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免费义务教育
Learning new lessons
学习新的课程
Online courses are transforming higher education, creating new opportunities for the best and huge problems for the rest
网络课程正在向高等教育转变，为优秀的人创造了新的机会，同时也为其余的人带来了巨大的难题。
Dec 22nd 2012 | CHICAGO, LONDON AND NEW YORK| from the print edition

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TOP-QUALITY teaching, stringent admissions criteria and impressive qualifications allow the world’s best universities to charge mega-fees: over $50,000 for a year of undergraduate study at Harvard. Less exalted providers have boomed too, with a similar model that sells seminars, lectures, exams and a “salad days” social life in a single bundle. Now online provision is transforming higher education, giving the best universities a chance to widen their catch, opening new opportunities for the agile, and threatening doom for the laggard and mediocre.
高品质的教育，严格的入学标准和令人印象深刻的资格让世界上最好的大学收取高额的学费：哈佛大学的本科生一年要超过50000美元。较不显赫的供应商也在蓬勃发展，利用相似的销售模式，这个模式是用一大笔钱来支付研讨会，讲座，考试和一种过时的生活。现在网络资源正在向高等教育转变，给好大学一个拓宽兴趣（收获）的机会，为聪明人提供一个新的机会，并且威胁了懒惰者和平庸者的发展。
The roots are decades old. Britain’s Open University started teaching via radio and television in 1971; the for-profit University of Phoenix has been teaching online since 1989; MIT and others have been posting lectures on the internet for a decade. But the change in 2012 has been electrifying. Two start-ups, both spawned by Stanford University, are recruiting students at an astonishing rate for “massive open online courses” or MOOCs. In January Sebastian Thrun, a computer-science professor there, announced the launch of Udacity. It started to offer courses the next month—a nanosecond by the standards of old-style university decision making. He also gave up his Stanford tenure, saying that Udacity had “completely changed my perspective”. In October Udacity raised $15m from investors. It has 475,000 users.
远程教育的起源可以追溯到几十年前。在1971年，英国的开放大学开始通过电台和电视进行教学，盈利性质的凤凰城大学在1989年开始网络教学。麻省理工大学和其他大学已经开始了十年的网络讲座。但是2012年的改变十分令人激动。斯坦福大学创立的两个新企业，因为大规模的在线教育和MOOCS，以惊人的速率招收学员。塞巴斯蒂安史朗一个电脑科学教授在一月份宣布Udacity（公司将陆续推出与计算机科学全系列课程）的开始，他下个月提供课程------------一纳秒通过旧式大学做决定的标准。他放弃了斯坦福大学的终身职位，说Udacity已经完全改变了我的观点。10月份，Udacity已经从投资者那里筹集了150万美元的资金。它已经有了475000的使用者。
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In April two of Mr Thrun’s ex-colleagues, Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller, launched a rival, Coursera, with $16m in venture capital. At first it offered online courses from four universities. By August it had signed up 1m students, rising to over 2m now. Its most successful class, “How to reason and argue”, attracted over 180,000 students. Harvard and MIT announced they would each put up $30m to launch edX, a non-profit venture offering courses from Ivy League universities. Other schools have joined too.
在四月份特龙先生的两个交换学生，Andrew Ng 和Daphne Koller用16000000美元的风险资本开展了一个竞争。起初它为四个大学开展网络课程。到了八月份它已经由开始的1000000位学生增加到现在的2000000位学生。它最成功的课程是“怎样说明原因和怎样辩论”吸引了18000位学生。哈佛大学和麻省理工大学宣布他们将投资30000000美元开设edx课程，这个课程来自于常春藤联盟大学提供的非盈利性的课程。其他的学校也加入进来了。

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The trend stretches far beyond America. Eight among Coursera’s 33 partners are foreign, including the universities of Edinburgh, Toronto and Melbourne. On December 14th a of British providers, led by the Open University and including Bristol, St Andrews and Warwick, said Futurelearn, a new platform for free courses, would soon compete with the American newcomers.
