 Just waiting for it here. I should be live now. Hello. Welcome to the SC4X Live Event 1. My name is David Corell. I'm your course lead, and I'm very excited to be here today with the executive director of the MicroMasters program, Dr. Eva Ponte. Thank you, and welcome. Welcome to this first live event for SC4X. We're very excited that you're all here with us today. You'll notice that we're doing this through Slido. So if you follow that link and enter the event code, you'll be able to interact with us and share your insights and views. So the first poll that we have up asks how many courses you've completed. So please take a second to vote and let us know how many courses you've taken with us. Votes are coming in. Looks like many of you have taken four courses, so you're getting close to the CFX. That's great. I hope that most of you have taken that in sequence in order. I know that some of you are taking some of them at the same time. But yeah, in any case, it's good to see that most of you have already taken four courses, and this is your last course, which is that how we design the MicroMaster credential. And in February, we will have the next CFX, the next comprehensive proctor final exam, February 2019. This is great. It's great to know we're dealing with experienced professional learners today. That's good. Always good. All right, well, I'm going to switch over to the slides here and tell you a little bit about the agenda for today. OK, so this is our first live event. And the agenda today is to talk about SC4X in general. We're going to talk about the MicroMaster's program, what you can get out of completing the whole program now that you're so close. And Ava will tell you about all the different opportunities that are open up to you now that you've come this far on the program. Then I'm going to talk a little more specifically about what you can expect for the rest of SC4X. And then we'll open it up for some questions. And we'll also talk about what I think a lot of you are here to learn about how you did in the fresh connection. So with that, the first question, many of you have already answered. How many courses have you taken? Wow, most of you have taken all four. That's great. Very exciting. That's great. Sure. And then the second one most representative is those who took three courses. Excellent. Perfect. And for what looks like just a few of you, this is your first course. We're very excited to have you two. OK, I'll hand it over to Ava to talk with the big picture about the whole MicroMaster's program. Excellent. So thank you, Dave. Yes, so I just want to give you an overview about the MITx MicroMaster program and supply chain management. So first of all, let's go to the next slide. I want to tell you a bit about us. We are at MIT, the Center for Transportation and Logistics. And at CTL, we have been working for more than 40 years creating supply chain innovation and driving this into practice. And this is something that is a part of the center. For instance, if we have a look into the research, all of the research projects we are doing here are in the city and in the city applied. So it's a very research-applied approach, the one we are following here. In terms of outreach, there is also a program that we collaborate very closely with companies. We have more than 50 companies that are partners of CTL. And with these partners, we are collaborating in education. We are doing research projects with them. We are receiving them here at the center almost every single week. We have one partner coming and sharing with us the challenges, the issues. And we are trying to learn from this real world and the real industry. The third leg is education. And this program, the MicroMaster program, is part of the education leg. I want to mention here that we started offering the first supply chain management master's degree in 1997. Dr. Bruce Arson is the director of this master degree program that has been running for more than 20 years now. So this program is the top number one rank in supply chain management. And let's say that this give us the experience and the knowledge in order to build the current MicroMaster program. So in addition to that, we are running PhD program in logistics, executive education program, specifically for professionals. And we are also part of the MITSK network. So let's say that the spirit of the CTL is a global way to do the things. So we have centers all around the world. We have centers in Spain, Zaragoza, in Luxembourg, in Europe, also in Malaysia, also in Bogota, here at MIT in Cambridge. So these are the different centers that we have. Each of these centers, they are following a similar model that we are following here at CTL with these three main parts, research, outreach, plus education. So the MicroMasters in supply chain management was announced in fall 2015. So in 2016, we started offering the MicroMasters in supply chain management that you are now part of this program. So this is about our global scaling network and where the center, the six centers of excellence that I already mentioned, I forgot to mention the one in China, NIMBO. So we have another one in Asia in NIMBO in China. So this is the location of the six centers. And the idea is to have these global networks. So we collaborate with them. We have different research projects and different kind of collaboration with our different centers. So in terms of the MITX MicroMasters in supply chain management, so you are now part of a huge community of SEX learners. So we just updated these numbers because we recently closed SE1X and SE3X. So we have more than 278,000 learners enrolled in at least one SEX course. So about a quarter of a million, let's say of learners enrolled in at least one SEX course. In terms of the learners verified, more than 18,000 of these learners are verified. I think most of you by now know what does a verified learner mean means, but if not, we will go through the logistics just in case you need to know that. We have issued more than 26,000 certificates. As I mentioned, this is a global program. Our learners are from more than 196 different countries all across the world. In terms of the MicroMasters credentials holders, we have now more than 1200 MicroMasters holders. You are most of you, as you told us, 60% of the people who are attending to this event, you already completed four courses. So you are almost at the very end of this long journey. We know that on average is taking between 15 to 18 months to complete the whole MicroMasters program. We know it requires a lot of effort. So you are almost there. You just need to complete this SE4X course as a verified learner. Take the CFX in order to earn the MicroMasters credentials. So I really encourage