 live event of SE1x supply chain fundamentals and SE3x supply chain dynamics of the MicroMasters program and supply chain management. We're really happy to have you join this event. We really feel like it's a special event that is bringing together some of our credential holders and the course leads of the two courses. My name is Alexis Bateman. I'm a research scientist at MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics. And on my research side, I direct our MIT sustainable supply chains. And then I also contribute as a course lead to our MicroMasters program and supply chain management. We're really happy to have you today. And really lucky to be co-hosting this with Ima Borela. And I'll let her introduce herself. Hello, everyone. I'm Ima Borela. I'm a research scientist at MIT CTL at MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics. And I'm the course lead for SE1x. I'm also doing research around supply chain management. I'm basically focused on digital transformation on supply chains and also collaborating with Alexis in sustainable supply chains. So really excited to have you all here today for this really fun life event. We're going to be touching on different topics. And I'm sure many of you are more interested in the tips that we can give you on how to be successful in the MicroMasters program and then the SEX courses. So let me share with all of you the agenda for the day so you know what to expect in the next 60 minutes. So we will start just talking about the MicroMasters in supply chain management programs because many of you might be aware that the course you're enrolled in SE1x or SE3x are part of this program. There is a MicroMasters in fully online MicroMasters in EDX. But we want to just explain it a little bit further for people who are not so aware of it and also to understand the the courses that compose this program. After that, it will take us 10 minutes max. Then we will talk, we will dive into tips to succeed in our online courses and we have three amazing guests here who are MicroMasters holders who've been like in your shoes and will be sharing great tips on how to manage your time, how to use resources that are available, how to work with others in order to be able to succeed and complete the courses. Then we will have a little bit of time for Q&As and finally we will wrap up with some next steps and suggestions for you. So during the event we will also be using some polls in order to engage with the audience and also get some information about you, get to know you all a little bit better. So I will be launching the first one now and in the meanwhile Alexis, while you respond to the poll, Alexis will start to talk about the MicroMasters Program and Supply Chain Management. Great, thank you, Emma. So yes, the poll should be live so it'll pop up on your screen, go ahead and fill that out and we'll close it in a minute so just so we can learn a little bit about you. So many of you may be joining having been enrolled in supply chain fundamentals and supply chain dynamics which are two courses in a series of five different courses and a final exam called the MicroMasters Program and Supply Chain Management and so we wanted to make you aware, many of you may already aware but as you can see there are five courses that we suggest taking in order as they build upon each other beginning with analytics that is open almost all the time, fundamentals to which many of you may be enrolled, design, dynamics and then technology and systems and together those are sort of the broad scope of tools and fundamental learnings you will need as for supply chain management and then at the end of this journey of the five courses there's a comprehensive final exam and so we run that twice a year and one is actually upcoming in May and will be run again this fall but once you achieve all those then you'll have the supply chain MicroMasters credential which is essentially half of masters and so that is a professional credential that you can show to demonstrate your awareness and knowledge in supply chain you know have it on your professional CVs and LinkedIn's and all of that and then you know it's also a pathway for credit for master's programs and so we have actually a few learners on today that will be talking about how you know they let that lead into the master's program they are now in that MIT and there are many different options for master's programs so many use it as a professional credential to complement their learnings some roll it into an additional master's program that they're using to to propel themselves in their career so many different options but we just wanted to make you aware that it is part of a larger program I'm going to pop in the link for the program information into the chat right now so if you want to learn it gives a lot of background on each of the courses when they're running the course team some testimonials and so just take a look when you have a chance and you know of course as you're in the courses you'll continue to hear about some of the opportunities to go on to the next courses once you've completed one and or three x so just want to give some some of that background and I'm going to go ahead and uh I'll so then did you want to take this one or should I continue on yeah no we will just as Alexis mentioned we don't want to like dive into each one of the courses here you have like a general picture an overview of what the main contents of each course are uh and maybe just zooming in into sc1x and sc3x since those are our courses and and the life event this life event is for them specifically so uh I'm the course lead for sc1x um sc1x focuses on really the fundamentals of supply chain management so I always recommend it someone is approaching the topic of supply chain management for the first time sc1x is the best course because it just teaches you about forecasting about inventory management and transportation which are the building blocks of any supply chain so uh it's an amazing course really fun challenging too uh because it has a lot of math uh but uh it's