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  3. You have probably heard about elite universities offering free online courses through Coursera. In just the past few weeks, Cour

You have probably heard about elite universities offering free online courses through Coursera. In just the past few weeks, Cour

admin2019-08-27  61
问题    You have probably heard about elite universities offering free online courses through Coursera. In just the past few weeks, Coursera has added 12 universities, including Princeton, Duke and Johns Hopkins.
   The company’s website says its goal is to "give everyone access to the world-class education that has so far been available only to a selected few", and much of the news coverage has focused on how this will democratize learning. Two weeks after Coursera announced its initial round of partnerships, Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced a plan to invest $60 million in a similar course platform called edX, and a third company, Udacity, announced that it too would join the fray.
   Despite near universal enthusiasm for such projects, it’s important to take a few steps back. First, although the content is free now, it’s unlikely that it will remain that way for long. According to Coursera’s contracts, both the company and the schools plan to make a profit — they just haven’t figured out the best way to do that yet. But more important, I’m concerned that computer-aided instruction will actually widen the gap between the financially and educationally privileged and everyone else, instead of closing it.
   In terms of learning on the college level, the Department of Education looked at thousands of research studies from 1996 to 2008 and found that in higher education, students rarely learned as much from online courses as they did in traditional classes. In fact, the report found that the biggest benefit of online instruction came from a learning environment that combined technology with traditional methods, but warned that the uptick had more to do with the increased amount of individualized instruction students got in that environment, not the presence of technology. For all but the brightest, the more time students spend with traditional instruction, the better they seem to do.
   Supporters of online learning say that all anyone needs to access a great education is a stable Internet connection. But only 35% of households earning less than $25, 000 have broadband access to the Internet, compared with 94% of households with income more than $100, 000. In addition, according to the 2010 Report on Mobile Access, only half of black and Latinos primarily use their cell phones to access the Internet, a much more expensive and less-than-ideal method for taking part in online education. In short, the explosion of this type of education, though free now, may leave behind the students who need education the most.
   It’s not hard to understand why the chance to watch lectures, pass tests and even get a formal certificate from an elite school would stir excitement. But the recently released report on the American Dream makes it clear: a four-year college degree is the only type of educational intervention that promotes upward mobility from the lower-middle class. If we really want to democratize education, finding creative ways to realistically open up colleges to different communities will do more to help than a model that is more beneficial for students who are already wealthy, academically prepared and highly motivated. We ought to make sure that everyone has access to the same opportunities, or we will further widen the opportunity gaps we mean to close.
According to the author, which of the following is NOT the reason why computer-aided instruction will actually widen the educational gap?
选项 A、Companies and schools want to make a profit from online courses.
B、Online instruction won’t help students as much as traditional classes.
C、Not everyone has the equal access to Internet connection.
D、It’s unrealistic to provide online courses to people from different communities.
答案A
解析 本题细节定位于第四、五和六段。第四段第一句话“…students rarely learned as much from online courses as they did in traditional classes”，即，学生通过在线课程不如他们在传统课堂上学到的知识多。这与B项相符。从第五段可知，收入在25000美元以下的家庭中，只有35％的家庭安装了宽带连接互联网；而黑人和拉丁美洲人当中，只有一半人口利用手机接入互联网，由此可知，并非每个人都有机会连接互联网，C项与此相符。第六段第三句话“If we really want to democratize education，finding creative ways to realistically open up colleges to different communities will do more to help than a model that is more beneficial for students who are already wealthy, academically prepared and highly motivated”。由此可知，找到创造性方式切实向不同社会团体开放大学会对学生更有帮助。可以推知，目前向不同社会团体开放大学还是不太现实的。而在第三段中，作者提出了两个问题：第一，尽管目前在线课程是免费的，但不可能一直这样持续下去，因为公司和学校都打算赚钱；第二，作者担心计算机辅助教学实际上将会扩大经济和教育特权阶层与其他人之间的差距，而非缩小差距。A项为作者提出的观点之一，并非计算机辅助教学会扩大教育差距的原因，因此选择A。
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