you to complete the journey and earn the credential. Okay, so this in terms of the numbers, in terms of the principles, we are sharing with MIT one of the main principles of this program that is to educate the world for free. That's why we are offering the videos, the quick questions and the practice problems to anyone anywhere. In addition to that, we are offering a credential, a certificate per course, plus the MicroMasters credential let's say a minimum cost, a very affordable fee for this credential that this mainly covered the administrative cost associated to issue the certificate, that's all. In terms of the SEX courses, what we want to do is to provide the best learning experience to our learners. And I'm very happy to have these course leads like Dave, they are putting a lot of effort into the course by itself, into running the course and trying to provide the best learning experience to help you guys with any questions you have or trying to implement new interventions or new actions that at the end try to make the course better. So we are working on that. We know that we are not perfect and we know that we have room for improvement. Indeed, we are trying to improve a very single run of this course mainly based on your feedback, based on the community teaching assistant feedback and all of the feedback that we are receiving from our learners, from our CTAs, and from the staff in order to try to make the courses better or at least as good as we can, the best we can. Yes. The second principle is to provide also a rigorous assessment. This is because of the certificate and this is because of the MicroMaster Credential. So we really need to be sure that we are providing the credential to the person that has the knowledge and we need to validate this and assess this knowledge. That's why you have meter and final exam per course and that's why at the very end of the program we are providing a comprehensive and proctor final exam before granting or issuing the MicroMaster Credential. So this is something that we also are investing a lot of effort in providing this rigorous assessment. And that's why also we also care a lot about the Honor Code and we always encourage you to read it before starting any SCX course and also you know that it's a prerequisite and before you complete any graded assignment, meter or final exam, you need to complete this Honor Code in order to agree with the rules of the course. I think that's one of the really differentiating things about our MOOCs or our online courses versus perhaps other offerings that you might have taken or that I've taken, you know, every midterm, every final exam is written new from scratch. The team is running algorithms to detect for cheaters and in a lot of that really boost the value of the credential for you learners who go through and do everything and study because we've done that rigorous testing of your knowledge. It's you can't sail through these courses and Ava has the team put a lot of efforts into that that I think helps the learners and the course leads. Definitely and the main thing behind is just to add value to the credential. This is why we are doing that, great. Okay, so in terms of the MicroMasters credential, as we mentioned, you are at the very end of the journey. Most of you already completed zero, one, two, three. You are now taking four, yeah, and then you just need one last stretch that is to take and pass the proctor, comprehensive final exam before earning the MicroMasters credential in supply chain management. Let's have a look to the, I want to highlight here how our learners are using the credential. So this is just, yeah, let's go to the end. This is just to highlight that you are at the very end. Most of you are at the very end. You just need to complete this SC4X course. Dave is going to present more details about the contents and what you expect to have in SC4X. Regarding the final comprehensive exam, we will provide all of the details at the very end of this course. So for those who are eligible and are planning to take the CFX, we will do a special life event, sharing with you all of the instructions and all of the details. So we will try to provide you all of the information you need in order to be prepared for that. Another thing I want to highlight here is that SC3 and SC4X are more qualitative courses. They are more kind of real courses that brings the complication and the complexity of the reality. So in SC3X, you already review global supply chains and the different actors and the issues in the interaction with them and all of the things about incoterns, for instance, and also about Professor Sheffi review risk management. In SC4X, we are dealing more with big data and you have already completed some weeks about big data. This is not a kind of expert course. You are not going to be an expert dealing with big data, but at least we want you to be able to manage this big data in a supply chain management context, try to apply some of the machine learning tools in order to help you to analyze this big data that based on our experience, we are using for most of our research projects and also our learners, residential SCM learners, they are using a lot for the custom projects and master thesis projects. So we have seen in the last years the use of these tools more and more, yeah. Excellent, so in terms of the value of the credential, so most of our learners are using this credential as an individual professional career development. Some of our learners are employees in different companies and they are using these companies as a way to train their staff in supply chain management and also to offer to their employees a training development career and also this micro master was designed as a pathway to an MIT supply chain management master degree. So this is what we call the supply chain management blended program. So let's say that once you complete the micro master credential and you earn the micro master credential, you can apply to a blended master's degree here at MIT. This is a one full semester master degree. Our traditional SCM master degree is a 10 month residential program, two full semester on campus. So with the micro masters, those who complete the micro master and have the credential can apply to the one full semester only spend one full semester on campus before earning the master degree. Application just open, but the round that applied to you guys is the one that opens in March, 2019. This is going to happen right after the CFX in February, 2019. So we always design the courses that you can take it in sequence in order. So after once you complete the C4X that we will finish this by the end of December, 2018, in February, we are offering the CFX and for those who