按: 本文详尽地介绍了慕课(大规模网络公开课)目前的发展态势，运用很多实例来勾勒一场如火如荼开展的全球性在线学习革命。尽管如文中所说，在线教育存在认证方面这样或那样的问题，但其燎原之势已经势不可挡，自工业革命以来形成的老套的教育模式必将受到挑战，未来必定是全球化在线教育的时代。在此推荐文中提到的Udacity(已经引进中国，名为“优达学城”)，除了收费的纳米学位以外，还提供很多免费、高质量的系列课程。在上课时一不小心就会有Google的CEO冒出来跟你唠两句嗑，那感觉还是棒棒哒。课程不仅讲解精彩，切割得容易消化，更重要的是每个课程片段之后都提供练习，能够马上检验学习效果，获得即时反馈，这一点对任何类型的学习来说都是至关重要的。国内的慕课推荐清华大学的“学堂在线”，除了课程种类丰富外，也提供证书，希望它能够不断向国外先进的慕课学习，提供更好的学习体验。
机器人已经开始抢饭碗了，你还不爬起来学习？

The return of the MOOC

Established education providers v new contenders

Alternative providers of education must solve the problems of cost and credentials
Jan 14th 2017

1. THE HYPE OVER MOOCs peaked in 2012. Salman Khan, an investment analyst who had begun teaching bite-sized lessons to his cousin in New Orleans over the internet and turned that activity into a wildly popular educational resource called the Khan Academy, was splashed on the cover of Forbes. Sebastian Thrun, the founder of another MOOC called Udacity, predicted in an interview in Wired magazine that within 50 years the number of universities would collapse to just ten worldwide. The New York Times declared it the year of the MOOC.
   1）对于慕课(MOOCs)的炒作在2012年达到顶峰。Salman Khan，一个投资分析师，开始通过互联网给他在新奥尔良的表弟教授小课，并将该行动变成一个名为“可汗学院”的广受欢迎的教育资源网站，他本人也荣登福布斯的封面。 Sebastian Thrun是另一个名为Udacity的MOOC的创始人，他在“有线”杂志的一次采访中预测，在50年内在全球范围内大学数量将缩减至仅为10个。纽约时报宣布2012是MOOC的一年。

2. The sheer numbers of people flocking to some of the initial courses seemed to suggest that an entirely new model of open-access, free university education was within reach. Now MOOC sceptics are more numerous than believers. Although lots of people still sign up, drop-out rates are sky-high.
   2）对最初的课程趋之若鹜的大量人数似乎暗示，一个开放的、免费的大学教育新模式是可以实现的。而现在，MOOC的怀疑者比信奉者更多。虽然仍然有很多人注册，辍学率却高上了天。

3. Nonetheless, the MOOCs are on to something. Education, like health care, is a complex and fragmented industry, which makes it hard to gain scale. Despite those drop-out rates, the MOOCs have shown it can be done quickly and comparatively cheaply. The Khan Academy has 14m-15m users who conduct at least one learning activity with it each month; Coursera has 22m registered learners. Those numbers are only going to grow. FutureLearn, a MOOC owned by Britain’s Open University, has big plans. Oxford University announced in November that it would be producing its first MOOC on the edX platform.
   3）尽管如此，MOOCs仍在继续。教育，如健康产业一样，是一个复杂和零碎的行业，这使得它难以规模化。尽管辍学率较高，MOOCs已经表明它可以做到快速和相对便宜。可汗学院拥有1400万至1500万用户，他们每个月至少进行一次学习活动; Coursera有22万注册学习者。这些数字只会持续增长。 FutureLearn，一个由英国开放大学拥有的MOOC，有很宏大的计划。牛津大学11月宣布将在edX平台上打造其第一个MOOC。