attainable and like uh people like show great results and also like many many people give us the feedback that they apply uh right away the concepts they learn in this course to their daily jobs right yes and and supply chain dynamics is the course that I run and so this is really a lot about where the rubber meets the relevant supply chain so having gone through the journey of analytics fundamentals design you're really learning about you know the global context of supply chain so why are they so complex what constitutes complexity in the supply chain how do you manage complexity what are strategies that you can employ to manage supply chains what are the tools that you can utilize to better understand what's happening in your supply chain and then you know bigger perspectives on global supply chain management so you know trade and uh other fundamental issues in global supply chains and why uh you know global supply chains are so critical to our our supply chains that we have today uh and then we we end the course with exogenous factors were which are what are the other factors that are influencing um you know supply chains and obviously we saw that very very clearly in the last year with covid and how they can impact our supply chains and so really understanding one what are the potential for risks and how to be more resilient but also you know other exogenous factors in terms of pressure to be more sustainable uh to be more responsible and so you know that course really brings the real world and so when you have you have a lot of this different fundamental courses throughout the different uh the other three courses before you reach the supply chain dynamics and this one really brings the real world and so we seek to bring you know real world examples and events to kind of like apply the learnings uh on the ground so um and then you know the last course in the series would be technology and systems to which you know leads in once you once you complete um se3x and so um go ahead yeah no maybe highlighting like one more thing so the um estimated dedication per week for our courses uh and it is very general right but just to get an idea is between eight and 12 hours that's reported by learners and is an average uh some weeks will take a little bit longer some some weeks a little bit shorter also depends on your background but just keep this in mind uh for the the amount of effort you will have to put in in the courses um and if you're struggling with with maths or would like to review some uh basic uh concepts regarding statistics regression etc se3x is uh a course that is always open uh you can always enroll in this course and just review some of the basic analytics tools that are going to be useful for for the rest of the program um so with this i think uh alexis we could go to the results of the poll let's see so i just uh ended the poll and i'm sharing the results so uh so really exciting results actually here which is what is your ultimate goal for enrolling in our micro masters courses and by and large 58 percent said i want to complete the whole micro micro masters program yes so we are excited to lead you on that journey and we have some folks that can talk about their experience in completing the whole program uh and then you know a good portion of you guys 29 plan to apply for the blended masters program so that's also uh very exciting there's options at mit there's options around the world at our sister centers and xeragosa in luxembourg and so many different options to to pursue that master's pathway and and all of which are articulated on the website that i shared before so if you're keen to look on the educational pathways after completing the micro masters please do look into that resource where we explain that very fully um any quick thoughts on that on our poll ima yeah i know that it's fantastic and maybe just a shout out for the mit supply team bootcamp i see that uh a few of the learners are planning to apply uh so if you want just to get a taste of how synchronous learning uh so with us live is you can also like just join us for the bootcamp and it's uh also a great experience actually like uh guong also joined one of our bootcamps and uh like many learners have just this taste of what mit um life teaching is like uh before applying for the blended or for any other like longer term master's degree so that's another possibility to just uh in your uh pathway and in your learning journey in supply team management great great uh so i think we will go ahead and we'll actually launch a second poll but then we're going to introduce our um our first speaker so let me actually get our second poll okay uh i got it launch poll real time uh tech right here so we're getting it you know we're explaining in the back seats so i'm really excited to actually have one of my supply chain management you know i say my but she's she's her own she's her own person i'm really fortunate to work with her as a blended student uh so kelly sorrell uh she has the micro masters credential uh and also is enrolled now in the supply chain management blended program and has been um in one of the most novel years of our master's program of all time during uh coveted and have really you know really watched her watch her blossom in her position and doing the research for our project but she has an amazing background is already an existing supply chain professional uh with a real deep expertise before she uh began the program so i thought today you know i invited her to talk a little bit about her experience in the micro masters and then you know leading into the pathway for the semb program uh thanks for joining us kelly alexis um hi everyone i'm happy to speak with you today um brought this amazing program and just give you a little bit of taste of my own experience my undergraduate degree is in chemistry so i moved to massachusetts um like 20 years ago and i've been working in the biotech and pharma industry um for all of those years i started out in the lab but um i moved into supply chain doing inventory management and then