complete that and are interested in applying for the blended degree at MIT, applications will open in March, 2019. That was a really exciting opportunity and I hope that all of you are thinking about it a way you can fit it into your lives because it's, I think, a really special and unique thing. Yeah, yes indeed. I think I have, yes, I have the picture of the last and very first supply chain management blended cohort that came on campus. They came here in January, 2018. They graduate in May, 2018. Yeah, for the MicroMaster team it was really, really nice to see this learner so motivated here on campus, learning a lot about their own campus experience too. Yeah, so this regarding the MIT experience, there are also 19 universities now that are offering a pathway for credit to a master degree in supply chain management feels related to that. Harvard Extension just signed an agreement with MITX the MicroMasters in supply chain management. So they are recognizing this credential as a pathway for some of the degrees offering through Harvard Extension School. Also Purdue University, RIT, Dong University but you can also find a local opportunities. There are some universities in Australia that they are offering a pathway for credit for the master's degree. There are also some Latin American universities, the University of San Francisco de Quito in Ecuador in Guatemala, Galileo University, also some European universities. Zaragoza is another example. Zaragoza is also offering a blended master degree and our center in Malaysia is also offering an accelerated way to earn a master degree in supply chain management. So there are many different options in almost all of the continents. So that's something that you might be interested in explore. All of this information is on our website. So if you want to receive more information of any of this program, you can go through our SEM website, MicroMasters SEM website have a look to these different options. In terms of the impact of the credential, I want to highlight you the impact on learners. So this is the example of Mia. Mia shared this video testimonial with us and after she completed the MicroMaster credential, she was hired by Akamai. This is a technological company here in Kendal MIT. So she was very happy with us. She shared this with us. For us, to be honest, this is the best thing when our learners contact us and say, hey, I got the job of my dreams or I'm applying what I'm learning every single day in my company. So these things really, really, we really appreciate that and we are very proud of our learners and see how they are promoting the jobs, how they are changing or finding new jobs, some of them how they are graduating here at MIT or at any other university. So yeah. And we even get to keep in contact with them. Sometimes they'll go and they'll advance into a great new job and then always be thinking about research and techniques and that conversation keeps going because we're all sort of part of a MicroMaster's community now that's really fun to be a part of. Yeah, and I also encourage you guys, you are at the very end of the journey. So I really encourage you to be part of the MicroMaster forum because this is the website we have in order to be in touch with you once you complete the program. So yeah, it's our way to have job offers, nice discussion about the relevant supply chain management topics. Also the impact on organizations. So we have some companies that they are sending their employees in order to train them in supply chain management. So General Electric is one of these examples. They are one of the, yes, I have one cohort of GE, just almost done. You are now taking SC4X, your fifth course and will be almost ready to take the CFX. This is the very first GE cohort that joined the MicroMaster in supply chain management. So more companies. There is one paper Spanish company that started to send their employees to SC0X. We have also another companies and go to the next slide. These are learners, they just enroll by themselves in all courses and they are from Amazon, from Google, from Johnson & Johnson, from Procter & Gamble, from many different companies and they are doing because they want to learn more in supply chain because they said that they are applying this concept in their day-to-day job. So, and we are very happy to see these forums through the MicroMaster portal that they have this thread and these groups of people from the same company. So we have a lot of, yes, professional from industry and this is great. When I go through the forum, I really learn every single time that I go there from your experience. It makes the discussions great to have people bring in their work experience and different tools and tips that they use in their jobs and it's kind of fun, I think, to see from the outside if you're in supply chain management. You know, there's a couple talent shortages that people often talk about. Knowledge of basic supply chain management, ideas and techniques and then facility with database tools. And I think what's great about our program is that we can really address that talent gap. We can train people up in supply chain management like you and we can train people up in database management tools. So it's a neat way to address a real industry problem. Yeah, great. So let's go to the next slide. Yeah, so then I think it's your turn to have a closer look into SC4X. Sure, all right. So I'm going to talk a little bit about our course SC4X, Supply Chain Technology and Systems, the course that you're in now and you have probably had the pleasure of doing a couple of graded assignments and looking forward to your next ones. So first I just want to take a look at who our learners are, who is in this class with you this term. So we have more than 5,000 of which around 430 are verified. So that's really pretty good, especially when we think about comparisons to other large online courses. That's a great rate for us. The median learner age is around 30 and 87% to have a college degree or higher. So to Ava's point, a lot of professional experienced people are taking our courses. Yeah, yeah. We're pretty international in scope. You can see the US is the largest percentage but also Brazil, India, Canada. It's really fun when going through the discussion forums to see all those different perspectives come to issues. Yeah, and different cultures, different... Yeah, people from different countries. Sometimes there are issues and challenges because there are challenges associated to the geographical location or to the specific themes of the country. So we can see this diversity in our forums and it's something for me, something fascinating. Absolutely, I hope... If you all haven't made it through week three yet, you'll