就在几年之前
And so a couple of years back,
我和我的合伙人 教导着这种大学生
my cofounder（n. 共同创办人） and I were teaching university students just like these,
只是我们所教的这些学生 看上去更像是这样
only the students we were teaching looked a little bit more like this here.
是的 这真的是目前的现状
And yes, this is really the reality out there
在世界上太多的大学都是如此：
in way too many universities around the world:
学生们很无聊 很散漫
students that are bored, disengaged/ˌdɪsɪnˈɡeɪdʒd/（adj. 空闲的；自由的）
有时甚至不确定最初 为什么要去学习
and sometimes not even sure why they’re learning about a topic in the first place.
我们开始寻找 新的创新性教学方式
So we started looking around for new, innovative teaching methods,
但是得到的结果却很令人失望
but what we found was quite disappointing.
只见纸质书慢慢转变为电子书
We saw that books were being turned into e-books,
黑板渐渐被YouTube视频替代
blackboards were being turned into YouTube videos
讲堂里的讲座变成了慕课——
and lecture hall(演讲厅；大教室) monologues(独白) were being turned into MOOCs —
大规模的网络公开课
Massive(adj. 大量的；巨大的) online open courses.
如果你仔细想一想
And if you think about it,
我们所做的一切就是把 相同的内容
all we’re really doing here is taking the same content
还有相同的格式
and the same format(n. 格式；版式),
传递给更多的学生——
and bringing it out to more students —
其实这挺好的 别误会我觉得这非常好
which is great, don’t get me wrong, that is really great —
但是教学方式或多或少都是相同的
but the teaching method is still more or less the same,
这一点没有真正的创新
no real innovation there.
所以我们开始探索新思路
So we started looking elsewhere.
我们发现 当与真正的飞行训练相结合时要有用得多
What we found was that flight simulators(模拟器) had been proven over and over again to be far more effective
飞行模拟器在训练飞行员方面一直以来都非常有效
when used in combination with real, in-flight training to train the pilots(飞行员).
于是我们就思考：
And so we thought to ourselves:
何不将其应用到科学领域呢？
Why not just apply that to science?
为什么不建一台虚拟的实验室模拟器呢？
Why not build a virtual laboratory simulator?
我们就这么做了
Well, we did it.
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