clinical planning for within biotech um i started the micro masters program after someone i worked with um talked about this amazing program he uh went through MIT and suggested that i look into it because i was i mean i was really enjoying my job in supply chain but obviously i didn't have any of that formal education and he thought that i would enjoy it or that i might be able to get something out of the online classes so i signed up um really just wanting to learn right how to do my job better um i didn't have big goals to complete the certificate or go to MIT i just really wanted to to learn um but i enjoyed them very much and learned so much i just kept going i took one after the other um it took me about four years um because i had a lot of other things going on at the time and like i said i didn't have these big goals i didn't have a timeline or anything like that i was just taking them um but then after that four years after i finished that last one i decided to take the comprehensive final just for fun and after i passed i decided to apply to MIT just for fun i thought it would be fine just to have that acceptance letter to see if i could get it then once i had it i like well i should probably just go um how could i not go of course i should go and it has been just the best experience of my life uh quang tells me i'm graduating in eight weeks so i'm almost done with this long five year um path that started out with just taking that one first class so uh lexus i think you wanted me to talk about one key concept right something that i learned in my uh micro masters class that i took into into my actual work yeah that'd be great and also a little bit about how you managed it with your job and your family that'd be great to hear about that as well okay so i'll tell you when i was doing inventory management for biotech manufacturing those equations from the i don't even know which class it was but it was like the calculating transit and safety stock eoq economic order quantity right when i kind of applied these concepts to how i replenish the just-in-time warehouse for for the manufacturing raw materials it was the game changer those things are gold right um just be more thoughtful about the process and being smarter and more efficient it was very helpful so that's i see one x kelly one x i'll also tell you i took them out of order i don't necessarily recommend that but it's possible um i we also kind of implemented a two bin system into into the manufacturing suite themselves so probably the same class um so as far as any tips for time management i think my advice is for each class to stay on top of it right like i think you normally get two weeks um stay in that first week right just because do things as quickly as you can you never know when maybe a topic will be more difficult than you're expecting or maybe your kids will be quarantined and they can't go to school anymore so there might be things in your life or in your work or in the class themselves that kind of take the time away from you that you had been planning on so i would first just recommend staying on top of it don't wait until those quizzes are due or the problems that they're due um and then personally i like to make a plan for each week right um like look at what you have to do for lectures and then what kind of practice problems you'll have to do and say okay uh looks like on tuesday afternoon my workload isn't so bad i'm gonna watch this video and then oh i don't have any more time during the day for this other video so i'm gonna do that after the kids go to bed on wednesday night and thursday night right just like make a plan and then um honestly each day i also make a list i'm like a list person right so i make a list of all the things i have been planned to accomplish that day and i prioritize them right first are the urgent and important things second are the non-urgent and important things third are the urgent and unimportant things fourth are the non-urgent and unimportant things honestly and then my goal for each day is to just check them off and if those number fours never get done they get pushed to the next day right that's fine fine they're not urgent and they're not important um i think that my only other comment is that i wish someone would have told me was just to take one topic at a time for these classes some of them are going to be really hard for you um but some of them you'll find your strength right you'll find very interesting so if you just get through the the hard ones um and like really enjoy those interesting ones that you're in your wheelhouse i think the whole package itself is completely worth it and personally i found as time went on i found it better like i was able to handle that better right if you get through that the first couple of difficult courses for me everyone will find it differently but i found um things to be a little bit more manageable and a little bit more interesting on the further i went i don't know that's my personal opinion so thank you for that kelly that was super helpful i think uh the the structured lists uh that kind of getting it done when you can the really prioritizing the most urgent and also i think i fully agree with her that you have two weeks but do it as soon as possible do not be waiting till wednesday at 1500 utc so make sure to do it earlier so all those are great tips really appreciate your your insight there um so on to that end i'm just going to pop up our poll that we just um uh ran and so you know just as we were talking about with kelly so when do you work when do you plan to work on the course contents uh so i think we got the by and large 38 percent whenever i can find some free time which no plan there that is that makes sense uh so i think the many of us who know are just trying to pocket it in in free time so that makes sense uh and then a lot on during the weekends early morning at night so um i think you know whatever strategy works for you is the best one but making a strategy is probably the most important that you have a strategy on when you're tackling not just