategy categories include:

People strategies may include cross-training, designated substitutes, alternative academic personnel, and succession arrangements for key teaching roles.

Premises strategies may include alternative classrooms, relocation, reciprocal arrangements, temporary facilities, or remote delivery.

Technology strategies may include resilient digital learning platforms, alternative communication mechanisms, recovery capability, redundant connectivity, and pre-defined offline arrangements.

Information strategies may include protected teaching materials, accessible class information, backup copies, and alternative access to essential academic information.

Supplier strategies may include service-level requirements, alternative providers, and contingency arrangements for externally provided technology or specialist resources.

The strategy selected for each Sub-CBF should be sufficient to achieve its approved MBCO and RTO rather than simply restoring normal operations as quickly as technically possible.

Relationship with Business Continuity Plan Development

The Sub-CBF structure provides a practical foundation for developing the Teaching and Learning Business Continuity Plan.

The plan can identify:

Trigger: What has become unavailable?

Affected Sub-CBF: Which teaching process is disrupted?

Continuity requirement: What minimum activity must continue?

Response: Which continuity strategy should be activated?

Resources: What people, premises, technology, and information are required?

Communication: Who needs to know?

Recovery: How will missed teaching be recovered?

Normalisation: When and how will the temporary arrangement end?

For example, loss of campus access should not simply trigger a generic instruction to "move teaching online."

The response should distinguish between lectures that can be delivered remotely, interactive activities requiring modification, practical activities requiring specialist facilities and teaching that may legitimately be deferred and recovered later.

Decomposing CBF-1 Teaching and Learning Delivery into Sub-Critical Business Functions gives James Cook University Singapore a detailed operational view of how it delivers and sustains teaching.

The proposed 26 Sub-CBFs cover the complete continuity lifecycle of the function: determining teaching requirements, allocating staff and facilities, preparing materials and technology, delivering different forms of teaching, supporting students, monitoring completion, managing disruption, recovering missed activities, and returning to normal operations.

This process decomposition strengthens several components of the JCUS BCM programme.

The Business Impact Analysis enables recovery requirements to be established at the level where impacts and dependencies can be meaningfully assessed.

The Risk Assessment maps specific threats to the processes, resources, and vulnerabilities they could disrupt.

For Business Continuity Strategy development, it helps JCUS determine which combinations of people, premises, technology, information, and third-party arrangements are required to maintain minimum teaching capability.

For Business Continuity Plan development, it provides the operational processes around which disruption procedures, alternative arrangements, responsibilities, and recovery actions can be structured.

For operational resilience planning, the decomposition reveals the interconnections between Teaching and Learning Delivery and supporting services such as digital learning platforms, ICT infrastructure, student records, campus facilities, communications, and academic resources.

The next stage of the BIA should therefore assess each approved Sub-CBF against its impact over time, MTPD, RTO, MBCO, minimum resource requirements, and key dependencies.

This will allow JCUS to distinguish activities that require rapid continuation from those that can be temporarily deferred, relocated, substituted, or recovered later.

eBook 3: Starting Your BCM Implementation
MBCO	P&S	RAR T1	RAR T2	RAR T3	BCS T1	CBF

CBF-1 Teaching and Learning Delivery
DP	BIAQ P1	BIAQ P2	BIAQ P3	BIAQ P4	BIAQ P5	BIAQ P6

		BCS T2	BCS T3	PD

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Institutional Resilience in Action: Business Continuity Management Implementation at JCU Singapore

[BCM] [JCUS] [E3] [BIA] [DP] CBF [1] Teaching and Learning Delivery

Business Continuity Management Certified Planner-Specialist-Expert

CBF-1 Teaching and Learning Delivery

End-to-End Process Structure

Key Dependencies of the Sub-CBFs

People

Premises

Technology

Information

Internal Dependencies

Using the Sub-CBF Catalogue in the Business Impact Analysis

Relationship with Risk Assessment

Relationship with Business Continuity Strategy

Relationship with Business Continuity Plan Development

More Information About Business Continuity Management Courses

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Institutional Resilience in Action: Business Continuity Management Implementation at JCU Singapore

[BCM] [JCUS] [E3] [BIA] [DP] CBF [1] Teaching and Learning Delivery

Business Continuity Management Certified Planner-Specialist-Expert

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CBF-1 Teaching and Learning Delivery

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End-to-End Process Structure

Key Dependencies of the Sub-CBFs

People

Premises

Technology

Information

Internal Dependencies

Using the Sub-CBF Catalogue in the Business Impact Analysis

Relationship with Risk Assessment

Relationship with Business Continuity Strategy

Relationship with Business Continuity Plan Development

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