加载中…6-冠状病毒会永远改变大学经历吗？
(2020-05-02 13:34:56)冠状病毒会永远改变大学经历吗？
------卫斯理大学大学校长迈克尔·罗斯说：“校园教育之美从未像现在这样令人向往。”
https://www.sohu.com/a/392584360_263508?spm=smpc.home.learning-news.4.1588395712489sFumQRt&_f=index_edunews_3
新奥尔良洛约拉大学的一位教授在他的院子里教了第一堂虚拟课。他穿着浴袍，一边慢悠悠地晃动着一杯红酒，一边给学生讲课。
位于宾夕法尼亚州伊斯顿的拉斐特学院的教师接受了用纸板和橡皮筋在家中制作简易投影仪的培训。
纽约州克林顿市的汉密尔顿学院为教师建立了Wi-Fi连接点，因为这些教师的网络不够稳定，无法将资料上传到网络上。
弗吉尼亚理工大学音乐学课程的学生的作业就是要求制作抖音视频。
新冠病毒大流行打乱了高校的教学活动，迫使各个高校匆忙应对，努力将教学继续下去，或荒谬或巧妙。而此时，学生们都已退缩为视频会议屏幕上格子里的小图，而且看上去也急需理发。
尽管以上提到的所有这些都号称是在线高等教育，但至少到目前为止，大多数课程并不算数。更有人预测这将引发从实体校园到虚拟教室永久性的转移，不过所有迹象都表明那很难以想象。
达特茅斯塔克商学院的教授Vijay Govindarajan说：“谈论在线教育时，我们谈论的是使用数字技术来改变学习体验。现在发生的这些并不是，这只是我们在八天内把所有原本该在教师里做的事转移到了Zoom上。”
专家们说，这将产生一些重要且持久影响：教师可以将在线工具（许多人第一次接触在线工具）融入常规课程，而且学生们也正在经历一种灵活的学习方式，本科生可能不喜欢，但如果想要获得硕士学位，则可以尝试。
这些趋势可能不会改变高等教育，但会加速技术与高等教育的融合。
罗切斯特大学在线学习副总裁Eric Fredericksen说，“本学期有可能提高人们对使用这些在线资源完善我们以前所做的事情的期望，这是一种渐进而不是革命性的方式，但是会产生更持久的影响。”
Fredericksen博士说，真正的在线教育是让学生可以按照自己的步调掌握学习节奏，加上可进行持续评估，他们一旦掌握某种技能就可以迅速前进。
构思、规划、设计和开发真正的在线课程或项目会花费长达一年时间培训教师，并需要指导设计人员的配合。同时学生也需要培训，获得资助，以及准备一套复杂的技术设备。
“不足为奇，当我们真正做到这一点时，确实需要七八天以上的时间，”Fredericksen博士揶揄道。
如果一定要把人们现在自认为是在线教育的东西——视频会议室里漫长的课时、穿浴袍的教授、用橡皮筋和硬纸板自己动手做的工具——说成是在线教育的话，这似乎会降低，而不是提高人们对在线教育的接受程度，。
伊利诺伊大学香槟分校伊利诺伊大学教育政策、组织和领导力的教授比尔说：“悲观的看法是，学生会讨厌它，再也不想上网课了，因为教师们所做的只是在Zoom上重复传统的以教师为中心，学生们被动学习的所有问题。”
大学生似乎早已经对在线高等教育感到冷淡。2018年秋季一项数据统计，只有大约20％的人愿意选择参加了一门在线课程学习。
如果他们不喜欢在线课程，那他们肯定不喜欢这学期的学业。
在线备考提供商OneClass对近1300名学生进行的一项调查显示，超过75％的人表示他们认为自己没有获得优质的学习体验。4月初niche.com网站对14,000名大学生和研究生进行的一项独立调查，有67％的受访者表示，他们发现在线课程远不如面对面授课有效。
Eduventures的报告称，去年12月，在打算上大学的高中毕业班学生中，只有不到四分之一的人对大学课程中少部分的课选择网络教学方式持开放态度；到今年3月底时，一些学生已在他们的高中停课后有了在线上课的体验，在接受niche.com的调查时，只有不到十分之一的人表示会考虑在线授课的大学课程。
类似的看法表明，学生们不太可能成批地逃离现实世界的校园，躲进网络空间。实际上，如果说目前的情况对学院和大学有什么好处的话，那就是学生们不再把校园生活的日常现实——低技术的面对面授课、文化娱乐活动、图书馆、体育活动、课外活动、学生在办公时间去见教授，以及与同学的社交往来——视为理所当然。
卫斯理大学大学校长迈克尔·罗斯说：“校园教育之美从未像现在这样令人向往。”
（注：“The beauty of a residential education has never been more apparent to people,” said Michael Roth, the president of Wesleyan University.）
但是倡导真正的在线教学的人说，当学生准备好继续攻读研究生或接受职业技能教育时，他们在移动平台上按自己的时间表参加课程可能会在以后出现。
Eduventures首席研究官理查德·加勒特说，在线高等教育“对于18岁的成年人来说过于单调乏味。但等到他们28岁，有了家庭和工作，他们就会意识到在线教育可能有用。”
斯特拉达教育网络对1,000人的一项调查表明，已经有超过一半的美国成年人在COVID-19大流行之后期望接受更多的教育或培训，他们表示会在线进行教育或培训。
观察人士说，改变在线教育局面并非全靠学生。也靠教师。
GSV Asset Management首席执行官迈克尔·莫（Michael Moe）表示，即使是那些长期避免上网的人也必须在本学期以某种形式进行。他们可能会从中学到最多的知识。
Moe先生说，和学生一样，教师“被投入到数字学习的深渊中，并被要求学会游泳。有些人会下沉，有些人会游到泳池边缘并爬上去，他们再也不想回到泳池中了。但是许多人会弄清楚该怎么做，如何摆腿，并让自己浮起来。”
如果有人要为此提供帮助，那就是教育技术领域。咨询公司Productive称，超过70％的这类公司本学期向学校和学院免费或以大幅折扣价提供产品和服务，预计以后会开展收费服务。
“管理者和教育者正在改变他们的态度，”资产管理公司TPG教育部门负责人John Rogers说。“那确实是与众不同的。这些工具的采用速度将加快。”
Govindarajan博士说，人们会拒绝新观念，直到外部冲击迫使他们改变为止。“我们正处于这种转折点。”
他说，教师们会问自己：“‘我们所做的工作的哪一部分可以用技术代替，而哪一部分可以用技术补充以改变高等教育？”
他说，大学应将本学期视为一个实验，以查看哪些课程最有效地在线授课—大型入门课程最好通过教师明星录制的视频讲座和在线教科书来教授，这些课程可以在各机构之间共享，以降低学习成本。
希望最好地提供面对面的学生，例如表演艺术或需要实验室工作的学生，将继续采用这种方式。
Govindarajan博士说：“让我们趁此机会就高等教育的整体设计展开更大的对话”。
“我们最好不要失去这个机会。”