see following the last quick question, we've ceded the discussion and that discussion was sort of a thoughtful prompt about what is the role of artificial intelligence in planning. And it was so fun to see the different perspectives from all over the world, coming at things from different angles and taking perspectives that I certainly had thought of and it was really refreshing to see. Yeah. Some people brought their own stories. I want to highlight user Kuang Boi who told the story about the discussion that he had with his mother-in-law, I believe, on this topic. It was really neat to see. We had across countries and across generations. So thank you for that, Kuang. That's good. Yeah, and also you're bringing new applications for us that is like, hey, this is a new way to apply this technology that we have never think about that before. So that's also great. Absolutely. And just following that up, I want to highlight how international the course team is too. That's something that runs consistently throughout the whole MicroMasters. So I want to highlight our amazing CTAs, Edmar from Bolivia, Param from India, Gianmarco from Peru, Alessandro from Germany, Philip from Germany, and Syed from Egypt are all working with us during this run and they're bringing so much to the course. If you're in the discussion forum regularly, which I hope you are, I know you see it. We see especially Edmar and Param helping to explain concepts with words and examples that we don't have time to put in the videos. That's quite helpful. Gianmarco and Alessandro have done so much to help me make the course better. Philip and Syed also going through the course, telling me where things could be explained better and better detail, helping understand the questions and also bringing that international perspective. So I think on behalf of me and Eva, we'd like to thank the CTAs and also on behalf of the learners. Definitely. Our community teaching assistants are amazing. They are putting a lot of effort and bringing their experience and they are the bridge in between the learners and also the staff. We have with them, they really bring all of your concerns, new ideas to improve the course. The most important thing, they spend a lot of time just trying to help the community and the learners if you are struggling. Most of our community teaching assistants that you already completed and passed as a verified learner this course. So they know what you are doing, they know for which stages you are passing through. So this is something that definitely, that's why I think they are also so, so helpful for you. Absolutely. And a great bridge like Eva was saying between learners and course leads and helping us all understand each other. And I just got a nice note from Syed, who's watching us now. Correction noted Syed, I'll update the slide. And I just want to point out our staff to Dr. Ponce, he's from Spain. Dr. Caplis is from the U.S. I myself am from the U.S. Our teaching assistants, Ed Bilal, around here we just call him Bilal, he's from Pakistan. I'm sure you've seen Bilal on the forums helping you with different concepts too. And then Arthur, who I know you get to communicate a lot with, is also from the U.S.A. So we're equally as international and I think really proud of that here in Cambridge. Yep. Okay. Yes. I think we'd like to see where you're from. So if you would, please take a second on the Slido and type in your answer, where are you from? We'll make a word cloud and we'll get to see where some of the live viewers are from. Wow, all over, this is great. Egypt, Germany, the Netherlands, Colombia, Indonesia, Great, China. One of the things we think about with the live events is obviously all our learners are all over the world and in different time zones. So it's quite helpful to us for you to put in where you're from, because it helps us understand which markets we're able to reach with the live events. Yeah. And we know, we know that it is not the best time to offer that because, yeah, sometimes it's very late for some of you, but we will try our best, yeah. Wow, all over the world, this is really exciting. Thank you, team. Excellent. I want to take a second to think about some of the things that we're covering in our course, and really the goal is to motivate why you want to spend that extra time studying and learning the things that we're talking about. So I'd like to ask the question, what is big data? And I want to start with some of the things that you've probably heard. You heard Dr. Kapless early in the course, say the definition he likes is anything that crashes Excel. I've heard from research scientists here in Cambridge and on other projects that, well, if R starts to run slowly, then I know. Popular definition is data sets distributed across systems. Another sort of more technical definition is anything over one terabyte. So there's a lot of discussion around this idea, but I think it'd be interesting to know what you think defines big data. So please take a second and tell us what you think defines big data. Looks like internet, scattered. I think that's a popular answer. It's distributed across multiple databases or sources. Any word that comes to mind when you think about what makes it big data as opposed to small data? Brett, that's a good one. Wow, you're bringing up your readings. Excellent. I'm glad to see velocity and volume there. Thank you. MicroMasters community is also something related to big data. We need to analyze some data. Absolutely. Raw, these are great answers. Thank you. Spreadsheet. Tracking. Tracking. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. Scalable, prescriptive. These are good answers, and I'm glad you're bringing them. Thank you. For me, I want to take a slightly different look. And this is not to say that anything that you all have put there is incomplete. I think you're really getting at some of the same things. But I think there's another way to look at it that at least for me is motivating when I think about building my skills and practicing our different techniques. And so one way to think about something that's big is that it's dangerous. I like to spend a lot of time on the water here in Boston on the harbor. And if I think about a big wave, what measures the big wave, it's not its size, but it's the destruction that it could bring. And so when I look at some recent news events, and you've probably seen these, big data can have consequences. So just recently from the Wall Street Journal up there, you saw what happened with the Google data breach and what that did to Google Plus users. Another famous one is, of course, the Facebook and Cambridge Analytica data breach down in the right hand corner, one here maybe specific to the