[Economist] 慕课的回归（5）

Learning and earning

慕课的回归

---

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.
但是在工作技能的认证方面还是需要给予用人单位一些信心。以 LinkedIn 的“背书”功能为例，很多用户会在自己不知道同样也不掌握的工作领域给他人“背书”，为的就是得到对方的“背书”。在 2016 年，LinkedIn 加强了相关管理，但依旧很难取得平衡。认证需要在公信力和实现难度上取得恰当的平衡。

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.
大学并不会有公信力的问题：许多学校有数个世纪的教学经验和名望。Coursera 拥有大学和商业学府的教学资源，这些学校的名称被骄傲的添加到 Coursera 的认证书之中。有些用人单位依靠其名声同样在认证中扮演了一定的角色。Google 公司提供的 Android 微学位就帮助 Udacity 的毕业生在一家印度电子贸易公司 Flipkart 顺利就业。

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.
不论教学资源来自何处，认证的专业性也需要对学生的作业进行合适的批改。当学生数量有限时，老师就能完成工作。但是在慕课的世界中，学生的数量急剧增长，这就使得教学者批改作业的任务变得不可能实现。自动化能帮助完成一些工作，但对于复杂的任务就显得无能为力。Udacity 让他的机器学习课程学生通过 GitHub （一个托管网站）来提交作业，几小时内就可以将成绩反馈给学生。

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.
即使这些问题可以得到解决，在微学位的认证世界中，仍然存在一些退步。就像一个大学学位，微学位仍然存留着权威认证机构以合适的程序进行认证的特征。然而许多的学习过程是非正式以及依靠经验取得的，许多的工作技巧也无法通过课程学习。