这种趋势已经远远超出了美国。Coursera的33个成员中的八个来自外国，包括爱丁堡，多伦多，和墨尔本的大学。在12月14日，由公开大学及包括布里斯托尔、圣安德鲁斯和沃里克领导的一个英国的供应商说，Futurelearn它是一个新的免费课程平台，它将很快与美国新企业竞争。
Individual academics have MOOCs too. Tyler Cowen of George Mason University has launched Marginal Revolution University, named after his own popular blog, to provide free economics education.
个别学者也是有MOOCs的。乔治梅森大学的泰勒考恩已经推出了边际革命大学，这个名字是有他受欢迎的博客之后命名的，他提供了一个免费的学术教育。
One spur is economic and political pressure to improve productivity in higher education. The cost per student in America has risen at almost five times the rate of inflation since 1983. For universities beset by heavy debts, smaller taxpayer subsidies and a cyclical decline in enrolment, online courses mean better tuition, higher graduation rates and lower-cost degrees. New technology also gives the innovative a chance to shine against their rivals.
对于高等教育一种鞭策是经济和政治压力，以提高生产力。在美国每一位学生的花费已经增长了近乎是1983年通货膨胀利率的五倍。大学面对的困扰是严重的负债、更小的的纳税人补贴和升学的周期性下降。网络课程意味着更好地讲授、更高的毕业率和低花费的学位。新的技术也给了对手创新了一个大放光彩的机会。
MOOCs are more than good university lectures available online. The real innovation comes from integrating academics talking with interactive coursework, such as automated tests, quizzes and even games. Real-life lectures have no pause, rewind (or fast-forward) buttons; MOOCs let students learn at their own pace, typically with short, engaging videos, modelled on the hugely successful online lecturettes pioneered by TED, a non-profit organiser of upmarket mindfests.
MOOCs不仅仅提供了在网上可以观看好的大学的讲座，真正的创新来自于整合与互动的课程，如自动测试，测验，甚至游戏。真正地演讲不分暂停、后退还是前进；MOOCs让学生通过使用短而典型、正在使用的视频，按自己的进度学习，TED首次塑造了一个巨大成功的在线讲座，TED是一个非营利性高档集会的组织。
The cost of the courses can be spread over huge numbers of students. A Udacity course on machine learning, taught by Peter Norvig, Google’s director of research, attracted 160,000 students. Ms Koller of Coursera muses that a single virtual classroom may one day seat 1.5m. Thousands of minds mingle in moderated discussion forums, where learners in Peru, Finland or Japan can speedily reply to a struggling student’s question, highlight points that are unclear, and even grade each others’ work.
课程的成本可以分摊给大量的学生。在机器上由谷歌的研究部主任彼得·诺维格教授全系列课程，吸引了16万学生。Coursera的克勒若有所思，一个单一的虚拟教室，也许有一天坐1500000位学生。成千上万的想法流淌在管理论坛，在秘鲁，芬兰和日本的学习者可以被迅速回复那些他们困惑的问题，不清楚的突出点，甚至是批改他们的作业。
MOOCs enrich education for rich-world students, especially the cash-strapped, and those dissatisfied with what their own colleges are offering. But for others, especially in poor countries, online education opens the door to yearned-for opportunities. One famous MOOC graduate is Khadijah Niazi, an 11-year-old girl in Lahore who completed Udacity’s Physics 100 class. Of the 155,000 people from five countries who registered for MIT’s prototype Circuits and Electronics course, only 45% were aged between 18 and 25. Most traffic came from five countries: America, India, Britain, Colombia and Spain. Some 7,200 students passed the course.
