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  3. DOTCOM mania was slow in coming to higher education, but now it has the venerable industry firmly in its grip. Since the launch

DOTCOM mania was slow in coming to higher education, but now it has the venerable industry firmly in its grip. Since the launch

admin2016-10-15  31
问题     DOTCOM mania was slow in coming to higher education, but now it has the venerable industry firmly in its grip. Since the launch early last year of Udacity and Coursera, two Silicon Valley start-ups offering free education through MOOCs, massive open online courses, the ivory towers of academia have been shaken to their foundations. University brands built in some cases over centuries have been forced to contemplate the possibility that information technology will rapidly make their existing business model obsolete. Meanwhile, the MOOCs have multiplied in number, resources and student recruitment— without yet having figured out a business model of their own.
    Besides providing online courses to their own(generally fee-paying)students, universities have felt
    obliged to join the MOOC revolution to avoid being guillotined by it. Coursera has formed partnerships with 83 universities and colleges around the world, including many of America’s top-tier institutions.
    EdX, a non-profit MOOC provider founded in May 2012 by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and backed with $ 60m of their money, is now a consortium of 28 institutions, the most recent joiner being the Indian Institute of Technology in Mumbai. Led by the Open University, which pioneered distance-learning in the 1970s, FutureLearn, a consortium of 21 British, one Irish and one Australian university, plus other educational bodies, will start offering MOOCs later this year. But Oxford and Cambridge remain aloof, refusing to join what a senior Oxford figure fears may be a "lemming-like rush" into MOOCs.
    On July 10th Coursera said it had raised another $ 43m in venture capital, on top of the $ 22m it banked last year. Although its enrolments have soared, and now exceed 4m students, this is a huge leap of faith by investors that the firm can develop a viable business model. The new money should allow Coursera to build on any advantage it has from being a first mover among a rapidly growing number of MOOC providers.
    The industry has similar network economics to Amazon, eBay and Google, says Ms Roller, in that "content producers go to where most consumers are, and consumers go to where the most content is. " Simon Nelson, the chief executive of FutureLearn, disagrees. "Anyone who thinks the rules of engagement have already been written by the existing players is massively underestimating the potential of the technology," he says.
    Certainly, there is plenty of experimentation with business models taking place. The MOOCs themselves may be free, but those behind them think there will be plenty of revenue opportunities. Coursera has started charging to provide certificates for those who complete its courses and want proof, perhaps for a future employer. It is also starting to license course materials to universities that want to beef up their existing offering. However, it has abandoned for now attempts to help firms recruit employees from among Coursera’s students, because catering to the different needs of each employer was "not a scalable model", says Ms Koller.
    For Udacity, in contrast, working with companies to train existing and future employees is now the heart of its business model. It has tie-ups with several firms, including Google. It recently formed a partnership with AT&T, along with Georgia Tech, to offer a master’s degree in computer science. Course materials will be free, but students will pay around $ 7,000 for tuition. EdX is taking yet another tack, selling its MOOC technology to universities like Stanford, both to create their own MOOC offerings and to make physically attending university more attractive, by augmenting existing teaching.
According to Paragraph 3, Oxford and Cambridge refuse to offer MOOCs because______.
选项 A、they think MOOCs will be a serious threat to their current offerings
B、they do not want to follow blindly when they are uncertain of MOOCs’ value
C、universities will be guillotined by it in the future
D、it cannot provide as many revenue opportunities as the existing business model
答案B
解析 本题考查考生对第三段中有关为什么剑桥和牛津这两所大学在众多大学纷纷投入大规模网络课程行列的大潮中为什么保持冷漠，不愿加入的原因。第三段以EdX和FutureLearn为例，介绍了这两个大规模网络课程提供商的发展和众多高校纷纷加入的盛况，紧接着提到，牛津和剑桥却没有加入，原因在于他们担心这种行为是“lemming-like rush”。理解这个短语的含义是作出正确选择的关键，lemming是“旅鼠”的意思，这种动物以季节性群体迁徙却往往走向末路而著称，常常用来比喻那些不假思索，盲目跟随大流的现象，同时，“rush”本身也有“匆忙，急促”的含义，由此可知，剑桥和牛津拒绝的原因是他们不想盲目跟风，[B]是正确选项。[A]、[C]、[D]均是迷惑选项，都不是第三段提及的原因，均不正确。
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