在線教學掀起教育革命風暴

在線課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，有多少壞消息讓人沮喪，不過，有一件正在發(fā)生的大事讓我對未來滿懷希望，那就是在全球范圍內正蓬勃興起的網絡高等教育革 命。沒有哪樣事物有這么大的潛力，能去消滅貧困，方法就是通過給窮人提供負擔得起的教育來讓他們獲得一份工作、或改善他們現有的工作。沒有哪樣事物有這么 大的潛力，能解放十多億的頭腦來解決世界上最艱巨的問題。沒有哪樣事物有這么大的潛力，能讓我們重新構想高等教育，而我說的就是大型公開在線課程 (massive open online course，簡稱MOOC)，這類高等教育平臺正在由斯坦福大學(Stanford)、麻省理工學院(Massachusetts Institute of Technology)等大學和Coursera以及Udacity等公司進行開發(fā)。

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剛剛上線時寫了一篇關于它的文章。Coursera是由斯坦福計算機學家達夫妮·科勒(Daphne Koller)和吳恩達(Andrew Ng)共同創(chuàng)建的。兩周之前，我返回帕洛阿爾托去再次拜訪這些網站。當我去年5月造訪該網站時，約有30萬人正在攻讀由斯坦福大學的教授和其他幾個高等學 府開設的38門課程。今天，這個網站擁有240萬學生，他們在學習包括八所國際性大學在內的33所大學開辦的214門課程，

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·阿加瓦爾(Anant Agarwal)曾任麻省理工學院人工智能實驗室主任，他現在是麻省理工學院和哈佛大學(Harvard)聯手打造的非營利MOOC項目——edX的總 裁。阿加瓦爾對我說，自去年5月以來，全球已有15.5萬名學生參加了edX的第一門課程：由麻省理工學院開設的電路學初級課程。他說，“參加這門課的學 生人數比麻省理工學院150年歷史中所有校友的人數還要高。”

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.

的確，只有一小部分的學生完成了所有的功課，即便是他們，往往也來自其所在社會的中上層階級，不過我確信，在五年之內，這些平臺將能觸及更廣大范圍 內的民眾。想象一下它可能如何改變美國的對外援助。美國可以用相對微不足道的資金，在埃及的村子里租賃個空間，安裝20幾臺電腦和高速衛(wèi)星上網設施，雇傭 一名當地的老師來進行服務，再邀請任何想要學習在線課程的埃及人聆聽全球最棒的教授們的課程，這些課程還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.”

你一定要聽聽這個行業(yè)的先行者們所說的故事，才能真正理解MOOC的那種革命性潛能?？评兆钕矚g的一個故事是關于“丹尼爾”(Daniel)的。丹 尼爾是一名17歲的自閉癥患者，他主要依靠計算機和別人交流。他參加了賓夕法尼亞大學(University of Pennsylvania)開辦的一門網絡現代詩課程。他和父母寫道，嚴格的學術課程迫使丹尼爾專注于手里的任務，而在線學習系統(tǒng)不會受限于他在社交能力 方面的不足和他的注意力缺失癥，或逼迫他與人對視，這些因素組合在一起，讓他能夠更好地控制自己的自閉癥。科勒分享了來自丹尼爾的一封信，后者在信中寫 道：“請把我的故事告訴Coursera和賓夕法尼亞大學。我是一名正在走出自閉癥的17歲男孩。目前我還無法坐在一間教室里，所以(你們的課)是我所上 過的第一個真正的課程。上課過程中，我必須要跟上班里的進度，這在特殊教育當中前所未聞。現在，我知道自己必須努力學習，之后我就能從中獲益，我喜歡這種 與世界同步的感覺。”

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團隊的一名成員最近參加了一門可持續(xù)發(fā)展課程，他對我說，這門課程比他上大學時所學的類似課程有趣很多。這門網絡課程包括來自世界 各地的學生，他們來自氣候不同的地域、收入水平和所在地的地理情況也不同，結果就是，與在美國一所典型大學里“和來自類似地理環(huán)境及收入水平的群體進行的 討論相比，這門課程里的討論更有價值、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，普林斯頓大學(Princeton University)社會學教授米切爾·鄧奈爾(Mitch Duneier)為《高等教育紀事報》(Chronicle of Higher Education)撰寫了一篇文章，文中講述了他通過Coursera平臺教授一門課的經歷：“幾個月前，就在畢業(yè)典禮之后，普林斯頓大學校園變得幾乎 沉寂的時候，來自全球113個國家的4萬名學生通過互聯網來到這里，參加了一門免費的社會學初級課程......作為開課后的首次公開討論的一部分，我對 C·懷特·米爾斯(C. Wright Mills)1959年的經典之作《社會學的想象》(The Sociological Imagination)進行了一次精讀，對其中的一篇核心章節(jié)進行了逐字逐句的研讀。我讓學生們對照自己手中的書，跟著我閱讀，就像我在校園課堂上所做 的那樣。當我在普林斯頓大學校園做講座時，我通常只能收到幾條鞭辟入里的問題。然而這一次，類似的討論被貼上線才幾個小時，在線課堂論壇就涌現了數百條評 論和問題。數日之后，評論和問題的數量達到了數千條......三周之內，我收到的與自己的社會學見解有關的反饋比我整個教學生涯中收到的還要多，它們極 大地影響了我之后的每次大課和討論課。

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的阿加瓦爾講述了一名開羅學生的故事，他參加了電路學課程的學習，并遇到了困難。在該課程的在線論壇里，學生們彼此互助，來完成作業(yè)。他在論 壇里發(fā)帖說，他正準備退課。其他參加了同一項課程的開羅學生做出回應，邀請他在一家茶館見面。他們在那里提出幫他跟上課程進度。阿加瓦爾補充道，作為所修 的混合式課程的一部分，一名15歲的蒙古學生也參加了這個課程，他在期末考試時獲得了優(yōu)異的成績，現在正在申請到麻省理工學院和加州大學伯克利分校 (University of California, Berkeley)就學。

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.

麻省理工學院校長L·拉斐爾·賴夫(L. Rafael Reif)說，當我們把目光投向高等教育的未來時，現在被我們稱作“學位”的東西將成為一個與傳統(tǒng)的校內學習經歷相關聯的概念，而這種學習經歷也將越來越 多地利用科技和網絡，來強化在教室和實驗室進行的教學活動。與此同時，許多大學會給世界各地的學生提供在線課程，他們可以通過這些課程獲得“資格證書”， 這些證書可以證明他們已經完成了學業(yè)、通過了所有考試，賴夫表示。所有MOOC項目依然在完善一套流程，即開發(fā)可靠的資格證書評審系統(tǒng)，以確認一名學生已 經充分地掌握了課程內容、沒有作弊、而且能夠達到雇主的要求。一旦成功，MOOC將出現巨大增長。