4. In their search for a business model, some platforms are now focusing much more squarely on employment (though others, like the Khan Academy, are not for profit). Udacity has launched a series of nanodegrees in tech-focused courses that range from the basic to the cutting-edge. It has done so, moreover, in partnership with employers. A course on Android was developed with Google; a nanodegree in self-driving cars uses instructors from Mercedes-Benz, Nvidia and others. Students pay $199-299 a month for as long as it takes them to finish the course (typically six to nine months) and get a 50% rebate if they complete it within a year. Udacity also offers a souped-up version of its nanodegree for an extra $100 a month, along with a money-back guarantee if graduates do not find a job within six months.
   4）在寻找商业模式时，一些平台现在更直接关注就业（尽管其他平台，如可汗学院，不是为了赚钱）。 Udacity已经推出了一系列以技术为重点的课程，从基础到前沿都有。此外，它还与雇主合作。 关于Android的一门课程是由Google开发的；自动驾驶汽车的“纳米学位”邀请了来自梅赛德斯 - 奔驰的Nvidia和其他人作为讲师。学生完成课程期间（通常为6至9个月）每月支付199-299美元，如果他们在一年内完成就可以得到50％的返还款。 Udacity还提供了一个每月需额外支付100美元的加强版的纳米学位，以及如果毕业生在六个月内找不到工作的退款保证。

5. Coursera’s content comes largely from universities, not specialist instructors; its range is much broader; and it is offering full degrees (one in computer science, the other an MBA) as well as shorter courses. But it, too, has shifted its emphasis to employability. Its boss, Rick Levin, a former president of Yale University, cites research showing that half of its learners took courses in order to advance their careers. Although its materials are available without charge, learners pay for assessment and accreditation at the end of the course ($300-400 for a four-course sequence that Coursera calls a “specialisation”). It has found that when money is changing hands, completion rates rise from 10% to 60% . It is increasingly working with companies, too. Firms can now integrate Coursera into their own learning portals, track employees’ participation and provide their desired menu of courses.
   5）Coursera的内容主要来自大学，而不是专门的讲师；其范围更广，并提供完整的学位（一个是计算机科学，另一个是MBA）以及短期课程。但它也把重点转向提升就业能力。它的老板，耶鲁大学前校长里克莱文，引用研究表示，一半的学生学习课程的目的是在事业上有所提升。虽然其材料是免费提供的，但学习者可以在课程结束时支付评估和认证的费用（$ 300-400用于Coursera称为“课程专项”的四门课程系列）。它发现，当学员付费时，完成率从10％上升到60％。它也越来越与公司合作。公司现在可以将Coursera集成到自己的学习门户中，跟踪员工的参与程度，并提供给他们想要的课程清单。

6. These are still early days. Coursera does not give out figures on its paying learners; Udacity says it has 13,000 people doing its nanodegrees. Whatever the arithmetic, the reinvented MOOCs matter because they are solving two problems they share with every provider of later-life education.
   6）这些还是早期阶段。 Coursera没有给出付费学习者的数字； Udacity说，有13000人正在学习它的纳米学位。无论数字如何，被重新发明的MOOCs都是重要的，因为它们正在解决每个“人生后期教育”提供者共有的两个问题。

7. The first of these is the cost of learning, not just in money but also in time. Formal education rests on the idea of qualifications that take a set period to complete. In America the entrenched notion of “seat time”, the amount of time that students spend with school teachers or university professors, dates back to Andrew Carnegie. It was originally intended as an eligibility requirement for teachers to draw a pension from the industrialist’s nascent pension scheme for college faculty. Students in their early 20s can more easily afford a lengthy time commitment because they are less likely to have other responsibilities. Although millions of people do manage part-time or distance learning in later life—one-third of all working students currently enrolled in America are 30-54 years old, according to the Georgetown University Centre on Education and the Workforce—balancing learning, working and family life can cause enormous pressures.
   7）第一个是学习的成本，不仅是在金钱方面，而且是时间方面的成本。正规教育是基于资格认证的想法，要获得此资格需要一段时间才能完成的。在美国，“座位时间”这一根深蒂固的概念，即学生与学校教师或大学教授一起度过的时间，可追溯到安德鲁·卡内基(美国钢铁大亨、慈善家)。它最初的目的是为教师们从这位实业家为大学教员初创的退休金计划中提取退休金提供资格要求。20岁出头的学生可以更容易地做出长时间学习的承诺，因为他们不太可能有其他责任。根据乔治城大学教育和劳动力平衡学习中心的统计，尽管数百万人在以后的生活中从事兼职或远程学习——目前在美国入学的所有在职学生中有三分之一是30-54岁——平衡学习、工作和家庭生活还是会造成巨大的压力。

