Why massive open online courses (still) matter
TED简介：2013 |2013年是MOOCs(大规模网络公开课)泛滥的一年。随着最初的失望而来的是巨大的数字和满腔的信心。但是edX网站的负责人阿加瓦尔指出这样的事实，作为一种广泛分享的高端学习方式，作为传统教室的一种补充教学方法(也许不是取代)，MOOCs仍然关系重大。阿加瓦尔分享了混合式学习的观点，教师可以利用混合式学习来为21世纪的学生创造理想的学习体验。
演讲者：Anant Agarwal阿南特·阿加瓦尔
片长：15：19
原文地址：为什么大规模网络公开课（仍然）那么重要
中英文对照翻译
I'd like to reimagine education. The last year has seen the invention of a new four-letter word. It starts with an M. MOOC: massive open online courses. Many organizations are offering these online courses to students all over the world, in the millions, for free. Anybody who has an Internet connection and the will to learn can access these great courses from excellent universities and get a credential at the end of it.
我想要重新定义教育。去年出现了一个新的四字单词，以M开头的缩写词MOOC：大规模网络公开课。许多机构陆续提供这些网络课程，免费提供给全世界数以百万计的学生。任何能够连接到因特网的人如果想要学习这些课程，可以访问这些名校名课，并在课程结束时获得专业证书在。
Now, in this discussion today, I'm going to focus on a different aspect of MOOCs. We are taking what we are learning and the technologies we are developing in the large and applying them in the small to create a blended model of education to really reinvent and reimagine what we do in the classroom.
接下来的讨论中，我会将话题集中在网络公开课的另一面我们大范围的吸收所学的知识，大范围的开发技术却小面积的应用，创造了一种混合的教育模式，真正意义上地重新确立和重新定义教室里的教学内容。
Now, our classrooms could use change. So, here's a classroom at this little three-letter institute in the Northeast of America, MIT. And this was a classroom about 50 or 60 years ago, and this is a classroom today. What's changed? The seats are in color. Whoop-de-do. Education really hasn't changed in the past 500 years. The last big innovation in education was the printing press and the textbooks. Everything else has changed around us. You know, from healthcare to transportation, everything is different, but education hasn't changed.
我们的教室需要改变。这是一间教室其所属的教育机构有三个字母组成，即美国东北部的MIT。这是五六十年代的一间教室，而这是目前使用的教室有什么变化吗？座位有了颜色，呕吼教育模式根本未曾改变过。过去的500年内教育领域里最近的一个大革新，是印刷机和教科书。生活中一切其他的事物都在改变，从医疗业到运输业 一切都有所变化，但是教育领域仍保持原样。
It's also been a real issue in terms of access. So what you see here is not a rock concert. And the person you see at the end of the stage is not Madonna. This is a classroom at the Obafemi Awolowo University in Nigeria. Now, we've all heard of distance education, but the students way in the back, 200 feet away from the instructor, I think they are undergoing long-distance education.
在是否有机会接受教育上，这也是个切实的问题。你看到的这张图片不是什么摇滚音乐会，讲台中间的那个人，不是麦当娜，这是一间教室，位于尼日利亚的奥巴费米亚沃洛沃大学。我们都听说过远程教育，但是坐在后面的学生离这位讲师有200英尺(61米) 我认为他们正在接受真正意义上的远距离教育。
Now, I really believe that we can transform education, both in quality and scale and access, through technology. For example, at edX, we are trying to transform education through online technologies. Given education has been calcified for 500 years,we really cannot think about reengineering it, micromanaging it.
现在，我真的相信我们可以转变教育模式，无论在质量上、规模上还是教育权利上，通过技术手段来转变。比如，在edX网站上我们正试着改变教育领域，通过在线技术。鉴于这500年来，教育已经僵化我们不能对它进行再造和微观管理。
We really have to completely reimagine it.It's like going from ox carts to the airplane. Even the infrastructure has to change.Everything has to change.We need to go from lectures on the blackboard to online exercises, online videos. We have to go to interactive virtual laboratories and gamification. We have to go to completely online grading and peer interaction and discussion boards. Everything really has to change.
事实上，我们需要彻底地重新定义就像从乘牛车到坐飞机，即使要改变基础设施，要改变一切我们需要从板书教育转变成在线练习、在线视频。我们要使用互动型虚拟实验室和游戏化模式，我们应当完全在线评分、在线与同伴互动和在线讨论。的确，一切都要改变。
So at edX and a number of other organizations, we are applying these technologies to education through MOOCs to really increase access to education. And you heard of this example, where, when we launched our very first course -- and this was an MIT-hard circuits and electronics course -- about a year and a half ago, 155,000 students from 162 countries enrolled in this course.And we had no marketing budget.