US, but this was really quite a big deal. The data breach at Equifax, where you can see there in the headline, more than 99% of people had their social security numbers turned over to hackers. And I don't know if Ava experienced this, but I know in my family, we had to register to have our identity protected and all these things because of that. And so all the things that you said, what defines big data, you talked about handling it, how it's tracking data, how it can come from multiple sources, how it's scary, how it's unstructured. I think the first thing when I think about what makes it big is the potential for danger that can come from it. It's very powerful, it conveys a lot of information, but that information, because it's distributed and because it's so powerful, has the potential to do us harm as well as to do us benefit. Yeah, I fully agree, I think it's a great point. But if there's a potential cost and a potential negative, there's a potential positive too. And so I want to introduce you to a couple of the friends that you're going to meet in week five here. So up in the top left is Michael Kress. He's a logistics manager for AB IMBEV. And he, we're going to take you on a virtual field trip to his office in New York City, where we're going to show you how he and our company. And in my conversation with him, one of the things he got to is the sentence that I love, data is an asset. And he said that one of the biggest learnings for him in the data science project was his company coming to understand that data is not a byproduct of their operations, but it's a valuable asset that they generate and that they need to take seriously. And so we're hoping in this course, you can see that early and be the people that can help your companies see that asset. Definitely, in which week can they see this? Week five, prep week, right before the midterm. Okay, great, we have to have some fun. Yeah. And for verified students, we're going to work on some extra problems to help you learn the techniques that they used at AB IMBEV in real life. Excellent, excellent. Another reason to become a verified member. It's gonna be really fun. Then I'd like to introduce you to another friend and this is an interview that Ava did with Dr. Holger Kohn from Adidas. And I really liked this interview. You'll also see it in week five. And I pulled out this quote where he said, we spend a lot of time and effort making the data high quality, compliant and normalized at different levels. Because to me, that really brought up how a professional working at a very successful and thorough company was using the tools that you just learned to bring value to his operations. Yeah, and you are almost about to review normalization. This is a week that, yeah, it's intense, I think so. And there is a lot of rules, but at the end, companies need to use that. So, and they are using that. So I think it's something good to learn, yeah. Absolutely, it's important. And just like Ava said, I know it's frustrating. We see in the discussion forums and we see on the help email, but it's also important. So that frustration, I'd like to suggest it's worth it. And now you have this guy from Adidas saying that he is using these techniques. Yeah, absolutely. And then just a couple of articles. So one from the Harvard Business Review and one from the MIT Technology Review. The MIT calls it the rise of data capital. Is the data that companies have perhaps one of their most valuable assets going forward? Many people think so. The Harvard Business Review asks if companies really know what their data is worth. I think they're starting to learn as I present as a researcher in different places, I'm often approached afterwards by companies saying, do you know students that know how to do this? We need to train our people up to use the larger databases to analyze them. And that is now you. I talk about SC4X all the time when people ask me those questions. So it's great to get to be with you on this journey to understand both the potential peril of big data, but the promise and the reason you spend your time learning this stuff too. So how do we do that for you? The way we train you up to make those contributions is we start by, just like Ava said in our first block, we're gonna talk about data modeling, about normalization, just like Dr. Cole mentioned he does at Adidas. We're gonna talk about how to use different database management software. I know you all are having adventures and misadventures with SAS and with MySQL, but those are the tools that allow you to do what people are doing in industry. And then we're just gonna start talking now about machine learning. Once we have these big data sets, what can we learn from them and how can you be those people that extract value from the data that your organizations have? In block two, we're gonna go even deeper and look at what kind of software systems are actually out there generating value from data sets. So we'll look at enterprise resource planning systems, transportation management systems, warehouse management systems, visibility and tracking systems. And then one of the best things about this course, I think is we don't just treat it at a classroom or theoretical level, we walk you through how organizations make the purchasing decision on these big technological software packages. So that really I think gives you a nice coverage of how to understand data and then how to work with it in real life. And then at the end, probably one of the most exciting weeks for learners, new trends in technologies, and we get to talk to a lot of different experts about a lot of different interesting things. Just a couple of housekeeping things. I know you all are pros at the MicroMasters program at this point, so you don't need to know too much of this, but I wanted to make sure you understand that we have a midterm and we have a final and taking them both will certainly help you pass. So you have the dates there, and if you have any questions about when the dates are, you can always go there week zero, key dates and course structure, and you have every deadline right there for you. So you can see the green checkbox from my screen. I visit it myself all the time just to make sure that I also know when things are due and how the course is going to run. So one thing I think maybe Ava and I will both want to talk to you about because we know it's frustrating, but we also know what's important is the proctored test in this course. So in week eight, your graded assignment will be proctored. And I'll invite Ava to sort of tell you what that is and why we do it. Yeah, definitely. It's a virtual proctor exam. That means that you need to download a specific software to be proctored during the time exam. It's