網絡教育的未來在校園

Daphne Koller was a computer science professor at Stanford University when, in 2009, she realized that the way she and other professors on campus were teaching their students was backwards.
達芙妮·考勒原是斯坦福大學計算機科學教授。2009年，她突然意識到現在她和大學裏其他教授的授課方式太落後了。

So, she began offloading her lecture time to video so she could spend more time interacting with students in class, a method now widely referred to as the "flipped classroom."
於是她將自己的講座錄製成視頻後上傳網絡，這樣就可以省出時間和學生課堂互動。現在這種教學方式被稱爲“翻轉課堂”。

Today, Koller is best known for co-founding Coursera, a company that offers actual college courses for free online. Most of the hype around Coursera has revolved around these so-called "massively open online courses" or MOOCs, which make classes from the best universities in the world available to anyone online for free.
現在，考勒已經是“課程時代”公司創始人之一，這家公司專門提供免費網上大學課程。大多數圍繞“課程時代”的宣傳都在講它是“大規模網絡開放課程”的一部分，即MOOC，它將最優秀的大學課程發佈在網上，並免費提供給全世界的學習者。

Why MOOCs Can't Abandon the Classroom
爲什麼MOOC不能脫離課堂？

EdX, one of the few non-profit MOOC providers, launched a pilot program at San Jose State University last fall for students. Before the school incorporated edX, the failure rate for that course had been a whopping 41 percent. After one semester, the failure rate for students in the flipped classroom dropped to just 9 percent.
EdX是非盈利性MOOC課程的提供者之一。去年秋天，EdX在聖何塞州立大學爲學生提供了一門試用課程。在學校使用EdX課程之前，這門課的不通過率高達41%。一學期之後，通過翻轉課堂學習這門課程的學生不通過率降到了9%。

"The edX course was used as a sort of new age textbook,” says edX president Anant Agarwal. "Typically students have to do reading assignments before class. Here, they watch a video, do interactive exercises, and in class they interact with the professor and each other."
EdX董事阿南特·阿格沃爾說：“EdX是一種新時代教科書。一般學生都要在課前讀書預習。但在這裏，他們可以看視頻、做互動練習，之後再到課堂上和教授、同學互動交流。”

Agarwal says edX didn't charge San Jose State for the pilot program, but starting this fall, it will be offering the flipped course to all California State University campuses for a fee.
阿格沃爾說EdX不會對聖何塞州立大學收取使用課程費用，但從本秋季學期起，EdX將面向所有加州大學，對翻轉課堂收取使用費。

"I think this will be a big part of how we make ourselves sustainable financially," Koller says, noting that the biggest growth opportunity for the flipped classroom is overseas. "There's a significant lack of instructional capacity in many parts of the world, so I think this will be heavily used outside the U.S."
考勒認爲翻轉課堂在海外有着巨大的發展機會，她說：“我認爲這將是公司保證可持續發展的一大重要經濟來源。世界上許多地區的正式教學能力嚴重匱乏，所以我認爲這種網絡教育應大規模應用於美國之外。”Experimenting With Business Models
嘗試商業運作模式

As successful as edX's San Jose State program was in lowering the class's failure rate, another partnership San Jose State struck with Udacity had the opposite effect.
儘管EdX課程成功降低了聖何塞州立大學的不及格率，但同樣是網絡教育，該大學和Udacity的合作成果卻恰恰相反。

Earlier this year, the school announced it would be offering five online courses through Udacity. Then, just a few weeks ago, Udacity announced it was suspending the partnership after just one semester. The cause? More than half of the students taking the online courses failed the final exam.
今年早些時候，學校宣佈通過Udacity提供五門在線課程。然而就在幾星期之前，Udacity在僅僅一學期後就宣佈合作項目終止。原因？使用在線課程的學生中，有超過半數的人期末考試不及格。

It looked like a crushing blow to the industry, with skeptics pointing the finger at Udacity as just one example of why MOOCs offer students a subpar education. With the entire class taking place online, and minimal instructor oversight, the students either couldn't keep up or lacked the motivation to.
這一事件看起來是對網絡教育的致命一擊，懷疑網絡教育的人指向Udacity，說這只是MOOC爲學生提供劣質教育的案例之一。在所有課堂活動都發生在網絡，又沒有及時指導監督的情況下，學生也喪失了動力，無法繼續學習。

The flipped classroom, on the other hand, actually enhances that oversight, forcing students to participate in class.
但另一方面，翻轉課堂卻能保證嚴格的監督指導，迫使學生參與課堂活動。

"If I don't retain a student in the program, I don't make anything, and that's good from the university's perspective," Agarwal says. "What happened with Udacity isn't really possible in our program, because we could see week two the student wasn’t doing the work."
“如果我不能讓學生參與到這個項目中，那我做什麼都是徒勞。對於大學來說這是個好事。”阿格沃爾說道：“Udacity的問題不可能出現在我們的課程中。如果學生沒有好好學習，我們從第二週就能得看出來。”

Agarwal says experimenting with business models is critical to this industry. It’s important to remember, he says, how new this space is and how very little education has changed over the last century.
阿格沃爾說嘗試用商業模式運作這一產業十分關鍵。他說，網絡教育還是個新型產物，而過去一個世紀的教育模式幾乎沒有改變，記住這兩點非常重要。

"We have to be ambitious, otherwise education will stay the same for the next hundred years. Some experiments will turn out well and some won't," he says, "but as they say, 'Nothing ventured, nothing gained.'"
他說：“我們必須要有野心，否則教育在接下來幾百年仍會停滯不前。有些嘗試會有好結果，但有些不會。但有人說過，‘不冒風險，就不會有所收穫。’”