whenever i have time which is which is a strategy but you need to be structured about as kelly was talking she's going to do this after her kids go to bed on wednesday and so she knows when she's going to tackle it so i think definitely being structured about how you're going to get through and and get through some of these very time consuming lessons is a is a really important tip because they're not insubstantial in terms of their time so uh imma did you want to introduce ray sure and just before that just saying that research in online education just supports what kelly just said just setting goals and having a plan is what really makes you successful and not quitting because then life happens right but if you have at least a plan then you can you're more resilient to all these impacts on things that may happen around you and of course doing things ahead of time that's waiting until the night before the deadline that's that's key yes amazing insights kelly and i think super important to to remind everyone of those so thank you so much to our first guest and let's go with our second guest who is ray ernan way ray thank you so much for joining us ray is a micro master holder too and um could you give us like some talk about a little bit about your background explain who you are and what your micro master is your knee husband sure thank you very much i'm the um my career in supply chain has actually spanned a couple of decades now and i've had diverse experiences at large companies like walmart and hila packer but also at smaller companies like zenus which is a e-commerce furniture company and jet.com which is a e-commerce startup and i've led teams and been on teams that have been responsible for inventory planning network design global logistics so even though i had accumulated those professional experiences one of my master's program came into my field of view i thought it would be a great way to update and upgrade my skills and so um i started with sc zero x to be really rigorous but really um challenging and valuable and so i i um you know work my way through the entire program and pass the cfx exam in 2018 so again that that course work in that curriculum i found to be super relevant even though i had a lot of working experience in many different supply chain domains and um i would further say uh i was so impressed by the quality of curriculum that i i convinced my company uh to partner with ctl to develop a custom version of the micro master's course and integrated into walmart's employee educational programming so um you know that the content is definitely um recognized as being very relevant and valuable to uh companies out there such as uh my former employer um for me the most maybe the most valuable part of the uh of the program was similar to kelly and sc one x um inventory planning inventory safety stock setting is a is a kind of a timeless challenge for most businesses and um at walmart e-commerce we were managing literally hundreds of thousands of skews and the inventory levels of those skews in our in our warehouse network so we needed a um a magnetized yet scalable way to do that and also comprehend forecasts uh as as an input to the inventory safety stock uh calculation so um having the working knowledge of those inventory equations and the forecasting methods as well um helped me very much actively participate in shape how walmart e-commerce scaled that math and put it into into a real-life operation at a major e-commerce company so that that to me was one of the great um contributions i could make by virtue of having the micro master's experience that's that's wonderful Ray and i think it's we see this like so often right people who have like this amazing background in supply chain management and then still you join the micro master and have like some something new to learn uh something that is opening and that can make your job even better or your performance even better so that's it's great to hear if i if i can make one more quick comment and sc three x um i believe you know there's a lot of um exposure to global global logistics topics um inco terms hgs codes modes of transportation and um i've worked for companies that are very global have global supply chains and that um familiarity with those terminologies i think and having knowledge of those concepts is increasingly important because we are facing you know tariffs and complexities and global supply chain management and those uh topics are increasing in um importance so uh again i wanted to also you know call that uh aspect of sc three x out as well definitely and i think like sc one and sc three x are very different courses right sc three x is much more strategic it's much more about global implications about the context and being aware of how that can influence your supply chain to be more resilient to manage risk to manage sustainability opportunities but um and sc one x is very much about the basics right the main blocks that that you have these pieces that build your supply chain and then you have like the world in which your supply chain operates so uh to me i mean these two courses are very different but very complementary at the same time right right so um re what would be your tip uh for our learners what tips would you like to share for these people who might be starting the journey or maybe halfway through the journey right um first i compliment kelly for her insights and i relate to them i too was working full-time while taking the scx course sequence and yeah time management and being very organized is is key to um i think success or it was in my case i commuted uh by a public transportation uh so during the week when the course materials are first released i would actually download the videos down the download the um the resources for the course just so i could have them on the on the hard drive of the computer and be able to access them when i wanted and um i used the commute time throughout the week to um watch the video lectures um pause replay when needed and work through the um quick questions and sometimes um the