本文作者为美国资深记者THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
I just spent the last two days at a great conference convened by M.I.T. and Harvard on “Online Learning and the Future of Residential Education” — a k a “How can colleges charge $50,000 a year if my kid can learn it all free from massive open online courses?”
过去的两天里，我参加了由麻省理工学院(MIT)和哈佛大学(Harvard)召开的一次大会，主题是“在线学习和居家教育的未来”， 这个主题也可以这么解读：“如果我的孩子能从大规模在线公开课程完全免费地学到知识，大学为什么还要收取每年5万美元（约合31万元人民币）的学费？”
You may think this MOOCs revolution is hyped, but my driver in Boston disagrees. You see, I was picked up at Logan Airport by my old friend Michael Sandel, who teaches the famous Socratic, 1,000-student “Justice” course at Harvard, which is launching March 12 as the first humanities offering on the M.I.T.-Harvard edX online learning platform. When he met me at the airport I saw he was wearing some very colorful sneakers.
你可能认为，公开课革命是一种炒作，不过，在波士顿给我开车的司机不这么认为。我的老朋友迈克尔·桑德尔(Michael Sandel)开车到洛根机场去接我，他在哈佛大学教授著名的苏格拉底式的正义论，有1000名学生上课。这门课是MIT与哈佛大学联手推出的在线学习平台edX提供的第一门人文课程，它将于3月12日上线。当我和桑德尔在机场会面时，我看见他穿着一双色彩非常鲜艳的运动鞋。
“Where did you get those?” I asked. Well, Sandel explained, he had recently been in South Korea, where his Justice course has been translated into Korean and shown on national television. It has made him such a popular figure there that the Koreans asked him to throw out the ceremonial first pitch at a professional baseball game — and gave him the colored shoes to boot! Yes, a Harvard philosopher was asked to throw out the first pitch in Korea because so many fans enjoy the way he helps them think through big moral dilemmas.
“你从哪儿弄的这双鞋？”我问道。桑德尔解释说，他最近去了韩国，在那里，他的正义课程已经被翻译成了韩语，在国家电视台播出。这门课让他在当地成了一个如此知名的人物， 以至于韩国人请他在一场职业棒球赛上投出仪式性的第一球，除此之外，他们还送了他这双鲜艳的鞋。是的，一位哈佛的哲学教授被邀请在韩国棒球赛上投第一球，因为许多人喜欢他启发学生思考重大道德难题的方式。
Sandel had just lectured in Seoul in an outdoor amphitheater to 14,000 people, with audience participation. His online Justice lectures, with Chinese subtitles, have already had more than 20 million views on Chinese Web sites, which prompted The China Daily to note that “Sandel has the kind of popularity in China usually reserved for Hollywood movie stars and N.B.A. players.”
桑德尔刚刚在首尔的一个露天剧场给1.4万名听众授课，现场听众可以参与课程互动。他的在线正义讲座配有中文字幕，在中文网站上的浏览量已经达到了2000万次以上，引起了《中国日报》(China Daily)的关注，说“桑德尔在中国受欢迎的程度，往往只有好莱坞电影明星和美国职业篮球联赛(NBA)球员才能比得上。”
O.K., not every professor will develop a global following, but the MOOCs revolution, which will go through many growing pains, is here and is real. These were my key take-aways from the conference:
好吧，不是每位教授都能风靡全球受到热捧，然而，在线公开课革命已经来临，它是真实存在的，尽管它将经历许多成长的阵痛。以下是我从这次大会上获得的主要心得：
Institutions of higher learning must move, as the historian Walter Russell Mead puts it, from a model of “time served” to a model of “stuff learned.” Because increasingly the world does not care what you know. Everything is on Google. The world only cares, and will only pay for, what you can do with what you know. And therefore it will not pay for a C+ in chemistry, just because your state college considers that a passing grade and was willing to give you a diploma that says so. We’re moving to a more competency-based world where there will be less interest in how you acquired the competency — in an online course, at a four-year-college or in a company-administered class — and more demand to prove that you mastered the competency.