two things, proctor and time. So the idea to do that is just to prepare you for the comprehensive final exam to the CFX. The CFX, there are two exams in the CFX and both exams are time and proctor. So you need to download the software in order to install this software to be proctored during the test. We are including this in week eight as part of the graded assignment for week eight. So the impact on the total grade is going to be 2.5%. That is the weight of one weekly graded assignment. Having said that, I really encourage you, especially this is only for verified learners to take this proctor exam. Because if you encounter any issue, technical issue with the application, with your computer, there are many different things that can happen and it's much better that you deal with that now than during the CFX. So I really encourage all of the verified learners to take the proctor test in week eight. We will provide all of the details before opening that. You will have tutorials, video, you will have all of the instructions in order to be ready to do that. If you have any questions, always you can reach us through the email account or through the discussion forum. But yes, this is the, and why we are doing that again is to provide value to the credential. In AC4X, it's just to train you for the CFX and the CFX is proctor because of the credential, yeah. It's really worth doing. We know it's difficult to arrange everything for the proctored, but once you do it, then you know how to do it and you can go into the CFX confident that every technical thing has been taken care of and you can just focus on the exam. So please do it. And if you start early, we can sometimes even help you. Sometimes people have different kinds of issues that we can troubleshoot well ahead of your comprehensive. Yeah, much better to identify as soon as possible. And as you mentioned, it's mandatory for all verified learners in AC4X. One note, we've seen a number of times that if you're taking our courses on a work computer, sometimes you'll need to find another computer because the proctoring software actually watches you at your desk, taking the exam. So just sort of a heads up and we'll give you more thorough information, but sometimes people need to arrange a different computer for that. We encounter in the past CFX and the past proctor test some issues with company laptops. So keep an eye on that, yeah. And then just a schedule for live events. Obviously you already know what's going on in this one because we're going through it. On October 31st, that's also Halloween here in the United States. We're going to talk with some experts about machine learning. It's one of my favorite live events because we bring people in from the field to share their insights. We already... This is the way we celebrate Halloween. That's true, that's true. Maybe we'll wear costumes. We already have one sort of household name company that's agreed to be a part of that and we might even have more. So please put that in your calendars, verified learners. We're excited to talk about it with these experts. When we did this in the last run, that was really one of our most watched videos. People are excited about how to use machine learning. And then in week 11, Dr. Ponte and I will be back with you to talk about wrapping up the course and the experience and getting you ready for the comprehensive final exam. So with that, why don't we see if there's any questions, especially if you have questions about the course or about the MicroMasters. You have sort of the creator and the expert right here to answer them and we'll see what we can answer. Wow, these are all great questions. And I think I'm going to defer to Ava on both Iman's and Frank's because I think these are great questions sort of about the program. Great, so the Aiman question is, is the master's degree awarded with the blended program the same as the full on campus program? The answer is yes. We are providing exactly the same degree through the two options, the 10 month residential program or the MicroMaster plus one full semester on campus. So yes, both are exactly the same degree. In other words, do we receive the same certificate? It's not a certificate. This is a master's degree. Yes, the answer is yes. So which one is the other one? Frank. Frank asks, what is the passing score for the final comprehensive exam to learn MicroMasters? 60%. The pass bar is 60%, the same as in all of our SCX courses. You need to, this is the, you need to earn 60 or above 60% in the whole comprehensive final exam. There is not a minimum in exam one or exam two. Yeah. And that's a good point. If you didn't know, there are two exams as part of the comprehensive final exam that cover sort of the beginning of the MicroMasters in exam one and the later part in exam two. Yeah. Yeah. For the blended program admission, does a higher score get more consideration? Definitely, yes. We take into consideration all of your scores in the whole program. The five SCX courses plus the CF effects. So this is not the only criteria we are taking into consideration, but definitely is one of the criteria. So a scores is something that we are considering for the admission process. There is much more than that. You need also to include a video. You need to include a custom project proposal. You need to include your bachelor degree, your grades and the bachelor letters of recommendation. There are many different criteria, but definitely your performance across the MicroMasters program, including the CF effects is taking into consideration. Yeah. I'm gonna answer one here because it was the first one that came in about SC4X content and then go back to Ava for these two great questions from Tushar and Evangelos. But Sanjay, you asked even before we started, so thank you. How small businesses lacking resources can build technology driven systems to handle data and derive meaningful insights from them? This is great, a great question. And actually when we had our bootcamp learners here a few months ago, this was something that came up quite a bit. There's a lot of different answers, but the one that I would put out right away because it's most accessible I think is the resources that we're using are really free. So personally, I like MySQL, it's very easy to get, very professional database program. We have a little bit about Python scripting in our course. You can get access to Python and to R, other sorts of tools that are completely free. So certainly there's more expensive solutions out there, but one of my favorite things about this field is that even since I was a young man, it's changed in that it used to be that we had to purchase expensive software packages. That was where the best stuff is. And I