practice problems but on the weekends for me was the was the time i would set aside to focus on um those working through the practice problems and um the graded assignments and um uh doing that and and as much of a distraction free environment as possible was uh i think a key key to my success um my advice when it comes to studying for exams is similar just be very very organized uh since they're with the exception of cfx the the other exams are open book so you want to be really organized have your key concept document um readily readily available to you have the solutions to the practice problem the graded assignments that you've worked um for the midterm or final can be for you and just um be sure that you can solve those practice problems so graded assignments again because you know the exams are logically similar in in nature so again i think organization is being preparation and and so i think with those with those tips you'll be successful that's that's great ray and maybe one question how something to expand what kelly and you uh focused on right but you both talk about how to manage time effectively because of course you have a life you have kids you have a job and also you're taking these courses that are pretty intense um did you have someone to keep you accountable you know like your husband i call me a friend um honestly i i want to um you know honor honor my spouse and my family because i actually deprioritize them on the weekend for uh well almost two years while i was going through courses you know to me it's it's holding myself accountable um i i um you know the tracker in the edX dashboard is you can see each week um did you complete what did how did you score so to me i'm self-motivated and competitive perhaps in a way but um i think maybe another tip would be to negotiate with uh the other key people in your life and say um i want to make this commitment i hope you understand um how i want to prioritize that will you support me and um i think if you have all those things in alignment uh there's a good chance things will work out thank you ray thank you for your candid response because i we've heard that from other people too how how hard it is to find that balance and how um the support from their spouse is so important to make this work so great um thank you so much ray thanks for your tips thanks for your insights and for sharing your journey uh really really interesting to hear uh how kelly and you managed the time um so and hopefully our our learners the ones that are listening can apply some of your insights uh to their journey so what we're gonna do now is land a third poll uh just to great just to um ask you how to use uh will do or do you plan to use the forums to support your learning and uh let's go with our third guest well we collect responses great yes so we've had great input from kelly and ray and we we've invited a third credential holder kwang boi who's also a a semi-celebrity in our community teaching assistant community and so has also a depth of expertise in supply chain so i'd love kwang if you could tell us a little bit about yourself and and about your journey in the micro masters program okay uh first all uh thank you very much alexa sir email and also mit for giving you this opportunity to share about my experience with the rest of the learners okay my name is kwang boi i'm from canada but i've been living and working in china for the last 20 years okay my role right now is i'm essentially a supply chain consultant in the water treatment industry mainly for the home appliances for the usa market okay my responsibility essentially are two one is in the s r m which is the supplier relationship management whereby i will source but uh and so procure a lot of these new products water related products from from china especially in china and then right now because of all this global trade happening between the friction between china and and the us we are actually looking into uh southeast asia countries okay that's one of my main focus the other focus is into uh new product development work especially in project management oh so i'm very hands-on i work a lot of my time with the rnd engineers to design to influence them to select components to to build machines or water dispensers uh water filtration products water softening products and water purification products again all these are all home applications for the usa markets i travel extensively in china last year i think uh just alone uh i think i spend roughly around 120 nights uh at the merritt hotel that's excluding hotels in the in the rest of like chinese hotel here and there so i think this year i'm going to heat maybe around 200 200 nights so this is common for me so hopefully when the covid is under control so this will also give me a lot of opportunity to travel across uh not only just asia but also back to the us where the heat water is located over there so um and one thing is that uh regards to the micro masters credential i started my learning journey in september 2017 and i received my micro masters credential in the end of september 2019 so uh that's that's part of my journey but i i think uh with this limited amount of time i like to focus on how to do well in your greater assignments so i have seven steps here so i'm going to be very regimental systematically explain to you the step by step how you do it so step one okay good time management this is very very important and it's repeated by ray and also by kelly okay because most of us are full-time professional and we have family commitments so if you are really in sincere about doing this make sure that you reserve blocks of time for you to commit to this thing so step two okay commitment is one thing but then you must have good discipline okay when you say that you want to do it make sure that you do it okay don't just say it and then forget it okay so what happened was that during the commitment part of it right for myself uh usually i will spend at least one hour a day monday to friday to go through the materials then weekends are very very important to me