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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

#341

Post by peter_l_downs »

gumby wrote: post #63
JPKab wrote: post #2

One of my coworkers daughters is affected by this. The big question this begs: If there is no refund being offered for the content shifting online from in-person, why have in-person at all? Is room and board going to be refunded? If courses being taught online is an acceptable substitute, why have caps on admission at all? Edit: Understood that infinite sized classes aren't workable for human intensive grading, inter…

I don't think anyone believes online is an acceptable substitute to a traditional MIT education, but it's a lot better than nothing, and better than continuing the in person teaching. I'm an MIT grad and know the benefits of being on campus. In fact I spent more time in the lab than I did in classes or my dorm and that just isn't possible online. My son's school (Courant) has sent everyone home too, with online subst…

I went to MIT too and with the exception of about three classes, every single in-person class was a waste. The value the school offers is, in order:

- the people you meet - the brand name on your resume - the psets and structured guide to learning hard things

Notice that the last two still work over Zoom. If I were in the hard sciences this might be different but as a professional Software Engineer, the classes were almost entirely irrelevant to me.

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

#342

Post by ineedasername »

The "problem" with all of these precautions is that, if it's successful, it will look a lot like an over reaction when all is said and done. Which I suppose is better than the alternative, but I worry that successful prevention in this case will, the next time there's an issue like this, make people a bit less likely to take appropriate preventative measures.

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

#343

Post by protomyth »

voidlogic wrote: post #273
kelnos wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are certainly restaurants nearby, but not sure I'd call them cheap. I imagine a lot of MIT students don't have the money to eat out every day. And since most dorms don't have any kind of kitchens or cooking implements, buying food from the grocery and cooking isn't really an option. Pre-made meals or other things from grocery stores that don't require cooking could work, but, again, I'd expect some/many student…

At my college all the dorms had a kitchen for residents to use in the basement... is this not normal?

US colleges earn money off the meal plan and tend to be liability shy so having a full kitchen is a non-starter. Heck, it was against the rules to have a microwave in dorms (even room not in actual dorms) where I went to college. It was a pain in the butt.

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

#344

Post by slg »

CydeWeys wrote: post #322
slg wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

Sure, but the dining halls are being closed for the same reason as the dorms. If not for the coronavirus then neither closure would be happening. In other words, it's not like the dining halls are being closed and then as a consequence the dorms are being closed for lack of food options.

This whole chain of comments started out with the following prompt:

>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?

Dining halls are inherently a highly trafficked gathering of a large group of people. That is exactly the type of things people are being instructed to avoid. It is likely a losing effort to try to prevent the spread of the disease through a college campus while still running dining halls at normal service levels. And once the decision is made to close the dining halls, you have to look at other options to feed the students. There is no clear answer to that question due to the reasons outline in previous posts so the ultimate response is to just send people home.

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

#345

Post by aatharuv »

DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #331
simonw wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a non-US national I never really know what a "semester" is with respect to US universities. Not sure what a better title would be though. The key information here in my opinion is that students are being told not o come back in a few weeks following spring break.

U.S universities typically have two sessions per year: the "fall semester" (usually September-December) and the "spring semester" (usually January-May). Each course (e.g., Introduction to Chemistry) typically runs one semester. A full-time student usually studies 3-4 courses per semester. Many universities also offer a small number of courses during the summer break. Some universities allow certain courses to be only…

Many universities (but not MIT) are on a quarter system. I honestly don't know which one is more prevalent.

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

#346

Post by kerakaali »

voidlogic wrote: post #273
kelnos wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are certainly restaurants nearby, but not sure I'd call them cheap. I imagine a lot of MIT students don't have the money to eat out every day. And since most dorms don't have any kind of kitchens or cooking implements, buying food from the grocery and cooking isn't really an option. Pre-made meals or other things from grocery stores that don't require cooking could work, but, again, I'd expect some/many student…

At my college all the dorms had a kitchen for residents to use in the basement... is this not normal?

Depends on the dorm, but in some older dormitories there might be maybe one full size kitchen for student use allotted to the entire building.

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

#347

Post by tropo »

better_names wrote: post #98

> to slow a spreading virus like COVID-19 The naming of this thing is such a disaster, even MIT can't get it right. - the virus is called SARS-CoV-2 (like HIV) - the disease it causes is named COVID-19 (like AIDS) - pretty much everyone calls both the virus and the disease coronavirus

Coronavirus is far too vague (there are many coronaviruses) and it gets confused with a type of beer. Those other names, SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19, are only slightly more readable than sha256 hashes and UUIDs. We also don't need the virus and the disease to have separate names, especially not ones that are so unrelated.

The common and original name is "Wuhan virus". That is easy to remember, easy to type, and specific enough. Use it, for better communication.

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

#348

Post by sethaurus »

throwaway237654 wrote: post #324
smallgovt wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, I think it's likely going to be seen as an overreaction in hindsight by the general public (even though it may not be). If these actions are successful in curbing the virus' spread, most people won't appreciate how bad things could have really gotten.

Yup, it's the same reason why most people now see the Japanese internment as unjust. They just know we won the war and fail to connect the dots that the internment was potentially critical to winning the war.

Is this an accepted view among historians? I'd like to know more about that.

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

#349

Post by greglindahl »

kart23 wrote: post #305
ryeights wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This is strange. Isn't the travel they are forcing quite possibly a cure worth than the disease? Many (most?) students already travel for spring break, so this shouldn't result in much more travel than usual. I imagine that is what motivated their timing on this.

International students are gonna be in a very tough spot, especially those from china.

That’s why there’s an exception for them?

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

#350

Post by maerF0x0 »

ineedasername wrote: post #342

The "problem" with all of these precautions is that, if it's successful, it will look a lot like an over reaction when all is said and done. Which I suppose is better than the alternative, but I worry that successful prevention in this case will, the next time there's an issue like this, make people a bit less likely to take appropriate preventative measures.

or vice versa. When the crisis does not escalate others will attribute the success to the decisive actions of leaders! "See? We should do this more often to save lives"

Of course who knows what would have happened without the response.

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