（本文译自《纽约时报》，原文标题Will the Coronavirus Forever Alter the College Experience?）
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/23/education/learning/coronavirus-online-education-college.html
The answer so far appears to be no. But some online education tools are likely to stick around.
By Jon Marcus
This article is part of our latest Learning special report, which focuses on the challenges of online education during the coronavirus outbreak.
A professor at Loyola University New Orleans taught his first virtual class from his courtyard, wearing a bathrobe and sipping from a glass of wine. Faculty at Lafayette College, in Easton, Penn., trained in making document cameras at home using cardboard and rubber bands.
Hamilton College, in Clinton, N.Y., set up drive-up Wi-Fi stations for faculty members whose connections weren’t reliable enough to let them upload material to the internet. And students in a musicology course at Virginia Tech were assigned to create TikTok videos.
The disruption caused by the coronavirus pandemic has prompted cobbled-together responses ranging from the absurd to the ingenious at colleges and universities struggling to continue teaching even as their students have receded into diminutive images, in dire need of haircuts, on videoconference checkerboards.
But while all of this is widely being referred to as online higher education, that’s not really what most of it is, at least so far. As for predictions that it will trigger a permanent exodus from brick-and-mortar campuses to virtual classrooms, all indications are that it probably won’t.
“What we are talking about when we talk about online education is using digital technologies to transform the learning experience,” said Vijay Govindarajan, a professor at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business. “That is not what is happening right now. What is happening now is we had eight days to put everything we do in class onto Zoom.”
There will be some important lasting impacts, though, experts say: Faculty may incorporate online tools, to which many are being exposed for the first time, into their conventional classes. And students are experiencing a flexible type of learning they may not like as undergraduates, but could return to when it’s time to get a graduate degree.
These trends may not transform higher education, but they are likely to accelerate the integration of technology into it.
This semester “has the potential to raise expectations of using these online resources to complement what we were doing before, in an evolutionary way, not a revolutionary way,” said Eric Fredericksen, associate vice president for online learning at the University of Rochester. “That’s the more permanent impact.”
Real online education lets students move at their own pace and includes such features as continual assessments so they can jump ahead as soon as they’ve mastered a skill, Dr. Fredericksen and others said.
