University Shutdowns - because of COVID 19

[R.D. Silverman]

A simple rhetorical question:

Do the universities have enough recording equipment and can their servers handle
the large number of courses that need to be taped and disseminated? That's a
lot of TV cameras!

[Dr Sardonicus]

Perhaps something could be done via E-mail, video streaming or even smart phones.

Speaking of which - what about campuses where they've instituted monitoring-by-smartphone to make sure students are attending their lectures? I can just see the alarms going off...

[R.D. Silverman]

Originally Posted by Dr Sardonicus

Perhaps something could be done via E-mail, video streaming or even smart phones.

Speaking of which - what about campuses where they've instituted monitoring-by-smartphone to make sure students are attending their lectures? I can just see the alarms going off...

My son is a CS masters student at UML. This semester he was taking a class at the
Harvard extension school. All of the extension school classes have been cancelled.
He was taking other classes on-line at UML. They have been cancelled.

[Nick]

At Leiden University here in the Netherlands, courses for medical students that take place
within the university hospital have been suspended for the sake of patient safety,
but all other lectures, seminars, etc. are going on as normal.

[Batalov]

All internal meetings with >50 people at our place of work have been cancelled.

A large scientific conference (ACMG) has just been cancelled (it usually gathers 3-5,000 participants; it was a couple weeks away so the losses for organizers are astronomical).

[BudgieJane]

Originally Posted by Batalov

... the losses for organizers are astronomical.

Didn't they invest in insurance against the possible necessity of cancelling the conference?

[pinhodecarlos]

In Portugal people went to the beach.

[ATH]

Press conference right now in Denmark. All Universities shutting down from Friday (and high schools I think) and they recommend students staying home from tomorrow if they can.
All schools and kinder gardens closing from Monday, all non-critical public employees will be sent home from Friday. Libraries and the like will be closed. All indoor public events with 100+ people they recommend being cancelled, and they will ban it in the next days with emergency legislation.
They recommend all private companies sending home all employees that can work from home.

Denmark went from 35 infected on Monday morning to 514 tonight in about 60-62 hours.

[wombatman]

Univ. of South Carolina extended Spring Break by a week (cancelled all classes and on-campus events until the 22nd) and is recommending all students stay away from campus until April 3rd. They're mobilizing significant resources (upgrading VPN load capacity, buying online course equipment like headsets and cameras and the like) to facilitate conversion to online teaching.

To be honest, they've shown an impressive amount of forethought and preparation.

[frmky]

Over the past week, Cal State Fullerton added USB cams and mics to all of the classrooms to enable video teleconferencing in the classroom. These relatively cheap cameras are quite adequate now. We already have site licenses for Zoom for teleconferencing and recording, Camtasia for video recording and editing, Adobe Creative Suite if you want to get fancy, and the Google suite including "unlimited" Google Drive space for storage and YouTube for video hosting. They also doubled the capacity of the locally hosted Moodle LMS. So yes, it can be done. They also created and deployed significant online and in-person training for these tools.

Starting tomorrow it is "permitted and strongly encouraged" that all classes move online with mandatory virtual instruction starting March 25. This can be as simple and direct as a Zoom hosted session with the instructor lecturing in the front of an empty classroom as the campus will remain open.

[frmky]

Originally Posted by Batalov

A large scientific conference (ACMG) has just been cancelled (it usually gathers 3-5,000 participants; it was a couple weeks away so the losses for organizers are astronomical).

The American Physical Society cancelled the March meeting in Denver the day before it was to start on March 2. It's a meeting with over 10,000 attendees. Pre-meeting workshops were already being held and lots of people, both from within the US and international, were already in Denver when they got the news.