正如历史学家沃尔特·拉塞尔·米德(Walter Russell Mead)所说，高等教育机构必须行动起来转变模式，从注重花了多少时间学习转变为注重实际学到了什么。这是因为，这个世界越来越不在乎你知道什么。所有的知识都可以通过谷歌(Google)找到。这个世界只在乎你能利用自己的知识做什么，而且只有这个是有价值的。所以，这个世界不会为你的化学得了C+而给你报酬，因为那只能说明你的州立学院认为你化学及格了，并愿意给你颁发一个文凭说明这一点。我们在向着一个更加注重能力的世界迈进，这个世界对你如何获取能力不那么感兴趣——不管你是通过在线课程、通过四年大学学习、或者是通过公司管理的课程获取这种能力都无所谓——这个世界更多地要求你能证明，你掌握了这些能力。
Therefore, we have to get beyond the current system of information and delivery — the professorial “sage on the stage” and students taking notes, followed by a superficial assessment, to one in which students are asked and empowered to master more basic material online at their own pace, and the classroom becomes a place where the application of that knowledge can be honed through lab experiments and discussions with the professor. There seemed to be a strong consensus that this “blended model” combining online lectures with a teacher-led classroom experience was the ideal. Last fall, San Jose State used the online lectures and interactive exercises of M.I.T.’s introductory online Circuits and Electronics course. Students would watch the M.I.T. lectures and do the exercises at home, and then come to class, where the first 15 minutes were reserved for questions and answers with the San Jose State professor, and the last 45 were devoted to problem solving and discussion. Preliminary numbers indicate that those passing the class went from nearly 60 percent to about 90 percent. And since this course was the first step to a degree in science and technology, it meant that many more students potentially moved on toward a degree and career in that field.
因此，我们必须超越当前的信息传授模式——教授是“讲台上的圣人”，学生做笔记，然后再进行肤浅的评估——进入另外一种制度，要求学生、并且赋予他们能力在网上按自己的步伐掌握更多基础知识，而教室则成了和教授讨论的地方，对所学知识的运用，也可以通过实验室里的实验得到磨练。现在好像有一种强烈的共识，认为这种将在线课程和以老师为主导的教室教学结合起来的“混合模式”是最理想的。去年秋天，圣何塞州立大学(San Jose State)使用了MIT电路与电子学的入门网络课程和互动练习。学生在家里观看MIT的课程并完成作业，然后再来上课。课堂上，开始15分钟用来向圣何塞州立大学的教授提问，教授做出解答，剩下45分钟用来解决问题，进行讨论。初步数据显示，这门课考试及格的学生人数比例从近60%增加到了大约90%。而且，因为这门课是取得理工科学位的第一步，这就意味着，更多学生可能会继续学习，将来取得该领域的学位，从事该领域的职业。
We demand that plumbers and kindergarten teachers be certified to do what they do, but there is no requirement that college professors know how to teach. No more. The world of MOOCs is creating a competition that will force every professor to improve his or her pedagogy or face an online competitor.
我们要求水管工和幼儿园教师取得相应的资质，但却没要求大学教师应该知道如何教书。现在不一样了。在线公开课正在制造一种竞争，这种竞争将迫使每位教授改善自己的教学方法，否则便会在网上遇到竞争者。
Bottom line: There is still huge value in the residential college experience and the teacher-student and student-student interactions it facilitates. But to thrive, universities will have to nurture even more of those unique experiences while blending in technology to improve education outcomes in measurable ways at lower costs. We still need more research on what works, but standing still is not an option.
说到底，住宿式学院和它所带来的教师与学生、学生与学生互动的经历仍然有巨大的价值。但为了今后的成功，大学必须在鼓励更多这种独特的学习经历的同时，结合科技手段，用更低的成本，以可衡量的方式提高教学的效果。什么教育方式有效，我们还要有更多的研究，但原地不动不是出路。
Clayton Christensen, the Harvard Business School professor and expert on disruptive innovation, gave a compelling talk about how much today’s traditional university has in common with General Motors of the 1960s, just before Toyota used a technology breakthrough to come from nowhere and topple G.M. Christensen noted that Harvard Business School doesn’t teach entry-level accounting anymore, because there is a professor out at Brigham Young University whose online accounting course “is just so good” that Harvard students use that instead. When outstanding becomes so easily available, average is over.
哈佛大学商学院教授、颠覆性革新的专家克莱顿·克里斯汀森(Clayton M. Christensen)曾做过一个很有说服力的讲座，说如今的传统大学就像上世纪60年代的通用汽车公司(General Motors)。就在那之后，丰田(Toyota)利用技术上的突破性进步，由一个名不见经传的企业，变成了超越通用汽车的行业巨头。克里斯汀森指出，哈佛大学商学院已经不再教会计入门知识了，因为杨百翰大学(Brigham Young University)一位教授的在线会计课程“非常好”，连哈佛大学的学生都听那个课程。当杰出的东西变得可以轻易获得，平淡无奇的东西就没市场了。
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