Stanford, Others Switch To Online Classes Temporarily Amid Coronavirus Fears

Stanford University canceled in-person classes for the final two weeks of the quarter, switching to online instruction amid rising concern about the coronavirus outbreak. From a report: As the coronavirus first reported in China spreads in the United States, several schools have taken this step as a precaution, hoping to avoid further infections on campus. The University of Washington, which has more than 55,000 students on three campuses, announced Friday that it would switch to virtual classes, and some smaller schools in and near the hard-hit Seattle area, such as Pacific Lutheran University, announced similar plans.

On Sunday, Rice University in Houston canceled in-person classes for the week of March 9 and canceled gatherings of 100 or more people through the end of April. An employee tested positive for covid-19 last week after international travel, university officials said in issuing the alert. [...] In New York, where multiple cases have been identified, Columbia University announced Sunday that classes are canceled Monday and Tuesday and that the university strongly discourages nonessential gatherings of more than 25 people. There are no confirmed cases among Columbia students, faculty or staff, but the Ivy League school's president wrote that someone had been quarantined and that the suspension of classes will allow the school to prepare for a shift to remote classes for the remainder of the week.

Future preview?

[Anonymous Coward]

If an institution such as Stanford can use online learning doesn't that indicate it's good enough? Time to move on from these brick and mortar money pits.

Re: Future preview?

[john83]

That they're resorted to in an emergency is not evidence that they're equally good.

Re:

[Train0987]

Will there be an asterisk on the degrees earned with these online courses? No? Then they're equally as good.

The real question is if there will be a tuition refund since the facilities are not needed and won't be used. Of course not, who am I kidding...

Re:

[Howitzer86]

Classes are canceled, but you can probably still use those facilities. As for the asterisk, bad instructors and bad books make a greater negative impact than online courses. At least they did with me.

Gosh, I wish YouTube was a thing when I was first starting out at my local university...

Re:

[Radical Moderate]

Ha ha, you're funny. My institution charges more for online courses. Because they can.

Most classes are space filler.

[couchslug]

Outside core courses most classes are space filler so with the exception of classes requiring hands-on contact with special equipment (or in case of medical classes, people) little of value will be lost.
OTOH if events force change then that's an opportunity to improve education by reducing meatspace gatherings which are expensive in carbon footprint, time and transportation.Fewer fixed hours = more personal freedom including opportunities to work jobs classes would interfere with.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

If an institution such as Stanford can use online learning doesn't that indicate it's good enough? Time to move on from these brick and mortar money pits.

It's really not. Some rare students can learn via computer only. Most need in-person face-to-face lectures and lab sections.

Re:

[bill_mcgonigle]

If an institution such as Stanford can use online learning doesn't that indicate it's good enough? Time to move on from these brick and mortar money pits.

All the current Stanford students had the option to use MIT OpenCourseware instead of going to Stanford. They chose to go to Stanford.

University of Phoenix: Online with the full perm c

[Joe_Dragon]

University of Phoenix: Online with the full perm cost.

Re:

[rogoshen1]

Thank you to the department of education and those sweet, sweet guaranteed loans that you cannot be discharged through bankruptcy. And this an example of the reality we'd get in the event of a Bernie win -- 'free' college, and ever mushrooming cost of tuition.

But, that said, without this government intervention University of Phoenix would go under in about a week. Which goes to show, if your entire business model is 100% dependent on a government subsidy, you'd better be in the business of selling militar

Re:

[tlhIngan]

If an institution such as Stanford can use online learning doesn't that indicate it's good enough? Time to move on from these brick and mortar money pits.

:

We've had online learning for probably what, over a decade now? Between Corsera and MIT OpenCourseware and many other providers, you can get an education remotely. And correspondent courses have been around forever, many from well known universities. And let's not forget many online only universities (University of Phoenix, anyone?).

Obviously remote learn

Makes one wonder

[oldgraybeard]

if online classes work why are we still doing the dated teacher at the front of a room providing knowledge model.
This may lead to a complete break down in the Government/Unionized lock on our public education system.

And that could be a real public good.!

Just my 2 cents ;)

Re:

[sid crimson]

if online classes work why are we still doing the dated teacher at the front of a room providing knowledge model.

This may lead to a complete break down in the Government/Unionized lock on our public education system. And that could be a real public good.!

I kinda wish that were true.
As someone who participates in several "online forums" using richer-than-email technologies such as video calls, I can confidently say it's just not the same as in-person. Sure, some people do better in this format... but all?

And of course it does depend on the coursework.

And of course, it depends on the student.

The real question is whether the cost of tuition will drop since the cost to educate /should/ also drop. I'm not optimistic...

Re:

[Aristos Mazer]

Works fine to replace lectures with video. But it hurts the discussion classes and the labs -- the places where students learn analysis and synthesis of information. Also hurts the development of people-interaction skills. Maybe those will be deprecated in the future if we stay socially distant in the long term, but I'd bet on their resurgence.

Depends on the school. WGU, Georgia Tech are value

[raymorris]

> The real question is whether the cost of tuition will drop since the cost to educate /should/ also drop. I'm not optimistic...

WGU is online and offers a very good value.

Georgia Tech is a top school for certain fields and their online masters is a great value. The Georgia Tech masters are not easy - they are at least as challenging as the on-campus version of the classes.

Some other schools don't offer the same value.

