在线教学掀起教育革命风暴

在线课程掀起高等教育革命

LORD knows there’s a lot of bad news in the world today to get you down, but there is one big thing happening that leaves me incredibly hopeful about the future, and that is the budding revolution in global online higher education. Nothing has more potential to lift more people out of poverty — by providing them an affordable education to get a job or improve in the job they have. Nothing has more potential to unlock a billion more brains to solve the world’s biggest problems. And nothing has more potential to enable us to reimagine higher education than the massive open online course, or MOOC, platforms that are being developed by the likes of Stanford and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and companies like Coursera and Udacity.

上帝知道，在今日的世界，有多少坏消息让人沮丧，不过，有一件正在发生的大事让我对未来满怀希望，那就是在全球范围内正蓬勃兴起的网络高等教育革 命。没有哪样事物有这么大的潜力，能去消灭贫困，方法就是通过给穷人提供负担得起的教育来让他们获得一份工作、或改善他们现有的工作。没有哪样事物有这么 大的潜力，能解放十多亿的头脑来解决世界上最艰巨的问题。没有哪样事物有这么大的潜力，能让我们重新构想高等教育，而我说的就是大型公开在线课程 (massive open online course，简称MOOC)，这类高等教育平台正在由斯坦福大学(Stanford)、麻省理工学院(Massachusetts Institute of Technology)等大学和Coursera以及Udacity等公司进行开发。

Last May I wrote about Coursera — co-founded by the Stanford computer scientists Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng — just after it opened. Two weeks ago, I went back out to Palo Alto to check in on them. When I visited last May, about 300,000 people were taking 38 courses taught by Stanford professors and a few other elite universities. Today, they have 2.4 million students, taking 214 courses from 33 universities, including eight international ones.

去年5月，我在Coursera刚刚上线时写了一篇关于它的文章。Coursera是由斯坦福计算机学家达夫妮·科勒(Daphne Koller)和吴恩达(Andrew Ng)共同创建的。两周之前，我返回帕洛阿尔托去再次拜访这些网站。当我去年5月造访该网站时，约有30万人正在攻读由斯坦福大学的教授和其他几个高等学 府开设的38门课程。今天，这个网站拥有240万学生，他们在学习包括八所国际性大学在内的33所大学开办的214门课程，

Anant Agarwal, the former director of M.I.T.’s artificial intelligence lab, is now president of edX, a nonprofit MOOC that M.I.T. and Harvard are jointly building. Agarwal told me that since May, some 155,000 students from around the world have taken edX’s first course: an M.I.T. intro class on circuits. “That is greater than the total number of M.I.T. alumni in its 150-year history,” he said.

阿南特·阿加瓦尔(Anant Agarwal)曾任麻省理工学院人工智能实验室主任，他现在是麻省理工学院和哈佛大学(Harvard)联手打造的非营利MOOC项目——edX的总 裁。阿加瓦尔对我说，自去年5月以来，全球已有15.5万名学生参加了edX的第一门课程：由麻省理工学院开设的电路学初级课程。他说，“参加这门课的学 生人数比麻省理工学院150年历史中所有校友的人数还要高。”

Yes, only a small percentage complete all the work, and even they still tend to be from the middle and upper classes of their societies, but I am convinced that within five years these platforms will reach a much broader demographic. Imagine how this might change U.S. foreign aid. For relatively little money, the U.S. could rent space in an Egyptian village, install two dozen computers and high-speed satellite Internet access, hire a local teacher as a facilitator, and invite in any Egyptian who wanted to take online courses with the best professors in the world, subtitled in Arabic.

的确，只有一小部分的学生完成了所有的功课，即便是他们，往往也来自其所在社会的中上层阶级，不过我确信，在五年之内，这些平台将能触及更广大范围 内的民众。想象一下它可能如何改变美国的对外援助。美国可以用相对微不足道的资金，在埃及的村子里租赁个空间，安装20几台电脑和高速卫星上网设施，雇佣 一名当地的老师来进行服务，再邀请任何想要学习在线课程的埃及人聆听全球最棒的教授们的课程，这些课程还可提供阿拉伯文字幕。

YOU just have to hear the stories told by the pioneers in this industry to appreciate its revolutionary potential. One of Koller’s favorites is about “Daniel,” a 17-year-old with autism who communicates mainly by computer. He took an online modern poetry class from Penn. He and his parents wrote that the combination of rigorous academic curriculum, which requires Daniel to stay on task, and the online learning system that does not strain his social skills, attention deficits or force him to look anyone in the eye, enable him to better manage his autism. Koller shared a letter from Daniel, in which he wrote: “Please tell Coursera and Penn my story. I am a 17-year-old boy emerging from autism. I can’t yet sit still in a classroom so [your course] was my first real course ever. During the course, I had to keep pace with the class, which is unheard-of in special ed. Now I know I can benefit from having to work hard and enjoy being in sync with the world.”

你一定要听听这个行业的先行者们所说的故事，才能真正理解MOOC的那种革命性潜能。科勒最喜欢的一个故事是关于“丹尼尔”(Daniel)的。丹 尼尔是一名17岁的自闭症患者，他主要依靠计算机和别人交流。他参加了宾夕法尼亚大学(University of Pennsylvania)开办的一门网络现代诗课程。他和父母写道，严格的学术课程迫使丹尼尔专注于手里的任务，而在线学习系统不会受限于他在社交能力 方面的不足和他的注意力缺失症，或逼迫他与人对视，这些因素组合在一起，让他能够更好地控制自己的自闭症。科勒分享了来自丹尼尔的一封信，后者在信中写 道：“请把我的故事告诉Coursera和宾夕法尼亚大学。我是一名正在走出自闭症的17岁男孩。目前我还无法坐在一间教室里，所以(你们的课)是我所上 过的第一个真正的课程。上课过程中，我必须要跟上班里的进度，这在特殊教育当中前所未闻。现在，我知道自己必须努力学习，之后我就能从中获益，我喜欢这种 与世界同步的感觉。”

One member of the Coursera team who recently took a Coursera course on sustainability told me that it was so much more interesting than a similar course he had taken as an undergrad. The online course included students from all over the world, from different climates, incomes levels and geographies, and, as a result, “the discussions that happened in that course were so much more valuable and interesting than with people of similar geography and income level” in a typical American college.

