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.
达芙妮·考勒原是斯坦福大学计算机科学教授。2009年，她突然意识到现在她和大学里其他教授的授课方式太落后了。

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."
于是她将自己的讲座录制成视频后上传网络，这样就可以省出时间和学生课堂互动。现在这种教学方式被称为“翻转课堂”。

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.
现在，考勒已经是“课程时代”公司创始人之一，这家公司专门提供免费网上大学课程。大多数围绕“课程时代”的宣传都在讲它是“大规模网络开放课程”的一部分，即MOOC，它将最优秀的大学课程发布在网上，并免费提供给全世界的学习者。

Why MOOCs Can't Abandon the Classroom
为什么MOOC不能脱离课堂？

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课程的提供者之一。去年秋天，EdX在圣何塞州立大学为学生提供了一门试用课程。在学校使用EdX课程之前，这门课的不通过率高达41%。一学期之后，通过翻转课堂学习这门课程的学生不通过率降到了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·阿格沃尔说：“EdX是一种新时代教科书。一般学生都要在课前读书预习。但在这里，他们可以看视频、做互动练习，之后再到课堂上和教授、同学互动交流。”

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.
阿格沃尔说EdX不会对圣何塞州立大学收取使用课程费用，但从本秋季学期起，EdX将面向所有加州大学，对翻转课堂收取使用费。

"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."
考勒认为翻转课堂在海外有着巨大的发展机会，她说：“我认为这将是公司保证可持续发展的一大重要经济来源。世界上许多地区的正式教学能力严重匮乏，所以我认为这种网络教育应大规模应用于美国之外。”

Experimenting With Business Models
尝试商业运作模式

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.
尽管EdX课程成功降低了圣何塞州立大学的不及格率，但同样是网络教育，该大学和Udacity的合作成果却恰恰相反。

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.
今年早些时候，学校宣布通过Udacity提供五门在线课程。然而就在几星期之前，Udacity在仅仅一学期后就宣布合作项目终止。原因？使用在线课程的学生中，有超过半数的人期末考试不及格。

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.
这一事件看起来是对网络教育的致命一击，怀疑网络教育的人指向Udacity，说这只是MOOC为学生提供劣质教育的案例之一。在所有课堂活动都发生在网络，又没有及时指导监督的情况下，学生也丧失了动力，无法继续学习。

The flipped classroom, on the other hand, actually enhances that oversight, forcing students to participate in class.
但另一方面，翻转课堂却能保证严格的监督指导，迫使学生参与课堂活动。

"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."
“如果我不能让学生参与到这个项目中，那我做什么都是徒劳。对于大学来说这是个好事。”阿格沃尔说道：“Udacity的问题不可能出现在我们的课程中。如果学生没有好好学习，我们从第二周就能得看出来。”

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.
阿格沃尔说尝试用商业模式运作这一产业十分关键。他说，网络教育还是个新型产物，而过去一个世纪的教育模式几乎没有改变，记住这两点非常重要。

"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.'"
他说：“我们必须要有野心，否则教育在接下来几百年仍会停滞不前。有些尝试会有好结果，但有些不会。但有人说过，‘不冒风险，就不会有所收获。’”