Learning and earning

慕课的回归

In response, the MOOCs have tried to make their content as digestible and flexible as possible. Degrees are broken into modules; modules into courses; courses into short segments. The MOOCs test for optimal length to ensure people complete the course; six minutes is thought to be the sweet spot for online video and four weeks for a course.
作为回应，慕课将自己提供的内容尽可能做到方便理解和具有适应性。将学位分解为单元；单元分解为课程；课程分解为小段。慕课测试各种课程的长度来保证人们能顺利完成课程学习；对于在线视频而言六分钟较为合适而对于课程而言最好在四个星期左右完成。

Scott DeRue, the dean of the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, says the unbundling of educational content into smaller components reminds him of another industry: music. Songs used to be bundled into albums before being disaggregated by iTunes and streaming services such as Spotify. In Mr DeRue’s analogy, the degree is the album, the course content that is freely available on MOOCs is the free streaming radio service, and a “microcredential” like the nanodegree or the specialisation is paid-for iTunes.
Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan 大学的院长 Scott DeRue 说道将教育内容分解成小的组成部分使他联想到了另一个产业：音乐。在 iTunes 和 流媒体服务商比如 Spotify 将专辑内容分解之前，歌曲都是打包成专辑进行销售的。在 DeRue 先生的类比中，学位就是专辑，慕课所提供的免费课程内容就是免费的电台音乐服务，而“微授权”正如微学位一样或者正如iTunes 提供的单曲。

How should universities respond to that kind of disruption? For his answer, Mr DeRue again draws on the lessons of the music industry. Faced with the disruption caused by the internet, it turned to live concerts, which provided a premium experience that cannot be replicated online. The on-campus degree also needs to mark itself out as a premium experience, he says.
那大学应当如何应对这种混乱呢？DeRue 回答道从音乐产业中去学习。面对互联网带来的挑战，音乐转向音乐会，提供互联网无法复制的优质体验。他认为学校提供的学位同样应该将自身定位为一种优质的服务。

Another answer is for universities to make their own products more accessible by doing more teaching online. This is beginning to happen. When Georgia Tech decided to offer an online version of its masters in computer science at low cost, many were shocked: it seemed to risk cannibalising its campus degree. But according to Joshua Goodman of Harvard University, who has studied the programme, the decision was proved right. The campus degree continued to recruit students in their early 20s whereas the online degree attracted people with a median age of 34 who did not want to leave their jobs. Mr Goodman reckons this one programme could boost the numbers of computer-science masters produced in America each year by 7-8%. Chip Paucek, the boss of 2U, a firm that creates online degree programmes for conventional universities, reports that additional marketing efforts to lure online students also boost on-campus enrolments.
另一个回答是大学应该将自己的教育更多的投向互联网。这些正在成为现实。许多人震惊于 Georgia Tech 以低价格在互联网上提供了它的计算机学位，因为这看起来就是在冲击原有的学位。但 Harvard University 的 Joshua Goodman 在研究这个计划后认为，这个决定是正确的。大学学位仍然吸引 20 多岁的年轻人来进行学习，而在线教育则吸引着那些不想辞职年纪大约是 34 的人群。Goodman 认为这个计划可以将美国计算机科学学位的拥有者数量每年提升 7-8%。2U ，一家为传统学校开展在线服务的公司，它的老板Chip Paucek 指出额外的市场努力在吸引在线教育学生的同时也增加了实体学校学生的入学率。