okay on saturdays and sundays i would usually spend maybe around six hours to eight hours but one of my worst uh course right now was uh when i took sc2x optimization on weekends i was spending roughly around maybe 12 hours to 15 hours a day so that was very very demanding that that cost okay then step number three is that every tuesday morning in china when mit released the or no edx released the cost material i would download all this material okay uh cost material lesson one lesson two and of course your greater assignments okay so i'll print out a copy for the cost material lesson ones and lesson two and also of course the the greater assignments so step number four which is very very important okay how do i study how do i make sure that i i do well with my greater assignments okay i go straight to the greater assignments without doing anything okay just go straight to a greater assignments read study the greater assignment and remember the questions okay then you go back okay to begin uh watching the videos so when you start watching the videos you remember okay at your back of your mind that okay what are the questions has been asked so this way will speed up your learning process and also at the same time you start writing downloads okay make sure that you know what what is going to happen and how you're going to tackle the questions step number five sometimes you may encounter very difficult concepts in your video so what i do is that i skip i continue to just skip and then after that once i finish at the end of it i'll go back again okay and then step number six uh once i'm done with the videos then i'll start of course i'm going to attack the qqs okay the quick questions the the pps and then the final one is the greater assignments okay my objective is that right when materials usually are released on Thursday morning right i will try my best to complete and submit the the greater assignments on Sunday evening same week the material is being released therefore you you will have a lot of time the next week that you have before you wait for the the next series of material that's going to be released you have Monday to Wednesday to go back again to your previous material so this is how i i i do for my uh greater assignments great thanks uh thanks quang so i think that was some great tips on on how he is very strategic and in tackling the greater assignments so certainly one strategy uh but of course you know the other strategy would be to watch everything in full uh and then get to the end so you know whatever makes it work is what is the most important strategy uh but we wanted to ask so you know you are one of our so alex alex is just to compliment that um yeah maybe saying uh re-emphasize that in the exam you can like find questions about any of the contents so just uh be careful i mean if you follow quang's strategy don't study only the questions that are in the greater assignment just you need to like learn everything that is in the lessons we recommend you to do the practice problems too because you might encounter something in the midterm exam on the final exam or the cfx that is actually not a question in the ga's in the greater assignment so um yeah just be aware that you need to know all the contents yep yep good point good point um so i think that you know make sure you the full material is testable on the exam so i think keeping that in in your um perspective and making sure you cover all the videos and practice problems is really important uh great so quang is one of our esteemed uh community teaching assistants um you know you're really engaged with a lot of the students in in the discussion forums i wonder if you could talk really briefly about um the value of the of engaging in the discussion forums and perhaps how that can help their their learning journey given that you know you you used a lot and and you're a very active cta in supporting learning journeys in there okay one important thing about this uh mooc or online learning experience is that it's actually a one-to-one you are always constantly facing the computer screen okay so you the computer screen is actually your best friend okay and how is it going to be a best friend is through the discussion forum okay so during my learning process whenever i don't know anything or i some of the content could be very difficult i'll set i just simply fire a question in the discussion forum and hopefully somebody will pick it up and are able to provide some some answers to me so but then sometimes when you get into very complex problems itself of course you may not have for example optimization itself so so how are you going to be able to solve these questions so one of the ways that not only do you use your discussion forum but at the same time i write emails back to the the teaching staff itself okay this is one way of doing it so of course you have to another another way is that i do have a study partner with me but of course you have to be also very sensitive regards to the code of conduct okay so this is about integrity and honesty wise so it's good to have a buddy buddy system but then and anyway going back again you have to be very careful with this great that was very helpful and i think you know exactly right he's he got his example of one discussion forum is a great resource many questions are many students are asking the same questions you have so check it it may have already been answered and our amazing cta's such as quang and a huge team of cta's we have in each course that are volunteered their time to answer your questions may already be answered so please check there first you know of course the course team is always a resource to you but so many of the answers are even fuller and more engaging in discussion form so we highly encourage you to go in there i think quang's suggestion of having a buddy is excellent to keep you honest to keep you through the week to week but of course parsing out the assessments that you need to do independently so you can have a study partner to you know check and make sure you're keeping on some of