8. Moreover, the world of work increasingly demands a quick response from the education system to provide people with the desired qualifications. To take one example from Burning Glass, in 2014 just under 50,000 American job-vacancy ads asked for a CISSP cyber-security certificate. Since only 65,000 people in America hold such a certificate and it takes five years of experience to earn one, that requirement will be hard to meet. Less demanding professions also put up huge barriers to entry. If you want to become a licensed cosmetologist in New Hampshire, you will need to have racked up 1,500 hours of training.In response, the MOOCs have tried to make their content as digestible and flexible as possible. Degrees are broken into modules; modules into courses; courses into short segments. The MOOCs test for optimal length to ensure people complete the course; six minutes is thought to be the sweet spot for online video and four weeks for a course.
   8）此外，职场越来越要求教育系统快速反应，为人们提供所需的资格。以Burning Glass为例，仅在2014年就有不到5万美国职位空缺的广告要求提供CISSP网络安全证书。由于美国只有6.5万人持有这样的证书，并且需要五年的经验才能获得一个这样的证书，这个要求很难满足。要求不高的专业也同样建立起了巨大的进入壁垒。如果你想成为新罕布什尔州的授权美容师，你将需要积累1500小时的培训时间。作为回应，MOOCs尽力使他们的内容尽可能好消化和灵活化。学位分为模块，模块分成课程，课程再分为短的片段。 MOOCs测试出最佳课程长度以确保人们完成课程；六分钟被认为是在线视频最舒服的时长，而整个课程最好在四个星期内完成。

9. Scott DeRue, the dean of the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, says the unbundling of educational content into smaller components reminds him of another industry: music. Songs used to be bundled into albums before being disaggregated by iTunes and streaming services such as Spotify. In Mr DeRue’s analogy, the degree is the album, the course content that is freely available on MOOCs is the free streaming radio service, and a “microcredential” like the nanodegree or the specialisation is paid-for iTunes.
   9）密歇根大学罗斯商学院院长斯科特·德罗（Scott DeRue）说，将教育内容拆分为更小的组成部分，使他想起了另一个行业：音乐。在通过iTunes和流媒体服务（如Spotify）分解之前，歌曲曾经被捆绑成专辑。在DeRue先生的类比中，学位是专辑，MOOCs免费提供的课程内容是免费流媒体广播服务，而像“纳米学位”或“课程专项”这样的微证书就是付费的iTunes。

10. How should universities respond to that kind of disruption? For his answer, Mr DeRue again draws on the lessons of the music industry. Faced with the disruption caused by the internet, it turned to live concerts, which provided a premium experience that cannot be replicated online. The on-campus degree also needs to mark itself out as a premium experience, he says.
    10）大学应该如何应对这种冲击？DeRue先生再次援引了音乐产业的教训作为回答。面对互联网造成的冲击，音乐产业转向了现场音乐会，提供了一个无法被在线复制的高级体验。他说，校园学位还需要将自己标榜为高级体验。

11. Another answer is for universities to make their own products more accessible by doing more teaching online. This is beginning to happen. When Georgia Tech decided to offer an online version of its masters in computer science at low cost, many were shocked: it seemed to risk cannibalising its campus degree. But according to Joshua Goodman of Harvard University, who has studied the programme, the decision was proved right. The campus degree continued to recruit students in their early 20s whereas the online degree attracted people with a median age of 34 who did not want to leave their jobs. Mr Goodman reckons this one programme could boost the numbers of computer-science masters produced in America each year by 7-8%. Chip Paucek, the boss of 2U, a firm that creates online degree programmes for conventional universities, reports that additional marketing efforts to lure online students also boost on-campus enrolments.
    11）另一个答案是大学通过进行更多的在线教学使自己的课程产品更容易获得。这一切正在开始发生。当乔治亚理工大学决定以低成本提供计算机科学硕士的在线版本时，许多人感到震惊：此举似乎有蚕食其校园学位的风险。但是，哈佛大学的约书亚·古德曼说，他已经研究了这个计划，这个决定被证明是正确的。校园学位继续招收20岁出头的学生，而在线学位吸引了平均年龄为34的人，他们不想离开他们的工作。古德曼先生认为，这一计划可以使美国每年诞生的计算机科学硕士数量增加7-8％。 Chip Paucek，一家为传统大学创造在线学位课程的公司2U的老板，宣称为吸引在线学生而做的额外市场推广努力也提高了校园招生量。

