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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.
The underlined phrase "beef up" in paragraph 6 is closest in meaning to______.
选项 A、replace
B、surpass
C、strengthen
D、shame
答案C
解析 本题考查考生对生词意思的理解。Beef up这个短语出现在第六段的第四句。第六段讲到大规模网络公开课本身是免费的，但是仍然存在着很多商业模式上的尝试，未来仍有很多可以盈利的机会，接着举了两个例子，第一个是针对雇员与企业之间，第二个是针对高校，也就是beef up这个词出现的地方。第二个例子指出它开始授权高校使用这些课程材料，以______现有的课程，既然是盈利的机会，肯定是对现有的课程有帮助的，[C]“加强”是最好的选项。[A]、[B]在意思上虽然也讲得通，但是如果MOOC可以取代或者超越现有高校的教育方式的话，高校恐怕也不会与之合作，更谈不上盈利，因此不正确。同理，如果网络公开课的功效只是“使高等教育现有的课程羞愧”的话，他们之间的合作和盈利都没有得到表现，因此[D]也不正确。
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