所以在edX网站和一些其他的组织，我们将这些技术应用于教育通过MOOCs，真正增加人们受教育的机会。大家应听说过这个事例，当时我们推出了第一档课程，麻省理工学院的电路与电子技术课程，大约一年半以前来自162个国家的155,000名学生注册了这档课程。
Now, 155,000 is a big number. This number is bigger than the total number of alumni of MIT in its 150-year history.7,200 students passed the course, and this was a hard course. 7,200 is also a big number. If I were to teach at MIT two semesters every year, I would have to teach for 40 years before I could teach this many students.
当时我们没有营销预算155,000是个大数目，这个数字大于麻省理工学院的校友总数，自其150年前建校以来7,200 学生通过了这个课程，而且这个课程很难。7,200也是个大数目如果我在麻省理工学院任教每年两个学期，要40年才能教到这么多学生。
Now these large numbers are just one part of the story. So today, I want to discuss a different aspect, the other side of MOOCs, take a different perspective. We are taking what we develop and learn in the large and applying it in the small to the classroom, to create a blended model of learning.
这些大数目都只是故事的一部分而已。所以今天，我想讨论一个不同的方面大规模网络公开课的另一面，以一个不一样的视角。我们将大量拓展和学习到的知识应用在局部到教室里来创建混合的学习模式。
But before I go into that, let me tell you a story. When my daughter turned 13, became a teenager, she stopped speaking English, and she began speaking this new language. I call it teen-lish. It's a digital language. It's got two sounds: a grunt and a silence.
但在谈到那之前，我先讲一个故事。我女儿满13岁时步入少年时期，她讲的不再是英语而是开始说这种新的语言，我称之为少年语言，它是一种数字式的语言。它有两种声音：咕哝声和沉默。
"Honey, come over for dinner."
"Hmm."
"Did you hear me?"
Silence. (Laughter)
"Can you listen to me?"
“Hmm.”
“亲爱的，过来吃饭”
“嗯”
“听见我说的话了吗”
沉默（笑声）
“能听见我说话吗?”
“嗯”
So we had a real issue with communicating, and we were just not communicating, until one day I had this epiphany. I texted her. I got an instant response. I said, no, that must have been by accident. She must have thought, you know, some friend of hers was calling her. So I texted her again. Boom, another response. I said, this is great. And so since then, our life has changed. I text her, she responds. It's just been absolutely great.
因此，我们有一个沟通方面的切实问题，我们根本不是在沟通，直到有一天我才有此顿悟，我发短信给她，得到一个即时的回应。我说，不，那肯定是偶然，你知道，她得想想她的一些朋友在叫她，所以我再次给她发短信，再一次回应我说，这太棒了。于是，从那时起，我们的生活已经改变了，我发短信，她回应。这种模式一直都非常好。
So our millennial generation is built differently. Now, I'm older, and my youthful looks might belie that, but I'm not in the millennial generation. But our kids are really different. The millennial generation is completely comfortable with online technology. So why are we fighting it in the classroom? Let's not fight it. Let's embrace it.
我们的千禧一代，成长方式有所不同。现在，我老了，这一点与我年轻的外表并不相称但我不是千禧一代但我们的孩子真的不一样。千禧一代完全适应在线技术，那么我们为什么不在教室里使用这种技术呢？不要再反对它，让我们接受它。
In fact, I believe -- and I have two fat thumbs, I can't text very well -- but I'm willing to bet that with evolution, our kids and their grandchildren will develop really, really little, itty-bitty thumbs to text much better, that evolution will fix all of that stuff. But what if we embraced technology, embraced the millennial generation's natural predilections, and really think about creating these online technologies, blend them into their lives.So here's what we can do. So rather than driving our kids into a classroom, herding them out there at 8 o'clock in the morning -- I hated going to class at 8 o'clock in the morning, so why are we forcing our kids to do that?
