 MOOC is basically massive open online course. So massive meaning a lot of students take part in it, open meaning that it is open to anybody, there is no admission process as such, there is no entry criteria, online meaning it is delivered using the internet, put up on a server, anybody can access it, courses of course, course. So distance education has been around for a long time, everybody knows what distance education has been. The course material is sent to you, you prepare using that and then appear for an exam and you clear the exam, you get a certificate. So in the MOOC model, it is almost like it replaces the distance education model of the past. But instead of giving the course material, shipping the course material physically to people, the course material is made available on a web portal, people register for the course, it is open that is the new thing about MOOCs, it is open. So anybody can register for it, anybody who has access to the internet can go online to that web portal register and they get a login and password and they are registered. And the material becomes available to them immediately. But the interesting thing about what is being given as MOOC right now is that it is organized exactly like a university course. So it is not that all the material is given to the person immediately, some material is released in the first week and the student has to study it and at the end of it there are some assignments that they have to do and after that some more material is released in the next week. So it almost runs like a university course. So you go for a few lectures every week and you do assignments and then the next week you go for a few more lectures and some assignments etcetera and it mirrors university course. So well there has been different formats for MOOC lectures, usually they are short. So they do not have a long 50 minute lecture for it but it is not really a format of the MOOC as such but it has got to do with what people can, what kind of time people will have with them. So for instance when students are assumed to be busy in college, so they may not have all the time in the world. So they would have maybe short periods of time in which they can quickly watch one module. So that is one way of thinking about it but usually the modules are short and there is no real reason for why there is a format but you know that is the accepted way in which MOOCs are delivered, short modules so that can be assimilated very easily. This MOOC specifically is on computer science, basic computer science and specifically we focus on programming. So most people would have studied programming in some form or the other in school and there are lots of institutes out there which offer programming courses. So what is different about this specific course? The main thing is that we are not just doing programming, we are also doing data structures and algorithms. So these three together programming along with an ample dose of data structures and algorithms really is what is needed to make somebody job ready in the IT industry particularly not just in the IT industry, in any industry today people are expected to program and not just write program any program that works but write good programs, efficient programs and for that you not only should know programming which some people might say just the syntax of the language, it is not enough to know the syntax of the language, you should know something called data structure, how to store the data efficiently and you should know something called algorithms, how to process the data efficiently and write efficient programs. So since all of these things are coming together I would more or less say this is an introduction to computing kind of course, how to write programs, how to write efficient programs, how to write good programs. So it is a nice bag of topics which you would probably find in multiple courses in engineering colleges but we have collected these topics together with the aim of making people job ready for specifically for high tech industry, any industry that needs program. It is not aimed at a very high level, so the MOOC lectures, the background that is needed for students is more or less 12 standard level, we are not expecting anything beyond that, some basic algebra and calculus and basic mathematics is probably needed but we are not expecting anything beyond that. So we do not expect researchers in this area to be taking part in it as students but definitely people who want to be job ready this will help a lot and people who are already in companies maybe they are fresh recruits going through their training process for them this will be of invaluable use. In this specific MOOC we are doing programming like I said and programming assignments are nice in the sense that we can evaluate them automatically by computer online. So there is a portal in which there will be an editor that will pop out and you have to key in your program and then you press submit and the program gets submitted and some server compiles it runs it checks the output against some preset actual output that it should obtain and if the outputs match it gives you marks. So that is how the assignments are graded. So that is the nice thing about programming everything can be done online. So all our assignments that is the other thing I should point out all the assignments in this MOOCs are going to be programming assignments more or less there is no simple multiple choice I mean there will be also some multiple choice questions but really multiple choice questions are not going to measure how good a programmer you are. So you really need to actually program. So more or less all the assignments in this MOOC are program based. So NPTEL is the organization which is organizing the content behind the MOOC and NPTEL is a project under the Ministry of Human Resource Development and it is a project that has been running for about 10 years now we have a collection of lot of course material. In this specific MOOC we have had faculty from the computer science departments of several IITs who have come together and have created a syllabus. And this syllabus was created after several meetings and in those meetings we had participation from IIT companies such as TCS, data consultancy services and CTS, cognizant technology solutions and NASCOM also. And through NASCOM a lot of other companies have also contributed to the content creation process in the sense I mean in the syllabus creation process. Now after the syllabus was formed lectures were recorded and for those lectures faculty from IIT have contributed. So different faculty have contributed faculty from IIT Madras, IIT Kanpur, IIT Kharagpur, IIT Goahti all of them have recorded lectures eventually these will be released in the MOOC. So that will happen later but the content creation industry has played a role in the syllabus creation and IITs have created role played a role in the content creation. Now we will also have some special lectures from industry. So that is to provide an industry view of how these topics are useful in say in applications that people have seen in industry. So we also have industry lectures but those are different from the main course content lectures. The main course content lectures are from the faculty at IIT and industry lectures are to supplement this effort also. So the recording of the lectures happened in the NPTEL studios in IIT Madras in Kanpur, Goahti and Kharagpur. So through the NPTEL project the IITs are equipped with really high quality studios where one can record lectures very easily HD format and all the latest technology is out there and the other part of it is the portal itself. Now the web portal also plays a very important role in delivering the MOOCs. The students log into the web portal, they see the lectures on the portal, they submit the assignments on the portal so everything happens on the web portal. And for the web portal we have a very strong association with Google. So Google through its course builder platform and in fact they are modifying the course builder platform to host this MOOC and Google is also offering services for hosting the portal so that cost is also being provided by Google. So we have a very active partnership with the engineers at Google and the team in Bangalore as well as there is a small team in Palo Alto which is working on this. So they are creating the portal. So the portal is one part of it and the studios are the other part of it. Of course the content input comes from the faculty you know. What student will need definitely is a computer and an internet connection. And the internet connection it is good if it is broadband but even I would say even let's say a 2G dongle the USB dongle that people have a 2G one might also be good enough but if you have a 3G connection that's great but an internet connection is definitely a must and a computer is a must. Now it might so in case as a student if you don't have access to the internet if you don't have a computer at home we are hoping the colleges will get involved and help out in getting the students access to internet and computers. Most colleges today have internet access and if they are involved then the internet connection and computers can be provided by the college and then the students can access it through the college. As a student this is an exciting opportunity to learn basic programming and data structures and algorithms which will first of all give you the essential requirements for becoming job ready in the IT industry and the high tech industry. But not only that I think it will take you towards an analytical approach to problem solving. So that is that is quite important as you as you become better and better engineers to to be a good engineer in general you have to be able to solve problems. Not only just by practice but you should also have an analytical reason for why you are solving the problem in that specific way and this course will really teach you about that. And you might be surprised at how some simple things which you might have done in very inefficient ways can be suddenly made very efficient if you analyze it analyze it carefully apply your mind and solve the problem very nicely. So I hope you enjoy this course and all the best.