the due dates and learning and questions and everything but of course make sure that you do your assessments independently because we are very serious about that so that is a key you know element of the program that you need to get through those independently but of course all the tips you can tool to help you get through the course are important so thank you quang for for sharing the journey and for those that are in in the courses right now you'll likely see him active in the discussion forums he's always answering questions along with the other great team of cta's we have for each of the courses so just he won't be the last of when you see some of these folks so imma just shared the poll results so how do you use the forums to support your learning so it says about 30 check them very often but i never contribute i suggest you change that so what you've learned here today is one yeah definitely check them by that's very important but contributing makes it even more engaging so clarifying questions or posing your own and then of course asking some so the next portion is that they've asked some questions expecting cta's or course team to answer yeah maybe just highlighting here alexis that a great way of improving your understanding is also trying to answer other students questions so just posting a question and waiting for for a cta or course staff to respond i mean that's great and we're going to respond but just trying to help other learners just contributing to the forums in different ways it's it's also a great way of deepening deepening your understanding on the topics and that's what all our cta's mentioned and african and rea are current cta's for for c1x and they and many others say that once they try to answer or to clarify the questions of other students it's just a great way of like really becoming a bit an expert in the topic so that's just a suggestion that you could use the forums also to to help your peers yep that was i think that's really important so discussion forum among the many tools you have available so we have a lot of questions but we also recognize we're a little bit over our time so i think what we'll we'll answer a handful of them and and get through a few and of course you know that you can check many of the questions i see here are things that are already answered on our website so if we don't get to it today please make sure to reach out go to the micromasters website you know we also have our our staff email the micromasters email to which bedray one of our colleagues who's online answers very quickly too so if we don't get anything through today just make sure that you you can find it so let's see so we'll start with per nav's question so is there any compulsion of having mandatory work experience before applying to the blended program well i'll say quickly yes it's preferable that you have work experience because we we tend to bring uh experts uh at or excuse me not experts students that have some work experience about two years between both our residential and blended program but maybe i'll just turn it to kelly briefly and see kelly how did having work experience already help you on upon joining the blended program um it was it was invaluable i mean i had you know 20 years under me and like i feel like i don't know how to explain um the the way that we do supply chain in the real world right it's it's a little bit less black and white than what you might get in your micromasters course right and so i just feel like that combination of like real world experience and the actual um classes and the recommendations and the equations and stuff like that i think that what was just super important so i i i i agree like that and and then the and then when you're at at the class with all these people with all these amazing different experiences in you it only really increases like the what you can get out of the program so that's a small feeling that's helpful yeah and i do like your framing of it it's the real world is not necessary as black and white as some of the lessons you get tied so um it's good to kind of keep that all in perspective so just to reiterate per navi it is helpful to have um several years and in in the selection committee does look for a little bit of experience before you enter the program because it really helps your experience in in the value you take out of the program all right in that you're good yeah we have a question here by tomoko harita um saying that uh haven't taken she or he i don't know hasn't taken a c1x and c2x but they would like to uh take a c3x and they wonder if it would be manageable before taking a c1x and c2x so i would say uh kelly is an expert in taking the courses in a different order and many people take the courses in a different order yeah some people just feel like more drawn into uh learning about supply chain strategy and these topics that are covered in a c3x starting there if that's uh what is your passion lays then let's do that and then you can always go and take a c1x and c2x and the more quantitative courses later uh if you think that the micro masters program style is something that is a good fit for you so i i don't know i think you're uh maybe you want to compliment that uh because you're the course lead for a c3x but i don't see uh that's a necessary step taking a c1x or a c2x before a c3x and we recommend the order but it's it's not mandatory yes i mean only to to echo exactly what imin said which is it's it's recommended just because the lessons do build upon each other so if you can do that great but it's not the courses are set up so that you can take them out of order and in some cases you can take two at a time which i know many end up doing so uh it it's pretty flexible in that way uh we have a recommended set but really we are we're we're cheering you on and we're hoping for your success and we've designed the port the program accordingly so we we really want you all to succeed so um just just to keep in mind that uh just i have one uh quick uh orace ask can you provide a link to discussion form below every single