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  3. Now online provision is transforming higher education, giving the best universities a chance to widen their catch, opening new o

Now online provision is transforming higher education, giving the best universities a chance to widen their catch, opening new o

admin2019-09-17  53
问题    Now online provision is transforming higher education, giving the best universities a chance to widen their catch, opening new opportunities for the agile, and threatening doom for the slow and average. The roots are decades old. Britain’s Open University started teaching via radio and television in 1971. MIT and others have been posting lectures on the Internet for a decade.
   But the change in 2012 has been electrifying. Two start-ups, both spawned by Stanford University, are recruiting students at an astonishing rate for "massive open online courses" or MOOCs. In January, Sebastian Thrun, a computer-science professor there, announced the launch of Udacity. It started to offer courses the next month — a nanosecond by the standards of old-style university decision-making. In April, two of Mr. Thrun’s ex-colleagues launched a rival, Coursera. At first, it offered online courses from four universities. By August, it had signed up 1 million students, now boasting over 2 million. Harvard and MIT announced they would launch edX, a non-profit venture. Other schools have joined, too.
   One spur is economic and political pressure to improve productivity in higher education. The cost per student in the U.S. has risen at almost five times the rate of inflation since 1983. For universities beset by heavy debts, smaller taxpayer subsidies and a cyclical decline in enrollment, online courses mean better tuition, higher graduation rates and lower-cost degrees. New technology also gives the innovative a chance to shine against their rivals.
   MOOCs are more than good university lectures available online. The real innovation comes from integrating academic talks with interactive coursework, such as automated tests, quizzes and even games. Real-life lectures have no pause, rewind (or fast-forward) buttons; MOOCs let students learn at their own pace, typically with short, engaging videos. The cost of the courses can be spread over huge numbers of students. MOOCs enrich education for worldwide students, especially the cash-strapped, and those dissatisfied with what their own colleges are offering. But for others, especially in poor countries, online education opens the door to yearning for opportunities.
   Some of Europe’s best schools are determinedly unruffled. Oxford says that MOOCs "will not prompt it to change anything", adding that it "does not see them as revolutionary in anything other than scale". Cambridge even says it is "nonsense" to see MOOCs as a rival; it is "not in the business of online education". Such universities are likely to continue to attract the best (and richest) applicants who want personal tuition and the whiff of research in the air. For these places, MOOCs are chiefly a marketing opportunity.
   To compete head-on with established providers, MOOCs must not just teach but also provide credible qualifications. The vast majority of Coursera, Udacity and edX offerings do not provide a degree. This may be one reason for MOOCs’ high dropout rates. Another worry is that online tests are open to cheating and plagiarism. Peer grading even if honest, may be flawed.
The phrase "a marketing opportunity" underlined in Paragraph 5 suggests______.
选项 A、some universities use MOOCs as a publicity facility only
B、students can obtain their degrees with the lowest costs
C、MOOCs, as any other online courses, mean better tuitions
D、MOOCs can reduce financial pressure on the universities
答案A
解析    语义推理。a marketing opportunity出现在第五段最后一句“For these places，MOOCs are chiefly a marketing opportunity”，即对于这些地方(大学)而言，慕课主要提供了营销机会(即仅仅作为宣传工具而已)。本句的chiefly决定了a marketing opportunity的语义色彩是褒义还是贬义，所以本题看似细节识别题，实际隐含着语义推理，因为语义推理是以词项间的语义关系为前提的。【知识拓展】语义推理题需要特别注意词项之间的关系，如本题的chiefly。词典对它的解释比较简单，如《柯林斯词典》解释为most of all，above all；mainly, mostly。但是语境中，它的意义会更丰富。e．g．The distinction between a job and an occupation is chiefly one of scope．工作与职业的区别主要在于范围。He is chiefly concerned with how to transform resources into results．他只关心如何把资源转化为结果。
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