Educational Lego

12. Universities can become more modular, too. EdX has a micromasters in supply-chain management that can either be taken on its own or count towards a full masters at MIT. The University of Wisconsin-Extension has set up a site called the University Learning Store, which offers slivers of online content on practical subjects such as project management and business writing. Enthusiasts talk of a world of “stackable credentials” in which qualifications can be fitted together like bits of Lego.
    12）大学也可以变得更加模块化。 EdX对供应链管理学提供一个微硕士学位，可以独立获得，或者计入一个完整的MIT硕士学位中。威斯康星大学 成人教育学院设立了一个名为“大学学习商店”的网站，提供关于实践课题的成小块的在线内容，如项目管理和商业写作。乐观者提出一个“可叠加文凭”的世界，其中文凭可以像乐高一样装配在一起。

count towards: If something counts towards or counts toward an achievement or right, it is included as one of the things that give you the right to it.
e.g. In many courses, work from the second year onwards can count towards the final degree.

13. Just how far and fast universities will go in this direction is unclear, however. Degrees are still highly regarded, and increased emphasis on critical thinking and social skills raises their value in many ways. “The model of campuses, tenured faculty and so on does not work that well for short courses,” adds Jake Schwartz, General Assembly’s boss. “The economics of covering fixed costs forces them to go longer.”
    13）然而，大学在这个方向上会走多远和多快还不清楚。学位仍然受到高度重视，对于批判性思维和社会技能越来越多的重视在许多方面提高了学位的价值。“大学校园、终身教师等模式对短期课程来说效果不好，”GA的老板杰克·施瓦茨（Jake Schwartz）补充说： “覆盖固定成本的经济模式迫使这些课程变得更长。”

14. Academic institutions also struggle to deliver really fast-moving content. Pluralsight uses a model similar to that of book publishing by employing a network of 1,000 experts to produce and refresh its library of videos on IT and creative skills. These experts get royalties based on how often their content is viewed; its highest earner pulled in $2m last year, according to Aaron Skonnard, the firm’s boss. Such rewards provide an incentive for authors to keep updating their content. University faculty have other priorities.
    14）学术机构也努力提供真正快速发展的内容。 Pluralsight使用一个类似于图书出版的模式，使用一个由1000名专家组成的网络来生产和更新其关于IT和创造性技能的视频库。这些专家根据其内容的观看频率获得版权费；其最高收入者去年赚了200万美元，根据公司的老板亚伦Skonnard所说。这种奖励为作者持续更新其内容提供了激励。大学教师有其他的优先权。

15. Beside costs, the second problem for MOOCs to solve is credentials. Close colleagues know each other’s abilities, but modern labour markets do not work on the basis of such relationships. They need widely understood signals of experience and expertise, like a university degree or a baccalaureate, however imperfect they may be. In their own fields, vocational qualifications do the same job. The MOOCs’ answer is to offer microcredentials like nanodegrees and specialisations.
    15）除了成本，第二个MOOCs需要解决的问题是证书。关系密切的同事相互了解彼此的能力，但现代劳动力市场的运作不能基于这种关系。他们需要能够被大家都理解的标志来表明经验和专业知识，如大学学位或学士学位，尽管他们可能是不完美的。在自己的领域，职业资格也起到同样的效果。 MOOCs的答案是提供微证书，如纳米学位和课程专项。