Re:

[sid crimson]

Great - they offer a good value. What wasn't cited is whether it's also cheaper. ;-)

Much cheaper :)

[raymorris]

Much cheaper than competing schools. :)

With WGU being a state school, much like the University of Utah, University of Texas, or University of Tennessee, it's a perfectly decent school. Not a top 5 most prestigious, but it's fine. With significantly lower tuition than other state schools.

Georgia Tech is top 3 best for cybersecurity, which is my masters.

Re:

[kebes]

There's a difference between "works" and "works well". I was recently scheduled to teach a 2-day short course recently; the meeting was cancelled (due to COVID19) so we switched to giving the lectures through video-conferencing and doing Q&A using a chat channel. It worked okay, but was not nearly as engaging as an in-person meeting. When courses are run well, the back-and-forth between instructor and students helps make the content more relevant and memorable. (E.g. the instructor can read body languag

Re:

[guruevi]

That may be true for good professors but these days non-STEM University courses are just regurgitating things you have to know to function in society vs deducing facts through logic and reason.

Re:

[CrimsonAvenger]

I was recently scheduled to teach a 2-day short course recently

I really hope that class you were scheduled to teach wasn't an English class....

Re:

[geekmux]

if online classes work why are we still doing the dated teacher at the front of a room providing knowledge model. This may lead to a complete break down in the Government/Unionized lock on our public education system.

Not sure if you often answer your own inquiries, but you certainly did here with your latter statement.

Hope that cleared things up for you. ;)

Re:

[Xylantiel]

Actually it's well known that online classes work fine to reduce classtime, but not eliminate it. So most classes that meet 3 times a week could be converted into meeting 1/week or 1/2weeks without loss, but going below that causes worse performance. So in that sense going online for a few weeks of a 14 week term is actually not unreasonable.

People who can learn from an online class could already learn from a textbook. They already didn't need in-person classes.

What is the long term plan?

[misnohmer]

So I see all these closures, moving to remote/online interactions. I get it, it will limit the spread, however it will not eliminate it. So what happens in 2 weeks, or a month? A working vaccine is at least a year away, so what will be different when places re-open and people start interacting in person again?

Re:

[spun]

I hear Mike Pence has started a prayer circle, so we've got that going for us, which is nice.

Re:What is the long term plan?

[avandesande]

Slowing the spread will help keep hospitals from becoming overwhelmed.

Re:

[93 Escort Wagon]

Not just that - I imagine the onset of warmer weather might slow or even eliminate the spread as well. There’s a reason “cold and flu season” is synonymous with “winter”.

(And yes, I realize it’s got nothing directly to do with the air temperature).

Re:What is the long term plan?

[kebes]

The main purpose is to slow the spread, so that health care infrastructure can keep up with the demand. The quality of care also improves over time, since health practitioners learn more and more about how best to manage the disease. (In the extreme case, if we can slow the spread enough then some people will get the vaccine before getting the real virus.)

This visualizes this in graphical form. [twitter.com]

Re:

[misnohmer]

I guess the question is how much will a 2 week closure slow the spread? Or asked in other ways, how long do the closures need to be in effect to keep the spread manageable?

Re:

[Aristos Mazer]

Northern Italy has closed all gyms, schools, bars, etc, through April 3 as of yesterday. China has plateaued its rate after keeping the whole country at home for three weeks. Ask again in about six weeks, then we'll be able to tell you whether two weeks was enough.

Re:

[AHuxley]

Japan, South Korea, Taiwan looked at and did a lot of that too. Early.

Re:

[sconeu]

You will note, however, that the churches are still open.....

Go figure.

Re:

[Xylantiel]

Two weeks is pretty useful, since the incubation period is less than that. So anyone who was already infected at the beginning of the 2 weeks will be in self-isolation by the end. But I would say that when that 2 weeks takes place is pretty important - doing it too early, when literally nobody involved has the virus, won't really help that much.
That being said, I think some places are just closing for 2 weeks in hopes that the US disease response will get its act together and clarify what is even going

Re:

[AHuxley]

A lot. Also gives time for tracking and testing to be used.
Find the people sick with wuflu. Allows the sick to be kept well away from been able to keep on spreading wuflu in the community.
Find and test everyone they have been in contact with the people tested to be sick with wuflu.
Keeps as many people out of a very limited number of ICU beds for a bit longer.

Re:

[93 Escort Wagon]

Given the situation is rather fluid right now, I expect the two week closure was just something safe and fairly drastic they could do right away without destroying winter quarter, which is mostly done, while giving themselves some breathing room for considering their long term plans. If three more weeks of studying the virus (two weeks plus spring break) leads WHO and the CDC to determine that proximity isn’t as big a deal, they can easily switch back to normal class meetings for spring quarter. Alter

Re:

[Aristos Mazer]

The theory is that if everyone who is currently sick dies or gets over the virus, then they cannot pass it to anyone new, so the virus is gone from the environment. Then we all go back to business-as-usual. It's a theory that has worked with other diseases. Whether it can work with one as communicable as this one remains an open question. If we cannot contain it, then it circulates around and around, reinfecting until it kills off the weakest members of the herd and cannot find anyone new to infect, or we a

Re:

[nospam007]

"The theory is that if everyone who is currently sick dies or gets over the virus, then they cannot pass it to anyone new, so the virus is gone from the environment. Then we all go back to business-as-usual."

Ah yes, that's how they eliminated smallpox a few hundred years ago.

Re: What is the long term plan?

[Aristos Mazer]

Does not work for all diseases. Has worked for some when they are not yet embedded in the populace. It is how we stop Ebola and SARS outbreaks

Re:

[AHuxley]

Webcams all the way down.