事实上，我有两个肥胖的拇指，编辑短信并不容易，但我敢说，在进化的过程中我们的孩子和他们的子孙将发育成很小，甚至极小的拇指，以便更好地编辑信息，这种进化将改变诸如此类的东西。但如果我们使用在线技术接受千禧一代天生的优待，真正去创建这些在线技术将其融入他们的生活，会怎样呢？这就是我们能够做到的与其把孩子送进教室，让他们在早上8点钟赶到教室，我以前就讨厌在早上8点钟上课，所以我们为什么要强迫孩子们这样做呢？
So instead what you do is you have them watch videos and do interactive exercises in the comfort of their dorm rooms, in their bedroom, in the dining room, in the bathroom, wherever they're most creative. Then they come into the classroom for some in-person interaction. They can have discussions amongst themselves. They can solve problems together. They can work with the professor and have the professor answer their questions. In fact, with edX, when we were teaching our first course on circuits and electronics around the world, this was happening unbeknownst to us.
倒不如让他们观看视频，做互动性的练习，在舒适的宿舍、卧室、餐厅、浴室任何使他们最具创造力的场所。然后他们再来到教室在人与人之间做一些真实的互动，他们可以相互讨论。可以一起解决问题，他们可以与教授合作并且有教授解答他们的问题。事实上，当我们第一次将课程传到edX上时让整个世界都能学到电路与电子技术这门课，并不知道会发生这样的事。
Two high school teachers at the Sant High School in Mongolia had flipped their classroom, and they were using our video lectures and interactive exercises, where the learners in the high school, 15-year-olds, mind you, would go and do these things in their own homes and they would come into class, and as you see from this image here, they would interact with each other and do some physical laboratory work. And the only way we discovered this was they wrote a blog and we happened to stumble upon that blog.
两名高中教师在蒙古国的桑特高中已经转变了他们的课堂教学模式，他们使用我们视频讲座和交互式练习。这所高中的学生，要知道，是15岁的学生会在自己的家园做这些，会进入课堂就像你看到的这幅图片，他们彼此进行交流，做一些物理实验。我们发现这些的唯一途径就是通过他们写的博客，我们碰巧发现了这个博客。
We were also doing other pilots. So we did a pilot experimental blended courses, working with San Jose State University in California, again, with the circuits and electronics course. You'll hear that a lot. That course has become sort of like our petri dish of learning. So there, the students would, again, the instructors flipped the classroom, blended online and in person, and the results were staggering.
我们也在做其他的试验。我们做了一个试验性的混合实验课程，同加利福尼亚州的圣何塞州立大学合作，再一次关于电路与电子技术，你将多次听到这门课，该课程已成为我们获取知识的培养皿。在那里，学生们会再次在经过老师改造的课堂教学模式中，将在线教学和课堂教学相结合。
Now don't take these results to the bank just yet. Just wait a little bit longer as we experiment with this some more, but the early results are incredible.So traditionally, semester upon semester, for the past several years, this course,again, a hard course, had a failure rate of about 40 to 41 percent every semester. With this blended class late last year, the failure rate fell to nine percent. So the results can be extremely, extremely good.
结果令人吃惊，到目前为止这些结果还不够真实，还得等我们对此进行更长时间的试验。但早期的结果已经叫人觉得不可思议，用传统的教学方式，一个学期接一个学期在过去几年里，这门课这门难学的课大约有40%到41%的失败率，每个学期 去年年底的这种混合教学将失败率降到9% 这种结果可以说是非常非常好。
Now before we go too far into this, I'd like to spend some time discussing some key ideas. What are some key ideas that makes all of this work?
在我们深入探讨之前我想花些时间讨论 一些核心观念，是什么样的核心想法使这一切如此奏效。
One idea is active learning. The idea here is, rather than have students walk into class and watch lectures,we replace this with what we call lessons. Lessons are interleaved sequences of videos and interactive exercises. So a student might watch a five-, seven-minute video and follow that with an interactive exercise.Think of this as the ultimate Socratization of education. You teach by asking questions.
一个观点是主动学习。这个观点，不是说让学生走进课堂听讲座，而是用课程来代替这类课程包括连续分节的教学视频和互动练习，所以学生可能看一段五分钟或七分钟的视频，并按视频内容做互动练习。把它看做是终极的苏格拉底式教育，通过提问来教学。
And this is a form of learning called active learning, and really promoted by a very early paper, in 1972, by Craik and Lockhart,where they said and discovered that learning and retention really relates strongly to the depth of mental processing. Students learn much better when they are interacting with the material.