16. But employers still need to be confident that the skills these credentials vouchsafe are for real. LinkedIn’s “endorsements” feature, for example, was routinely used by members to hand out compliments to people they did not know for skills they did not possess, in the hope of a reciprocal recommendation. In 2016 the firm tightened things up, but getting the balance right is hard. Credentials require just the right amount of friction: enough to be trusted, not so much as to block career transitions.
    16）但雇主仍然需要相信这些证书保证的技能是真实的。例如，LinkedIn的“推荐”功能常常被成员用于向他们不认识的、具备他们所没有的技能的人们提供赞美，以期互相推荐。在2016年，公司对这一功能的控制变得严格，但是要取得平衡是很困难的。证书需要恰到好处的摩擦力：既足以被信任，又不能阻挡职业转型。

17. Universities have no trouble winning trust: many of them can call on centuries of experience and name recognition. Coursera relies on universities and business schools for most of its content; their names sit proudly on the certificates that the firm issues. Some employers, too, may have enough kudos to play a role in authenticating credentials. The involvement of Google in the Android nanodegree has helped persuade Flipkart, an Indian e-commerce platform, to hire Udacity graduates sight unseen.
    17）大学在赢得信任方面就没有问题：许多大学可以依赖于几个世纪的经验和名誉认可。 Coursera的大部分内容依赖于大学和商学院；他们的名字自豪地出现在该公司颁发的证书上。还有一些雇主有足够的信誉在认证证书的有效性上起到作用。 Google参与的Android纳米学位帮助说服了Flipkart，一个印度电子商务平台，可以不经检查地雇用Udacity毕业生。

call on: to make a demand on ; depend on
e.g. universities are called upon to produce trained professionals.
kudos : the state of being admired and respected for being important or for doing something important
e.g. He acquired kudos just by appearing on television.
sight unseen: without inspection or appraisal

18. Wherever the content comes from, students’ work usually needs to be validated properly for a credential to be trusted. When student numbers are limited, the marking can be done by the teacher. But in the world of MOOCs those numbers can spiral, making it impractical for the instructors to do all the assessments. Automation can help, but does not work for complex assignments and subjects. Udacity gets its students to submit their coding projects via GitHub, a hosting site, to a network of machine-learning graduates who give feedback within hours.
    18）无论内容来自何处，学生的工作通常需要被正确地验证，以使证书可信。当学生数量有限时，打分可以由教师完成。但在MOOCs的世界里，这些数字可能是连续增长的，使讲师们做所有的评估是不切实际的。自动化可以有所帮助，但不适用于复杂的作业和学科。 Udacity让学生通过GitHub（一个托管网站）向机器学习毕业生们提交他们的编码项目，他们可以在数小时内提供反馈。

19. Even if these problems can be overcome, however, there is something faintly regressive about the world of microcredentials. Like a university degree, it still involves a stamp of approval from a recognised provider after a proprietary process. Yet lots of learning happens in informal and experiential settings, and lots of workplace skills cannot be acquired in a course.
    19）然而，即使这些问题可以克服，微证书领域也有一些微弱的退化。像大学学位一样，它仍然涉及到在一个专有的过程之后从公认的课程提供者那里获得认可。然而，大量的学习发生在非正式和基于经验的环境中，并且大量的工作场所技能并不能在课程中获得。

Gold stars for good behaviour

20. One way of dealing with that is to divide the currency of knowledge into smaller denominations by issuing “digital badges” to recognise less formal achievements. RMIT University, Australia’s largest tertiary-education institution, is working with Credly, a credentialling platform, to issue badges for the skills that are not tested in exams but that firms nevertheless value. Belinda Tynan, RMIT’s vice-president, cites a project carried out by engineering students to build an electric car, enter it into races and win sponsors as an example.