MOOCs可以吩咐那些富有国家的学生的教育，尤其是那些囊中羞涩和对自己学校提供的教育不满意的学生。但是对于其他国家，尤其是贫穷的国家，在线教育为那些渴望拥有这样机会的人打开了一扇门。一个著名的MOOC毕业生哈蒂嘉.尼亚兹，一个11岁的女孩,在拉合尔完成Udacity的物理100级。155,000名专业人士，来自五个国家，他们注册了MIT的原型电路与电子学科课程，只有45％的人年龄在18至25之间。大部分学员来自5个国家：美国，印度，英国，哥伦比亚和西班牙。大约有7,200学生通过课程。
Spires not wires
Some of Europe’s best schools are determinedly unruffled. Oxford says that MOOCs “will not prompt it to change anything”, adding that it “does not see them as revolutionary in anything other than scale”. Cambridge even says it is “nonsense” to see MOOCs as a rival; it is “not in the business of online education”.
一些欧洲最好的大学依然坚持。牛津大学指出MOOCs“将不会发展它来改变任何事情”，并且指出“从来没有见过如此大规模的革命”剑桥甚至指出将MOOCs作为竞争对手是没有意义的，它不具备网络教育的商业性。
Such universities are likely to continue to attract the best (and richest) applicants who want personal tuition and the whiff of research in the air. They have other benefits too, including sublime architecture, better marriage partners and a huge career boost. For these places, MOOCs are chiefly a marketing opportunity: once customers taste the lectures, they may pay for the rest of the bundle.
一些大学可能继续吸引最好（最富有）的想申请个人教学申请者以及正在进行的研究。他们也有其他的利益来源，包括高层次的社会地位，更加美满的婚姻以及事业的成功。在这些方面，MOOCs能够提供良好的机会。一旦消费者听过演讲，他们就有可能支付剩余的钱。
But elsewhere change is likely to be more disruptive. Clayton Christensen, a Harvard Business School professor and author of “The Innovative University”, predicts “wholesale bankruptcies” over the next decade among standard universities.
但是其他方面的改变可能具有更大的破坏性。哈佛大学商学院的教授同时也是“创新性大学”的作者克莱顿·克里斯坦森预测在接下来的十年标准水平的大学会出现“大规模的倒闭”。
One potential casualty is the cross-subsidy between teaching and research. MOOCs will make it far harder to overcharge students, especially undergraduates, in order to subsidise research that nobody else will pay for. Some universities will have to specialise to survive—perhaps dropping indifferent lecturing or teaching to concentrate on something else, such as brilliantly set and marked examinations. Online platforms will also allow clusters of universities to pool resources, such as providing first-year undergraduate lecture courses, suggests William Lawton, director of the Observatory on Borderless Higher Education, a think-tank in London.
一个潜在的伤害是教学和研究的交叉补贴。 MOOCs将会使它变得更加艰难，即为了给研究补贴而过度的向学生收费，特别是本科生，将不会有人支付。一些大学将不得不专门想办法生存——减少冷门的课程或者专注于其他方面，例如杰出的设置和标记检查。网络平台也允许大学向其中添加资源，例如提供第一年本科生的演讲课程，正如伦敦无国界高等教育的研究者智囊团的主任威廉·劳顿所建议的那样。
To compete head-on with established providers, MOOCs must not just teach but also provide credible qualifications. The vast majority of Coursera, Udacity and edX offerings do not provide a degree. This may be one reason for MOOCs’ high drop-out rates: even the most ardent knowledge-lover needs qualifications. Another worry is that online tests are open to cheating and plagiarism. Even soundly run mechanical tests are no substitute for the fuller picture provided by human examiners. Peer grading (students’ assessments of their fellows), even if honest, may be flawed.
为了同现存的提供者竞争行业领袖，MOOCs不仅提供教学同时还提供名誉证书。绝大部分的Coursera, Udacity 和 edX不能提供学位。这可能是MOOCs保持高增长率的原因：即使是最狂热的知识爱好者也需要一个证书。另一个担心是在线测试同时也对抄袭者和剽窃者开放。即使是健全的机械测试也不能完全替代由人类检测者所提供的完整图片。同年级的学生（学生之间所做的评估）即使是诚实的，也可能有错误。
One option is non-academic testing. Google already has links with Udacity. A certificate of programming proficiency from a firm like that might impress some employers more than an old-style degree.