think now the best stuff is open source. So there's a lot of opportunities out there and we're gonna show you the beginnings of it and let's stay in touch and let me know what you find. People find all sorts of stuff all the time that is really quite exciting. So long way of saying I think you can do it and I think you can do it with open source software. Take our course to learn the tools or the basics and then just go from there. Yeah. Maybe Evangelos here. Yeah. Evangelos said will there be more opportunities for virtual tours of real life supply chain managers and companies during the course? We are working on that. I think two previous rounds. We did an effort to bring experts from industry through the interviews. Last round, Dave did a great job with Arthur bringing this ABI case and this virtual tour. And yes, Dave is working in preparing another one. So we are working on that. The question is do not underestimate the effort behind doing that because it takes much more time that we were expecting at the beginning and every single video takes time to prepare all of this material. But yes, the answer is yes, we are working on that. We really want to bring reality to the SCX courses to bring experts from industry. Indeed, this January we are planning to have here on campus for the residential program experts from different industry. Last year, we took advantage of this great opportunity that we are offering here on campus. Arthur and myself, we did a bunch of videos. Adidas video is one of these examples. We also prepared some videos for SCPX. Bringing this experts view and expert experience in certain topics that we are covering the different SCX courses, including these videos through our courses. So we are planning to do the same this January and add more videos for that. And also Dave is working in another virtual tour that is something that I personally found fascinating. It was super fun. The virtual field trips are a lot of fun. Let's... Too sharp? Too sharp. Ask, do blended program students get on campus job opportunities? This is a great question too sharp. So as I mentioned, we have two masters degree, the 10 month residential program and the blended master degree. So the 10 month residential program is more oriented to job opportunities. These students arrive on campus in August and companies also are here visiting us during the fall and going through selection process with our residential 10 month residential students. Blended students already completed the micro master come into the on campus in January and they are here from January to May. In January, some companies are coming but most of our companies came in for during the fall. Some of them are coming for those companies that are coming all of our residential students independently if they are from the 10 month program or blended program are going to be exposed to that. However, the focus of the 10 month program is more for job opportunities. For the blended program, there are two things that I need to mention here. Most of our students are international students. If you only spend one full semester on campus you cannot have OPT. That means that you cannot stay in the USA and work in a company here through the OPT program. So this is something to take into consideration. From, I can tell you that from our international students that graduate from the blended program, most of them were looking for a promotion in their current company. Some of them are looking for a different job in a different industry in this country or in a different country. But in terms of how we have defined both programs, let's say that the 10 month program is more oriented to job searching and the blended is more oriented to provide you this master degree to continue with your career. And you'll be very busy while you're here doing that for the blended. Yes, for the one full semester, definitely. Let me answer one more from SK Shedding. I recognize you from the forums. Thank you for all your participation there and then we're running low on time so we'll get to the fresh connection. So SK Shedding asks, what are possible major steps approaches to be taken for success of big data projects or step to avoid any failure of big data projects? So a lot of that is of course context specific but a couple of things just come to mind right away. And of course we can continue this discussion in the forums or over email but one is do not underestimate data cleaning. It's a huge part of any project. And I think oftentimes I see students underestimate how long that could take. They think it might take a weekend when in fact it could take months. It could take a meaningful percentage of the overall project time just to make sure that the data is correct and complete and in the right form. And as Dr. Cole mentioned, normalized as appropriate to the question. So the first thing I think and I've made this mistake still and people do is a lot, a healthy amount of time to cleaning the data. It will save you time. And to thinking about the ERDs that you've learned how to do, thinking about how to structure it. The second thing, I wanted to bring up a funny line that I heard a research scientist here on campus say the other day. And it speaks to, it's very important to be in constant contact with the user or the company that you're working with, not to just be an analyst in isolation. So the story that my colleague told was that if I'm not in contact with the company, I'm just a sailor on a ghost ship. And he said that if I am sailing on my own, I'm not a sailor, I'm just a curious person. So I will sail to the Bermuda Triangle because that is the most interesting point in the world. But it is not where a company wants me to sail their ship. So he said that he needs to be in constant contact with the users to answer useful questions and to help steer the data scientist towards something meaningful. And we'll drive that point home again in our upcoming virtual field trip. Excellent. So let's move now to the first connection debrief. Let's do it, we have just a few minutes. Yes, okay. So this is just to highlight you that we, the first time we offered the first connection in SC4X was the fall of 2017. We have some teams that classify for the final competition. They went to Lisbon for SCX learners, SC4X learners, they met them from the very first time. They work as a team for the very first time and they won, they won the global challenge. It's a challenge with hundreds of people from all over the world. They were professionals and students. Yeah, this was more for professionals. We were very proud of them because they went there, they learned the first connection through SC4X and they did a great job working as a team. So there is some, yeah, some picture about this event. This is just to encourage you guys to take the fresh connection. Okay, so in terms of this round, the first round of the first connection, I know that you already completed the second round but just recently, you just recently completed. So I do not have this for the debrief, but I have the data for the first round of the first connection that you just played with us. Total of 208 participants, 125 have been active participants. That means that makes some decision through the game and through the platform. The average score is minus 3.9% that is almost the starting point and the median score is minus 0.5%. 