Conceiving, planning, designing and developing a genuine online course or program can consume as much as a year of faculty training and collaboration with instructional designers, and often requires student orientation and support and a complex technological infrastructure.
“Not surprisingly, when we really do this, it does take more than seven or eight days,” Dr. Fredericksen said wryly.
If anything, what people are mistaking now for online education — long class meetings in videoconference rooms, professors in their bathrobes, do-it-yourself tools made of rubber bands and cardboard — appears to be making them less, not more, open to it.
“The pessimistic view is that [students] are going to hate it and never want to do this again, because all they’re doing is using Zoom to reproduce everything that’s wrong with traditional passive, teacher-centered modes of teaching,” said Bill Cope, a professor of education policy, organization and leadership at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Undergraduates already seemed lukewarm toward virtual higher education; only about 20 percent took even one online course in the fall of 2018, the consulting firm Eduventures estimates.
If they didn’t like that, they definitely don’t like what they’re getting this semester.
More than 75 percent said they don’t think they’re receiving a quality learning experience, according to a survey of nearly 1,300 students by the online exam-prep provider OneClass. In a separate poll of 14,000 college and graduate students in early April by the website niche.com, which rates schools and colleges, 67 percent said they didn’t find online classes as effective as in-person ones.
Among college-bound high school seniors, fewer than a quarter said in December that they were open to taking even some of their college courses online, Eduventures reported; by the end of March, after some had experienced virtual instruction from their shutdown high schools, fewer than one in 10 polled by niche.com said they would consider online college classes.
Sentiments like these suggest there’s little likelihood that students will desert their real-world campuses for cyberspace en masse. In fact, if there’s a silver lining in this situation for residential colleges and universities, it’s that students no longer take for granted the everyday realities of campus life: low-tech face-to-face classes, cultural diversions, libraries, athletics, extracurricular activities, in-person office hours and social interaction with their classmates.
“The beauty of a residential education has never been more apparent to people,” said Michael Roth, the president of Wesleyan University.
But advocates for true online instruction say that students’ experience of taking courses on their own schedules over mobile platforms may come back to them later, when they’re ready to move on to graduate or professional educations.
Online higher education “is a thin diet for the typical 18-year-old,” said Richard Garrett, the chief research officer at Eduventures. “But today’s 18-year-olds are tomorrow’s 28-year-olds with families and jobs, who then realize that online can be useful.”
Already, more than half of American adults who expect to need more education or training after this pandemic say they would do it online, according to a survey of 1,000 people by the Strada Education Network, which advocates connections between education and work.
It isn’t entirely students who will move this needle, observers say. It’s also faculty.
Even those who had long avoided going online have had to do it this semester, in some form or other. And they may have the most to learn from the experience, said Michael Moe, chief executive of GSV Asset Management, which focuses on education technology.
Along with their students, faculty were “thrown into the deep end of the pool for digital learning and asked to swim,” Mr. Moe said. “Some will sink, some will crawl to the edge of the pool and climb out and they’ll never go back in the pool ever again. But many will figure out what to do and how to kick and how to stay afloat.”
If there’s anyone who’s banking on this, it’s the ed-tech sector. More than 70 percent of such companies have been offering products and services to schools and colleges free or at steep discounts this semester, anticipating sales later, according to the consulting firm Productive.
Cengage, for example, is providing free subscriptions to its online textbooks, and says it has seen a 55 percent increase in the number of students who have signed up for one. Coursera is providing 550 colleges and universities with free access to its online courses.
“Administrators and educators are reframing their attitudes,” said John Rogers, education sector lead at the $5 billion Rise Fund, which is managed by the asset company TPG and invests in ed tech. “That really is the difference-maker. The pace of adoption of those tools will accelerate.”
People resist new ideas until external shocks force them to change, said Dr. Govindarajan, who cites as an example the way World War II propelled women into jobs that had traditionally been done by men. “We are at that kind of inflection point.”
Faculty, he said, will ask themselves, “ ‘What part of what we just did can be substituted with technology and what part can be complemented by technology to transform higher education?’ ”
Universities should consider this semester an experiment to see which classes were most effectively delivered online, he said — big introductory courses better taught through video-recorded lectures by faculty stars and with online textbooks, for example, which could be shared among institutions to lower the cost.
Students who want classes best provided face to face, such as those in the performing arts or that require lab work, would continue to take them that way.
“Let’s take advantage of this moment to start a larger conversation” about the whole design of higher education, Dr. Govindarajan said.
“We had better not lose this opportunity.”
This article was published in cooperation with The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit news organization that covers education. Sign up for its newsletter.
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