一个选择是非学术性的测试。谷歌已经与Udacity链接。一个来自于类似公司的编程能力证书可能比一个旧式的学位证书更能打动雇主。
Elsewhere, pickings so far are slim. The American Council on Education is reviewing a handful of Coursera’s classes for credit equivalency; once approved, universities can choose to grant credit for them (or not). Freiburg University in Germany gives credit for a Udacity course. North Virginia Community College has started awarding credits for introductory college courses provided for around $100 by Straighter Line, a for-profit online-education firm. Students can transfer these to George Mason University.
在其他地方，目前为止还没有大的收获。美国教育理事会正在审查Coursera的信贷类的课程。一旦批准，学校可以选择给（或不给）他们极大的学分。德国的弗莱堡大学给Udacity课程一个学分。北维州社区大学已经开始为引入的大学课程奖励学分，这些课程的奖励是由一家非盈利的在线教育公司提供的大约100美元。学生们也可以将学分转到乔治梅森大学。
Even if MOOCs can coin sound academic currency, they must also make real money. Though marginal costs are low, designing enticing online material is costly. Non-profit ventures such as edX want to break even. Others have investors to satisfy. The first way of generating revenue is a “freemium” model, in which the course is free but the graduation certificate is paid-for. Udacity, for example, charges $89 for an exam invigilated by Pearson VUE, an electronic-testing firm; its parent company is a part-owner of this newspaper.
即使MOOCs可以创造学院的名誉资产，他们却无法创造真正的金钱。尽管边际成本很低，设计吸引人的在线材料也需要花费。类似edX的非营利性的企业想打破这一现实，甚至让投资者满意。第一种方式产生的收入是“免费增值”模型，这种模型是课程是免费的，但毕业证书是付费的。例如，Udacity皮尔森公司为一场考试监考收费89美元，皮尔森公司是一家电子测试公司，他的母公司是这个报纸的股东之一。
A second model is to charge potential employers a fee for spotting suitable recruits among the students. Coursera charges for referrals to its best students. A third option is to license online courses to universities to help them improve their offerings to students. Ms Koller foresees a blended approach, in which universities mix MOOCs and in-house provision to expand the range of degrees they offer.
第二种模型是在学生之间寻找新成员，并向潜在的顾客收取小费。Coursera 将费用奖励给最好的学生。第三种选择是为大学提供网络课程通行证，以此来帮助改善他们为学生提供的服务。科勒预见到了混合的方式，这种方式是高校将MOOCs和扩大他们所提供的学位范围加以混合。
Mr Christensen predicts that most universities below the upper tier will have to integrate a “second, virtual university” into the standard one. Good online classes would reduce the need for costly campus facilities and free teachers’ time for individual tutoring. Knewton, a for-profit provider of personalised online education, calls that idea the “flipped classroom”.
克里斯坦森先生预测大部分顶级的高校将不得不将融入“第二虚拟大学”作为标准。好的网络课程将减少昂贵的校园设施的花费以及减少老师来提供个人辅导的时间。Knewton是一家提供个性化的在线教育的盈利性公司，他把这个想法叫做“移动教室”
Coursera and edX both want to work with standard providers. Udacity, as its name suggests, is more daring. Mr Thrun is hiring more big names from outside academia, to join Google’s Mr Norvig. Mr Thrun predicts that in 50 years there will be only ten universities left in the world.
Coursera 和edX 都想同标准的供应商合作。正如他的名字，Udacity更是大胆。杜伦先生雇佣学术界知名的人士加入谷歌。杜伦先生预测50年之后时间上将只剩10所大学。
If not quite on that scale, MOOCs clearly mean upheaval for the cosseted and incompetent. But for those who most want it, education will be transformed.
如果没有如此大的规模，MOOCs 明确指出由宠爱和无能力者所引起的动乱。但是如果谁想拥有它，教育将会促使他进行转变。