網(wǎng)絡(luò)公開課提供免費(fèi)教育

1、.網(wǎng)絡(luò)公開課提供免費(fèi)教育This is the VOA Special English Education Report.A class with tens or even hundreds of thousands of students might sound like a teachers bad dream. But a big idea in higher education these days is the massive open online course, or MOOC.Some universities offer free, non- credit MOOCs ava

2、ilable to anyone in the world. Others charge for courses and provide credits. The idea is still developing.The Massachusetts Institute of Technology recently started its first MOOC. The school plans to offer many free, non-credit courses through a project called MITx.So far, most massive open online

3、 courses are in computer science, technology, mechanics and engineering. For example, students around the world are taking a free course called Building a Computer Search Engine. Two computer scientists, Sebastian Thrun and David Evans, are offering this course through .Mr. Evans is on le

4、ave from the University of Virginia. Mr. Thrun is a Stanford research professor and a Google Fellow best known for his work on a driverless car.There are no education requirements for the course. The students watch short videos. Then, says Mr. Evans, they take informal, ungraded quizzes after the vi

5、deos each week for six weeks.DAVID EVANS: Quizzes are part of the lecture to keep students engaged and keep them thinking, for students to be able to check that they understood what we covered. Those are not graded and students try those as often as they wish.They can repeatedly watch the videos and

6、 take the quizzes whenever they want.Students receive homework. They join online groups to exchange questions and answers about the course.The teachers hold virtual office hours to answer questions that the students have voted to send them. They also present their own questions and observations.The

7、students take a final examination to show where they rate in the class Everyone who finishes the course receives a grade and proof of completion. Top students get letters documenting their work.Mr. Thrun started Udacity, which supports free MOOCs. Udacity hopes to make a profit in the future by conn

8、ecting possible employers with interested students. On his Stanford homepage he says he wants to democratize education. Education, he says, should be free, accessible for all, everywhere and any time.So how does David Evans compare the education in MOOCs to traditional teaching?DAVID EVANS: There ar

9、e things that we can do better in the online format. We can certainly deliver high-quality education to so much more students at much lower cost .But he recognizes the limits.DAVID EVANS: Part of what I hope will happen as a result of this is that the best traditional universities will be able to fo

10、cus on the things they can do really well that cant be done better through an online university.And thats the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Jerilyn Watson. Im Bob Doughty.這里是美國之音慢速英語教育報(bào)道。一個(gè)教室坐滿幾十、幾百或數(shù)千學(xué)生的話，實(shí)在是老師的惡夢。但最近有人提出了一種高等教育理念，那就是大規(guī)模開放的網(wǎng)絡(luò)課程，簡稱MOOC。有的大學(xué)為全世界提供免費(fèi)、不提供學(xué)分的在線課程。也有的大

11、學(xué)提供收費(fèi)、提供學(xué)費(fèi)的課程。這種理念仍在探索中。麻省理工學(xué)院最近推出了首個(gè)網(wǎng)絡(luò)開放課程，學(xué)校計(jì)劃通過一項(xiàng)名為MITx的項(xiàng)目提供許多免費(fèi)、不提供學(xué)分的課程。到目前為止，大量網(wǎng)絡(luò)公開課都是關(guān)于電腦科學(xué)、技術(shù)、機(jī)械和工程的。比如，全世界的學(xué)生都在上一門名為“建立計(jì)算機(jī)引擎”的免費(fèi)課。電腦科學(xué)家Sebastian Thrun和Evans借助網(wǎng)絡(luò)推出了這門課程。Evans來自維吉尼亞大學(xué)，目前正在休假。Thrun是斯坦福大學(xué)一名研究教授兼谷歌研究院，因研究一輛無人駕駛汽車而知名。這門課程不需要學(xué)生有什么教育背景，學(xué)生們觀看視頻短片。然后每周進(jìn)行非正式、不分級的測試，一共是六周時(shí)間。DAVID EVANS: “測試是課程的一部分，使學(xué)生參與進(jìn)來并思考問題，讓他們檢查自己理解了多少，這些測試不分級，學(xué)生們可以自愿參加?！睂W(xué)生們可以反復(fù)觀看視頻，任何時(shí)候都可以進(jìn)行測試。他們還會有家庭作業(yè)，加入在線小組，交流課程的問題和答案。老師們有虛擬的辦公時(shí)間，來回答學(xué)生發(fā)來的問題。老師們還會提出自己的問題和意見。學(xué)生們要進(jìn)行期末考試，看自己在班級里的名次。完成課程的學(xué)生都會收到評分等級和結(jié)業(yè)證明，最優(yōu)秀的學(xué)生會收到成績單信件。Thrun創(chuàng)辦了支持免費(fèi)在線課程的Udacit網(wǎng)站，希望將來把潛在雇主與有意向的學(xué)生聯(lián)系起來，從而從中獲利。他在自己的斯坦福大學(xué)主頁上說，希望使教育“民主