这是一种学习形式叫做主动学习。早期文件显示，这种学习方法在1972年经由克雷克和洛克哈特推行而兴起，他们提出并发现学习和持久记忆与大脑加工知识过程的深度大有关系，学生会学得更好，如果他们结合这些学习资料。
The second idea is self-pacing. Now, when I went to a lecture hall, and if you were like me, by the fifth minute I would lose the professor. I wasn't all that smart, and I would be scrambling, taking notes, and then I would lose the lecture for the rest of the hour. Instead, wouldn't it be nice with online technologies, we offer videos and interactive engagements to students? They can hit the pause button. They can rewind the professor. Heck, they can even mute the professor. So this form of self-pacing can be very helpful to learning.
第二个观点是自定步调学习。我一旦进入讲堂如果你是像我一样，五分钟内就会跟不上这位教授。我不太聪明，我会焦急的记着笔记，然后余下的时间就跟不上了。相反，在线教学技术不是很好吗？我们为学生提供视频和互动式参与，他们可以按暂停按钮，可以回放课程甚至，他们可以消音。这种自定步调的学习形式非常有助于学习。
The third idea that we have is instant feedback. With instant feedback, the computer grades exercises. I mean, how else do you teach 150,000 students? Your computer is grading all the exercises. And we've all submitted homeworks, and your grades come back two weeks later, you've forgotten all about it. I don't think I've still received some of my homeworks from my undergraduate days. Some are never graded.
第三个观点是即时反馈。有了即时反馈，计算机可以为练习评分，不然你要怎么教十五万学生，您的计算机会对所有练习打分。我们都曾提交过作业你的成绩会在两周后反馈回来。那时你已经忘了作业内容，我认为我不会再收到一些本科时期的作业一些永远不会评分的作业。
So with instant feedback, students can try to apply answers. If they get it wrong, they can get instant feedback. They can try it again and try it again, and this really becomes much more engaging. They get the instant feedback, and this little green check mark that you see here is becoming somewhat of a cult symbol at edX.Learners are telling us that they go to bed at night dreaming of the green check mark. In fact, one of our learners who took the circuits course early last year, he then went on to take a software course from Berkeley at the end of the year, and this is what the learner had to say on our discussion board when he just started that course about the green check mark: Oh god“have I missed you ”
有这样的即时反馈，学生可以试着填上答案，如果做错了，他们可以获得即时反馈，他们可以一次又一次的尝试这个过程更加迷人，他们得到的即时反馈就是你看到的这个小小的绿色复选标记，它成了edX上令人痴迷的符号，学习者告诉我们他们晚上上床睡觉都做着绿色对号的梦。事实上，有一名学习者去年年初学习了那门电路课程，接着，他又修了一门伯克利大学的软件课程，就在同年年底这位学习者在讨论板上提到他刚刚开始学那门课的时候关于绿色的复选标记的想法： “天啊，我是那么的想念你”
When's the last time you've seen students posting comments like this about homework? My colleague Ed Bertschinger, who heads up the physics department at MIT, has this to say about instant feedback: He indicated that instant feedback turns teaching moments into learning outcomes.
你最后一次见到学生对家庭作业发表如此评论是什么时候？我的同事Ed Bertschinger 担任麻省理工学院物理系的主任，曾对即时反馈有这样的说法：他表示，即时反馈使教学时刻即时体现出学习成果。
The next big idea is gamification. You know, all learners engage really well with interactive videos and so on.You know, they would sit down and shoot alien spaceships all day long until they get it. So we applied these gamification techniques to learning, and we can build these online laboratories. How do you teach creativity? How do you teach design?
另一个伟大的理念是游戏化模式，所有学习都者都能很好的利用，互动式教学视频等等。他们会整天坐在那拍摄外星人的宇宙飞船，直到他们拍摄到。所以我们可以将这些游戏化的技术应用到学习中，我们可以建立在线实验室你如何教会学生发挥创造力？你如何教学生学习设计？
We can do this through online labs and use computing power to build these online labs. So as this little video shows here, you can engage students much like they design with Legos. So here, the learners are building a circuit with Lego-like ease. And this can also be graded by the computer.
我们可以通过在线实验室来实现，使用计算机建立这些在线实验室就像这个小小的视频所显示的一样，您可以吸引学生的注意力就像他们用乐高进行设计。在这儿，学习者正在构建一个电路，像玩乐高一样轻松这也可以由计算机来打分。
Fifth is peer learning. So here, we use discussion forums and discussions and Facebook-like interaction not as a distraction, but to really help students learn. Let me tell you a story. When we did our circuits course for the 155,000 students, I didn't sleep for three nights leading up to the launch of the course. I told my TAs, okay, 24/7, we're going to be up monitoring the forum, answering questions.