21. 一种解决方式是通过发布“数字徽章”来认可不太正式的成就，将知识的货币分成更小的面额。 RMIT大学是澳大利亚最大的高等教育机构，正在与Credly（一个资格认证平台）合作，发布没有在考试中测试、但是公司仍然重视的技能的徽章。 RMIT副​​总裁Belinda Tynan介绍了一个由工程学生进行的项目，用以建造一辆电动汽车，进入比赛并赢得赞助作为例子。

22. The trouble with digital badges is that they tend to proliferate. Illinois State University alone created 110 badges when it launched a programme with Credly in 2016. Add in MOOC certificates, LinkedIn Learning courses, competency-based education, General Assembly and the like, and the idea of creating new currencies of knowledge starts to look more like a recipe for hyperinflation.
    21）数字徽章的问题是它们趋向于不断激增。当伊利诺伊州立大学在2016年与Credly一起推出一个计划时，创造了110个徽章。MOOC证书的增加，LinkedIn学习课程，基于能力的教育和GA等类似组织，、以及创造新的知识货币的想法开始看起来更像一个恶性通货膨胀的方式。

23. David Blake, the founder of Degreed, a startup, aspires to resolve that problem by acting as the central bank of credentials. He wants to issue a standardised assessment of skill levels, irrespective of ** how people got there. The plan is to create a network of subject-matter experts to assess employees’ skills (copy-editing, say, or credit analysis), and a standardised grading language that means the same thing to everyone, everywhere.
    22）一家初创公司Degreed的创始人戴维·布莱克（David Blake）渴望通过担任证书中央银行的角色来解决这个问题。他想要对技能水平进行标准化的评估，而不管**人们通过何种方式达到此水平的。该计划想要创建一个学科专家网络，以评估员工的技能（比如说编辑校对，或信用分析），以及对任何人、在任何地方都同样有意义的标准化的分级语言。

24. Pluralsight is heading in a similar direction in its field. A diagnostic tool uses a technique called item response theory to work out users’ skill levels in areas such as coding, giving them a rating. The system helps determine what individuals should learn next, but also gives companies a standardised way to evaluate people’s skills.
    23）Pluralsight(一家在线教育公司)正朝着相似的方向前进。它开发的诊断工具使用一种称为项目反应理论的技术来计算用户在编码​​等领域的技能水平，给予他们评分。该系统有助于确定人们下一步应该学习什么，也给公司提供一个标准化的方法来评估人们的技能。

25. A system of standardised skills measures has its own problems, however. Using experts to grade ability raises recursive questions about the credentials of those experts. And it is hard for item response theory to assess subjective skills, such as an ability to construct an argument. Specific, measurable skills in areas such as IT are more amenable to this approach.
    24）然而，一套标准化技能衡量系统有其自身的问题。使用专家来评估能力引发了对于这些专家的资格认证的无限循环的问题。并且项目反应理论难以评估主观技能，例如构建论证的能力。确切地说，在诸如IT等领域可衡量的技能更适合这种方法。

25. So amenable, indeed, that they can be tested directly. As an adolescent in Armenia, Tigran Sloyan used to compete in mathematical Olympiads. That experience helped him win a place at MIT and also inspired him to found a startup called CodeFights in San Francisco. The site offers free gamified challenges to 500,000 users as a way of helping programmers learn. When they know enough, they are funnelled towards employers, which pay the firm 15% of a successful candidate’s starting salary. Sqore, a startup in Stockholm, also uses competitions to screen job applicants on behalf of its clients.
    25）事实上，这些技能如此适合这种方法以至于它们可以直接被测试。作为亚美尼亚的一个青少年，Tigran Sloyan曾经参加奥数比赛。这次经历帮助他赢得了麻省理工学院的入学资格，并启​​发他在旧金山成立了一家名为CodeFights的创业公司。该网站向50万用户提供免费的游戏化的挑战，帮助程序员学习。当他们学到足够多的时候，他们会被推荐给雇主，雇主支付该公司15％的成功应聘者的起薪。 Sqore，一个在斯德哥尔摩的创业公司，也使用竞赛代表其客户筛选求职者。

26. However it is done, the credentialling problem has to be solved. People are much more likely to invest in training if it confers a qualification that others will recognise. But they also need to know which skills are useful in the first place.
    26）无论怎么做，必须解决认证问题。如果培训能授予别人都认可的资格，人们才更有可能投资于它。但他们首先也需要知道哪些技能是有用的。
    This article appeared in the Special report section of the print edition under the headline “The return of the MOOC”

原文出处：经济学人杂志

译者：七呵夫

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