能同時成為哈佛和耶魯最受學生歡迎的課程，這門課有啥不一樣？
葛繼甫
2019-09-26
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面對去年成為哈佛大學（Harvard）最流行課程的CS50，守舊派人士可能會目瞪口呆。這是一門入門的計算機科學課，主講人是酷愛牛仔褲和黑色T恤的年輕教授大衛·馬倫。他的課程仿佛精心打磨的快節奏演出，在大量運用道具和展示的同時調動學生積極參與。而學生不必親身出席。講課以多機位拍攝，制作品質堪比商業電視劇，大部分學生都選擇在網上觀看。此外，它不僅是哈佛大學排名第一的課程，還同時可供耶魯大學（Yale）的學生選擇，也由馬倫執教。在這兩家充滿競爭關系的大學同時存在的318年里，這顯然還是第一次。 不過，CS50絕非為被寵壞的學生提供的簡化版撫慰課程，而是在當今技術和社交環境下為如何教授學科所樹立的一個精心設計的典型。它的要求極高，到了學期中期，大部分學生每周會用超過12個小時解答問題集。如果他們需要幫助，十余位助教都能提供每周10小時的個人指導，這比傳統課程要多得多。 在大一時選擇CS50課程的耶魯大學大三學生艾米麗·舒斯海姆表示：“這門課提供的支持太多了，社交性也很強?！逼渌麑W生將它稱為一種現象、一種奇景、一種時尚和一種生活方式。 CS50還支持在EdX教育平臺上免費學習，目前已有超過100萬學生參與了該課程。舒斯海姆接受《財富》采訪時表示，她上大學時本計劃主修經濟學，甚至沒有“真正打算”選擇一門計算機科學課。然而，她現在的專業是計算機科學和經濟學。今年秋天，她就要成為CS50的助教了。（財富中文網） 本文的另一個版本登載于《財富》2019年9月刊，標題為“火爆現象”。 譯者：嚴匡正 |
Traditionalists may look aghast at CS50, Harvard’s introductory computer science course, which last year became the school’s most popular course of any kind. It’s taught by a young professor in jeans and a black T-shirt, David Malan, whose lectures are highly polished, fast-paced performances filled with props, demonstrations, and student involvement. Students aren’t required to attend, though; lectures are recorded in a slick, multi-camera format with production values that rival commercial TV, and most students watch them online. In addition to being Harvard’s No. 1 course, it’s offered simultaneously at Yale, with Malan teaching, an arrangement apparently unprecedented in the rival schools’ 318-year coexistence. But far from being a dumbed-down sop to spoiled students, CS50 is a carefully crafted model of how to teach any subject in today’s technological and social environment. It’s extraordinarily demanding; by mid-semester, most students are spending over 12 hours a week on problem sets. If they need help, dozens of teaching assistants are available for in-person assistance 10 hours a week, far more than in traditional courses. “There’s so much support,” says Emily Schussheim, a Yale junior who took CS50 as a freshman. “It’s also really social.” Other students have called it a phenomenon, a spectacle, a cult, and a lifestyle. CS50 is available for free on the EdX education platform, where it has been taken by over a million students. Schussheim tells Fortune she came to college planning to major in economics, with “no real intentions” of ever taking a computer science course. Now her major is computer science and economics, and this fall she’s a teaching assistant in CS50. A version of this article appears in the September 2019 issue of Fortune with the headline "A Crimson Phenomenon." |
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