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MIT moves all classes online for the rest of the semester

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Re: MIT moves all classes online for the rest of the semester

#291

Post by JabavuAdams »

grimjack00 wrote: post #106
TeMPOraL wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They might still get quarantined. Given the state of testing in the US, who knows if few days from now they won't discover there was a carrier on the campus.

> who knows if few days from now they won't discover there was a carrier on the campus. And by that time, most of the student body (with who knows how many asymptomatic carriers) will have been widely dispersed.

I'm guessing part of the rationale is that there is no way to contain this in the US. It's going to go around. But, spreading it out in time and space will reduce the chance that local health infrastructure will become saturated, resulting in more deaths. Basically hospital load-balancing.

Re: MIT moves all classes online for the rest of the semester

#292

Post by eternalban »

kyeb wrote: post #167
generationP wrote: post #144

> Undergraduates who live in an MIT residence or fraternity, sorority or independent living group (FSILG) must begin packing and departing this Saturday, March 14. We are requiring undergraduates to depart from campus residences no later than noon on Tuesday, March 17. This is strange. Isn't the travel they are forcing quite possibly a cure worse than the disease? And are they really expecting students (many of them…

>In what way are dorms worse than personal homes for diseases anyway? Are they not trusting their students to prepare their own food? Why don't they just close the dining halls instead? The dorms have shared bathrooms, often shared rooms with doubles, triples, and quads, and shared living spaces (lounges, study rooms, laundry, etc.) in addition to the dining halls. Moreover, in our dorms, we have effectively no way t…

> Nobody on campus has tested positive yet (as far as we know)

Have any been tested? How many have been tested?

I am not sure how one determines "risk" (?) with this asymptomatically contagious disease that lingers on surfaces and can travel in aerosal form a few meters.

The people at "risk" are the older generation [the parents ..], and movement of people contributes to spreading of the disease.

I think MIT is just off loading hot potatoes here.

Re: MIT moves all classes online for the rest of the semester

#293

Post by bsanr2 »

Schools could undercut one of Bernie Sanders' major platforms by using this as an opportunity to start offering free/low-cost, LIVE courses online, reserving networking and on-campus support opportunities for formally-accepted students. I'd be surprised that this wasn't happening, if not for the cluelessness and/or callousness the moneyed set that make up the constituency of America's top schools seem to be approaching everything these days. As a disabled acquaintance bemoaned about similar developments in teleworking policy: "They've always been able to do it, they just didn't care until their asses were at risk."

Re: MIT moves all classes online for the rest of the semester

#294

Post by dr-detroit »

ptero wrote: post #155

I am not a doctor but I honestly do not see why the current state warrants such drastic actions. Is it, objectively, so much worse than usual seasonal flu epidemics? An honest question, any scientific/quantitative pointers appreciated!

liability mitigation. lawyers can prove that they knew the hospitals would be overloaded.

Re: MIT moves all classes online for the rest of the semester

#295

Post by saagarjha »

chickenpotpie wrote: post #221
saagarjha wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't really work, because professors move their exams all the time…

Everyone 100 level class had their final time set by the registrar.

My university does this too, and that doesn't stop professors. They just have to find their own place to have the final.

Re: MIT moves all classes online for the rest of the semester

#296

Post by Gibbon1 »

CydeWeys wrote: post #276
kingbirdy wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MIT is a private university, not public.

Doesn't matter. Universities generally are governed by specific laws.

Yeah people make the mistake of thinking your can figure out the law based on deduction and first principals. You can't you need to be familiar with applicable case law.

Thing to remember law predates science by about 3000 years.

Re: MIT moves all classes online for the rest of the semester

#297

Post by JabavuAdams »

Jtsummers wrote: post #42
colechristensen wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A university education is not a SaaS product. We are getting to the point where lectures should be mandated to be recorded and put into the public domain, and the University's value proposition in admission, tuition, and residence should be the everything else involved which could raise the focus away from re-doing the same lectures over and over.

There's a lot of value in running through the lecture live with a new class. Different students, different needs. If my undergrad CS Theory prof had used recorded lectures, it would've been great for 5 of us, and terrible for the other 30 or so. There were sections that they just did not get and needed repetition or clarifying examples. What's more, the students often don't know what they aren't understanding (someti…

It's a lot easier for students to understand lectures that they would not in-person, when they can pause or rewind video. A lot of misunderstandings are due to lapses in attention. This needs to be considered in any model of relative-effectiveness.

Re: MIT moves all classes online for the rest of the semester

#298

Post by slg »

CydeWeys wrote: post #282
slg wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is "no way to eat [while remaining quarantined]". Dorms do not have private kitchens. They don't even have private sinks. I'm not familiar with MIT specifically, but the most you can usually hope for in the average American dorm room is a mini-fridge and a microwave. It would be incredibly difficult to expect a large number of people to live in those conditions for multiple weeks if quarantined.

You're still allowed to go to the grocery store in China. It's one of the very few places you can still go. Same in Italy. Obviously starvation is a much surer death than coronavirus, hence governments are not literally starving people to death by disallowing them from even obtaining food.

I was more focusing on the lack of facilities to prepare food. That limits what is available to students from the local grocery stores. Are we going to force these kids to basically eat cereal for every meal for a couple weeks? Do the local grocery stores have the stock of non-perishable and ready to eat foods to meet the needs of these students? Does every student have the funds to purchase this food out of pocket and outside of their meal plan? There are a lot of questions that aren't answered by just pointing to the local grocery store if the dining halls and local restaurants are no longer an option.

Re: MIT moves all classes online for the rest of the semester

#299

Post by fspeech »

Trasmatta wrote: post #148
chrisco255 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what do we do if this virus festers for another couple of years? We can't shut down society forever.

The goal at this point should be to flatten the curve as much as possible to prevent overwhelming healthcare until a vaccine is developed and tested. Nobody thinks this is going to be a permanent measure.

Or even just more personal protective gears for medical personnel, more isolation wards, and more ventilators could be readied. The medical system can be built up and reconfigured to take care of this disease but it needs time.
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