第五点是同伴学习。所以，我们使用论坛讨论还有类似脸书的互动，不为消遣而是真正有助于学生学习。给大家讲一个故事，当我们的电路课程要为那155,000的学生上线时我连着三个晚上没睡觉引领课程上线。我每时每刻都在告诉我的助教们人数会上涨的，监测论坛、回答问题。
They had answered questions for 100 students. How do you do that for 150,000? So one night I'm sitting up there, at 2 a.m. at night, and I think there's this question from a student from Pakistan, and he asked a question, and I said, okay, let me go and type up an answer, I don't type all that fast, and I begin typing up the answer, and before I can finish,another student from Egypt popped in with an answer, not quite right, so I'm fixing the answer, and before I can finish, a student from the U.S. had popped in with a different answer.
他们解答了100名学生提出的问题。面对15万学生要怎么办一天晚上我坐在那，凌晨两点钟，思考一个巴基斯坦的学生提出的问题，他问了一个问题我想好吧就去键入一个答案吧，我可以慢点写，然后我开始键入答案，还没写完，另一名埃及的学生就弹出了一个答案。不完全正确所以我就完善了一下，我还没有改完，又有一个来自美国的学生突然弹出了一个不同的答案。
And then I sat back, fascinated.Boom, boom, boom, boom, the students were discussing and interacting with each other, and by 4 a.m.that night, I'm totally fascinated, having this epiphany, and by 4 a.m. in the morning, they had discovered the right answer. And all I had to do was go and bless it, "Good answer." So this is absolutely amazing, where students are learning from each other, and they're telling us that they are learning by teaching.
然后我坐回去，被吸引住了 砰 砰 砰 砰 学生之间，相互讨论交流，那天凌晨四点我完全入迷，他们渐渐顿悟到早上4点钟他们发现了正确的答案。我能做的就是去赞美一下 "答得好" 这太让人惊讶了，学生之间彼此学习。这告诉我们他们是因教而学。
Now this is all not just in the future. This is happening today. So we are applying these blended learning pilots in a number of universities and high schools around the world, from Tsinghua in China to the National University of Mongolia in Mongolia to Berkeley in California -- all over the world. And these kinds of technologies really help, the blended model can really help revolutionize education.
这一切不是只存在于未来，今天也同样在发生。所以我们将这些混合学习模式试验应用到世界各地的一些大学和高中，从中国的清华大学到蒙古的蒙古国立大学到加州的伯克利大学到整个世界。这种类型的技术，这种混合教学模式可以真正帮助改革教育领域，它也能解决大规模网络公开课的实际问题。
It can also solve a practical problem of MOOCs, the business aspect.We can also license these MOOC courses to other universities, and therein lies a revenue model for MOOCs, where the university that licenses it with the professor can use these online courses like the next-generation textbook. They can use as much or as little as they like, and it becomes a tool in the teacher's arsenal.
在其商业方面我们还可以授权这些网络公开课面向其他的大学，其中蕴藏着MOOCs的收益模式，那些授权使用的大学，其任课教授可以使用这些在线课程就像下一代的教科书，他们可以想用多少就用多少它就是老师武器库中的一个工具。
Finally, I would like to have you dream with me for a little bit. I would like us to really reimagine education.We will have to move from lecture halls to e-spaces. We have to move from books to tablets like the Aakash in India or the Raspberry Pi, 20 dollars. The Aakash is 40 dollars. We have to move from bricks-and-mortar school buildings to digital dormitories.
最后，我想要大家与我一起想象一小会儿，我希望能够真正重新定义教育，我们将会有从讲堂转移到电子空间。我们要从使用书本转移到使用平板电脑，就像印度的Aakash平板电脑或20美元的树莓派电脑，Aakash平板售价40美元我们要从砖泥构筑的学校建筑转移到数字化房间。
But I think at the end of the day, I think we will still need one lecture hall in our universities. Otherwise, how else do we tell our grandchildren that your grandparents sat in that room in neat little rows like cornstalksand watched this professor at the end talk about content and, you know, you didn't even have a rewind button?
但我想终有一天，我们仍然需要一个课堂保留在大学里，否则我们要怎样告诉我们的子孙，你们的爷爷奶奶当初就坐在那个房间里一排一排整齐的就像田里的玉米杆，然后在后排看着教授讲授知识，知道吗？你根本没有后退键可以按。
Thank you.(Applause)
Thank you. Thank you. (Applause)
谢谢（掌声）谢谢 谢谢（掌声）
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