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Now online provision is transforming higher education, giving the best universit

游客2023-12-30  83
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. [br] Paragraph 5 indicates that some of the best European universities _____.
选项 A、cannot remain calm in the face of MOOCs
B、regard MOOCs as a revolution in higher education
C、prefer traditional education to online provisions
D、attract the best applicants to challenge online courses
答案 C
解析 本题考查第5段的细节。根据第5段第2、3句可知，欧洲顶尖高等学府，比如剑桥和哈佛都对慕课持较为否定的态度，第4句则指出剑桥和哈佛还是会照旧吸引最好、最有钱的申请者，可以看出，这些学校“相比线上课程更喜欢传统教育”，故选C。第5段第1句说欧洲顶尖高等学府镇定自若，故A“在慕课面前无法保持镇定”与文意相反，直接排除。B“将慕课视为高等教育的重大变革”不对，第5段第2句说到，牛津大学认为慕课除了学生数量，并无革新之处，故排除B。D“吸引最优质的生源以挑战线上课程”，第5段第3句说剑桥大学没把慕课视作竞争对手，因此自然也不会去“挑战”，故排除。
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