73% of you guys are verified learners, those who play the game. This is in terms of the results. So more than 50% of those who play the game improve, improve a lot. So you know that the starting point is minus 3.9%. We have most of the students over 1% around zero above 1% to the maximum score that was a bit above 5%. Let's go to the next one because we have, yes, 72% the score better than the starting point, 51% the score more than minus 1% and 33% the score more than 1% that for the first round, I need to say that this is a good result. Yeah. So yeah, I do not have too much time so I'm not going to spend a lot but just wanted to highlight here that you have been making decisions in different areas of the supply chain management and the main goal of this game is to show you that these decisions, supply chain management decisions are interconnected. That means that when you make a decision about the supplier, this is going to have an impact on your final product and an impact on the service level that you are going to offer to your customer. So I think that this is a great opportunity for you guys to apply some of the concepts that you have learned through the whole MicroMaster program, concepts that you learn in SC1X, in SC0X, in SC2 and SC3X and apply in a kind of real situation. This is a company, they are producing juice, they have different suppliers, you need to make decisions about the quality of the supplier, the availability of the inbound material, the availability of the outbound material and play with any single decision you need to play with trade-offs, trade-offs between cost and service level. It's all about how decisions in supply chain management are interconnected. So... I think because we're low on time, maybe we'll go right to the top scores. Definitely. Let's go to the top score. So congratulations, Bruno. You were the one with the top score in this RAM, 5.25%. This is a great result. Gamal, 4.85%. And David Soklov, 4.73%. That's a great results. Yeah. There are different strategies to follow here. There are students that focus more on efficiency. This means that they focus more on reduce the cost of the inbound warehouse, the cost of the outbound and try to design a supply chain that based on the minimum cost in each of the parts. There are some of the students that focus more on service level and they put much more effort in making decisions that increase the service level with their customer or the service level with their suppliers in order to provide a better service level for their customer. And this is, we call this strategy more a service level oriented strategy. And there are learners that play following more a balanced strategy in between cost and service level. The beauty thing of this game is that there is not one recipe here. There is not one unique strategy that you should follow in order to have this ROI of let's say 6% in the company. There are many different strategies that will allow you to reach this 5% or 6% or ROI in the fresh connection company. So my recommendation is you can choose whatever strategy you decide but keep in mind that decisions are interconnected and you should be aligned with your strategy. So whatever strategy you decide to follow is important that you align these across the different decisions that you are allowed to make during the game. There are two, four rounds. The first two rounds, the same difficulty is the same. You are allowed to take the same decisions. In the last two rounds, you are allowed to make more decisions. So it's a bit more complex but still doable. For those that you didn't have the opportunity to take it, I really encourage you to take. You can take, you can start with round number three. The only thing is you are going to start with the starting point of the minus 3.9% of ROI in the company. But from this point, you can make your decisions and try to improve the profitability of the company. So if you didn't have the opportunity to take the previous round, don't worry. But if you have the opportunity from now to the end of the course, the deadlines are there. So the round number three will open next Wednesday and Chloe is going to be open for viewing one week. Round number four will open on October 31st, Halloween day. So you will have again one week to play. So I really encourage you to do that. I think it's a nice simulation tool to apply some of the concept that you have already learned with us and see the impact on different areas of the supply chain management. Excellent. We're running a little over. So two last minute things for me. And then I'll turn it over to Ava. One, our colleague Arthur has been with us and he wants me to remind you about the MicroMasters portal and the discussion forums there. So you can get there at mm.mit.edu slash scm that can also help you find people in your locality, in your country, in your city who are also doing the program and have a meetup. And sometimes people send pictures of those meetups to Arthur and we get to see him and it's really fun. Yeah, we really encourage you to collaborate always in the learning space. Collaborate through the videos, the quick question and the practice problem. Yeah, people are organizing this meeting up. They are organizing a study group, which is great because you can collaborate and learn with your peers. For assessment, you know, it's an individual work. So please keep it as individual. But yes, we encourage you to have this meetup through the discussions at odl.mit.edu. And for more information about the MicroMasters, do not hesitate to visit our website at mm.mit.edu slash scm. This is the MicroMasters website for supply chain management. And for those of you that submitted questions after we moved on, let's just keep the discussion going offline. You can always email us or if it's not related to graded content, which it looks like it's not posted in the form and will be as helpful as we can. So keep up the good work, complete the SC4X and one last stretch for the CFX and you are almost done with this journey. Thank you so much. Yeah, good luck with SC4X. Good luck. Thanks, team. Bye.