Learning and earning

慕課的回歸

But employers still need to be confident that the skills these credentials vouchsafe are for real. LinkedIn’s “endorsements” feature, for example, was routinely used by members to hand out compliments to people they did not know for skills they did not possess, in the hope of a reciprocal recommendation. In 2016 the firm tightened things up, but getting the balance right is hard. Credentials require just the right amount of friction: enough to be trusted, not so much as to block career transitions.
但是在工作技能的認(rèn)證方面還是需要給予用人單位一些信心。以 LinkedIn 的“背書(shū)”功能為例，很多用戶會(huì)在自己不知道同樣也不掌握的工作領(lǐng)域給他人“背書(shū)”，為的就是得到對(duì)方的“背書(shū)”。在 2016 年，LinkedIn 加強(qiáng)了相關(guān)管理，但依舊很難取得平衡。認(rèn)證需要在公信力和實(shí)現(xiàn)難度上取得恰當(dāng)?shù)钠胶狻?/p>

Universities have no trouble winning trust: many of them can call on centuries of experience and name recognition. Coursera relies on universities and business schools for most of its content; their names sit proudly on the certificates that the firm issues. Some employers, too, may have enough kudos to play a role in authenticating credentials. The involvement of Google in the Android nanodegree has helped persuade Flipkart, an Indian e-commerce platform, to hire Udacity graduates sight unseen.
大學(xué)并不會(huì)有公信力的問(wèn)題：許多學(xué)校有數(shù)個(gè)世紀(jì)的教學(xué)經(jīng)驗(yàn)和名望。Coursera 擁有大學(xué)和商業(yè)學(xué)府的教學(xué)資源，這些學(xué)校的名稱被驕傲的添加到 Coursera 的認(rèn)證書(shū)之中。有些用人單位依靠其名聲同樣在認(rèn)證中扮演了一定的角色。Google 公司提供的 Android 微學(xué)位就幫助 Udacity 的畢業(yè)生在一家印度電子貿(mào)易公司 Flipkart 順利就業(yè)。

Wherever the content comes from, students’ work usually needs to be validated properly for a credential to be trusted. When student numbers are limited, the marking can be done by the teacher. But in the world of MOOCs those numbers can spiral, making it impractical for the instructors to do all the assessments. Automation can help, but does not work for complex assignments and subjects. Udacity gets its students to submit their coding projects via GitHub, a hosting site, to a network of machine-learning graduates who give feedback within hours.
不論教學(xué)資源來(lái)自何處，認(rèn)證的專(zhuān)業(yè)性也需要對(duì)學(xué)生的作業(yè)進(jìn)行合適的批改。當(dāng)學(xué)生數(shù)量有限時(shí)，老師就能完成工作。但是在慕課的世界中，學(xué)生的數(shù)量急劇增長(zhǎng)，這就使得教學(xué)者批改作業(yè)的任務(wù)變得不可能實(shí)現(xiàn)。自動(dòng)化能幫助完成一些工作，但對(duì)于復(fù)雜的任務(wù)就顯得無(wú)能為力。Udacity 讓他的機(jī)器學(xué)習(xí)課程學(xué)生通過(guò) GitHub （一個(gè)托管網(wǎng)站）來(lái)提交作業(yè)，幾小時(shí)內(nèi)就可以將成績(jī)反饋給學(xué)生。

Even if these problems can be overcome, however, there is something faintly regressive about the world of microcredentials. Like a university degree, it still involves a stamp of approval from a recognised provider after a proprietary process. Yet lots of learning happens in informal and experiential settings, and lots of workplace skills cannot be acquired in a course.
即使這些問(wèn)題可以得到解決，在微學(xué)位的認(rèn)證世界中，仍然存在一些退步。就像一個(gè)大學(xué)學(xué)位，微學(xué)位仍然存留著權(quán)威認(rèn)證機(jī)構(gòu)以合適的程序進(jìn)行認(rèn)證的特征。然而許多的學(xué)習(xí)過(guò)程是非正式以及依靠經(jīng)驗(yàn)取得的，許多的工作技巧也無(wú)法通過(guò)課程學(xué)習(xí)。