Coursera团队的一名成员最近参加了一门可持续发展课程，他对我说，这门课程比他上大学时所学的类似课程有趣很多。这门网络课程包括来自世界 各地的学生，他们来自气候不同的地域、收入水平和所在地的地理情况也不同，结果就是，与在美国一所典型大学里“和来自类似地理环境及收入水平的群体进行的 讨论相比，这门课程里的讨论更有价值、也有趣得多。”

Mitch Duneier, a Princeton sociology professor, wrote an essay in The Chronicle of Higher Education in the fall about his experience teaching a class through Coursera: “A few months ago, just as the campus of Princeton University had grown nearly silent after commencement, 40,000 students from 113 countries arrived here via the Internet to take a free course in introductory sociology. ... My opening discussion of C. Wright Mills’s classic 1959 book, ‘The Sociological Imagination,’ was a close reading of the text, in which I reviewed a key chapter line by line. I asked students to follow along in their own copies, as I do in the lecture hall. When I give this lecture on the Princeton campus, I usually receive a few penetrating questions. In this case, however, within a few hours of posting the online version, the course forums came alive with hundreds of comments and questions. Several days later there were thousands. ... Within three weeks I had received more feedback on my sociological ideas than I had in a career of teaching, which significantly influenced each of my subsequent lectures and seminars.”

去年秋天，普林斯顿大学(Princeton University)社会学教授米切尔·邓奈尔(Mitch Duneier)为《高等教育纪事报》(Chronicle of Higher Education)撰写了一篇文章，文中讲述了他通过Coursera平台教授一门课的经历：“几个月前，就在毕业典礼之后，普林斯顿大学校园变得几乎 沉寂的时候，来自全球113个国家的4万名学生通过互联网来到这里，参加了一门免费的社会学初级课程......作为开课后的首次公开讨论的一部分，我对 C·怀特·米尔斯(C. Wright Mills)1959年的经典之作《社会学的想象》(The Sociological Imagination)进行了一次精读，对其中的一篇核心章节进行了逐字逐句的研读。我让学生们对照自己手中的书，跟着我阅读，就像我在校园课堂上所做 的那样。当我在普林斯顿大学校园做讲座时，我通常只能收到几条鞭辟入里的问题。然而这一次，类似的讨论被贴上线才几个小时，在线课堂论坛就涌现了数百条评 论和问题。数日之后，评论和问题的数量达到了数千条......三周之内，我收到的与自己的社会学见解有关的反馈比我整个教学生涯中收到的还要多，它们极 大地影响了我之后的每次大课和讨论课。

Agarwal of edX tells of a student in Cairo who was taking the circuits course and was having difficulty. In the class’s online forum, where students help each other with homework, he posted that he was dropping out. In response, other students in Cairo in the same class invited him to meet at a teahouse, where they offered to help him stay in the course. A 15-year-old student in Mongolia, who took the same class as part of a blended course and received a perfect score on the final exam, added Agarwal, is now applying to M.I.T. and the University of California, Berkeley.

edX的阿加瓦尔讲述了一名开罗学生的故事，他参加了电路学课程的学习，并遇到了困难。在该课程的在线论坛里，学生们彼此互助，来完成作业。他在论 坛里发帖说，他正准备退课。其他参加了同一项课程的开罗学生做出回应，邀请他在一家茶馆见面。他们在那里提出帮他跟上课程进度。阿加瓦尔补充道，作为所修 的混合式课程的一部分，一名15岁的蒙古学生也参加了这个课程，他在期末考试时获得了优异的成绩，现在正在申请到麻省理工学院和加州大学伯克利分校 (University of California, Berkeley)就学。

As we look to the future of higher education, said the M.I.T. president, L. Rafael Reif, something that we now call a “degree” will be a concept “connected with bricks and mortar” — and traditional on-campus experiences that will increasingly leverage technology and the Internet to enhance classroom and laboratory work. Alongside that, though, said Reif, many universities will offer online courses to students anywhere in the world, in which they will earn “credentials” — certificates that testify that they have done the work and passed all the exams. The process of developing credible credentials that verify that the student has adequately mastered the subject — and did not cheat — and can be counted on by employers is still being perfected by all the MOOCs. But once it is, this phenomenon will really scale.

麻省理工学院校长L·拉斐尔·赖夫(L. Rafael Reif)说，当我们把目光投向高等教育的未来时，现在被我们称作“学位”的东西将成为一个与传统的校内学习经历相关联的概念，而这种学习经历也将越来越 多地利用科技和网络，来强化在教室和实验室进行的教学活动。与此同时，许多大学会给世界各地的学生提供在线课程，他们可以通过这些课程获得“资格证书”， 这些证书可以证明他们已经完成了学业、通过了所有考试，赖夫表示。所有MOOC项目依然在完善一套流程，即开发可靠的资格证书评审系统，以确认一名学生已 经充分地掌握了课程内容、没有作弊、而且能够达到雇主的要求。一旦成功，MOOC将出现巨大增长。