Editor’s desk

I am writing this with the comfort and convenience that work-at-home provides. IISc has been locked down for two weeks because of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) threat. Classes have been cancelled and laboratories have been closed. Faculty members have been instructed to work from home. The Institute is still functioning, albeit in a lowkey mode: essential services continue and administrative staff are coming in to work. Students, who hail from different parts of the country, had a trickier time as they not only had to leave for home but had to do so at short notice. They all had to make travel bookings within a short time. Fortunately, their smartphones came to their rescue. In a situation like this, the real benefit of mobile communication technology is more visible than ever before. A few thousand students and project assistants could leave the campus at the drop of a hat. This is, by the way, the situation elsewhere in the country and in most parts of the world that are hit by fastspreading SARS-CoV-2. With students back home, some universities are better prepared for online instruction and are adapting to the situation that requires social distancing (new phrases come about more frequently than novel viruses). I hear that some private engineering colleges in India too are using online instruction. I am not so surprised because of something I had heard from students at a college: “most instructors dump their power-point presentations on us without real teaching”. Colleges that are used to doing it have an advantage in such a crisis. This, however, does not mean that online instruction cannot be effective. Online classes have their own place if they are done well. Instructors and students could be anywhere and still interact in real time as if they are in the same G. K. Ananthasuresh* J. Indian Inst. Sci.