lesson just scroll down to the bottom we have discussion form links at every single relevant lesson so you'll just scroll down there if there's a question it'll show up and you know if there's an answer pop it'll pop up or you pose your own of course you can also go to the top header of your of your dashboard and there will be a link that goes to this discussion forum there and you can actually search for things but just it's basically everywhere you look so just make sure to scroll and look down and and the more you use it the better you'll become savvy with finding what you're looking for uh so we just wanted to throw that in there um i yeah i have one question here is about how can they apply to become a community teaching assistant a part of the of the cta team we send out an email uh towards the end of each course just um with a link to apply to become a community teaching assistant for our courses we're always looking for new contributors to be part of our teams and uh we have these amazing teams of uh 13 14 people in each run just uh passionate learners who are very experienced in teaching management and are like really willing to give back back to the community and and help all of you to uh go through the courses in uh um just learning as much as you can and answering your questions so um just keep an eye out for that email towards the end of the course and uh so and or you can send an email now to sc1x help at mit.edu or sc3x help at mit.edu and just um say that you're interested uh we will take your candidate candidate your candidacy into account okay yep good good answer for there so let me just we'll just ask two more questions and then we're going to sign off for today because i know our guests have to get on to their day um they're very busy people we're fortunate to have their time so uh Maria Cruz asked are there recovery activities available in case we get a bad grade in a GA so good question and so actually ask uh Kwong uh you know in the case that you got one bad grade how do you recover from that uh and how do you keep kind of keep motivated if you didn't do real poorly on if you did poorly on one GA oh this is a good question very very good question you know what you just have to soldier on okay so what happened was that don't get discouraged by just one greater as i'm sorry i think it's only 2.5 marks only or 2.5% only so just just move on more important focus on uh i try to get over your your GA's then focus on your midterm in your final exam those are very high rate age and um one question for for re um what are good strategies regarding knowledge retention so i guess people are worried that they're taking these courses maybe throughout two years then they have to take the CFA CFX how do they make sure that they actually like remember what they learned in the first course two years ago yeah you know i think it pays to be really organized when you're going through the courses um keep your homework assignments keep those lecture files slides and so forth um at your fingertips and i go back and refer to um you know the spreadsheets the slides and even sometimes the videos um when i'm working on a particular topic at work um so i think the more that you can translate um some of the MIT micro masters concepts to your to your work um problems the the more you you know retain the the knowledge that you accumulated in the courses so i think key to knowledge retention is um just putting those concepts into the practical use on the job so look for ways to do that even if it's not yourself you can you know advise other other teams sometimes and uh uh draw upon that uh that great reservoir of knowledge that's in that huge um collection of courses thank you ray great point yeah that was really helpful and i ever the input from all three of our panelists was uh super helpful today really appreciate their time and of course you got the mega semi book key concept documents so you know you just put that somewhere carried around with you make sure you're you check it all the time is sort of a retention we you know over time we've added to that document of course it's not everything but at least uh some refreshers you go along um but let i'll uh just want to again reiterate our thanks to kelly to ray to quang for your time and your input today we we you know on the other side of the course lead we respect all of our credential learners for their capability to manage your time and get through this very challenging program but as you see on the other side it's worth the journey it's worth the community development it's worth the learnings um really appreciate all of you joining for the event uh we will have this uh go up on our youtube channel so if you want to refer back to it or or you know want to um get some key insights again from from any of our panelists you can come back and watch it but i just want to wish you all the best of luck in your in your courses and um we'll we'll be along with you for the journey um yes and maybe so let me reiterate just thank you so much to our guests i think it's been great and it's always great for our learners to connect with someone who has been through that and they are just at the end of it and are happy about the journey right because sometimes it can be tough um so let me let me share um one last uh slide just for wrapping up uh we will have two amazing live events uh one in may one in june um we will have we will be having like fire side chat discussions with uh mark baker and wendy herrick who are uh both of them are vp's at uh big companies in the u.s. hewlett pacard and also unilever so i think these are going to be very insightful insightful and fun conversations and we will see how the topics that you are learning in our courses can be applied in uh in the real supply chains as our guests today were mentioning that at the end is the one of the key um outcomes of taking these these courses and just wanted to mention that um if you want to complete the micro masters program as many of you seem to uh seems that seems to be your objective as per the first poll that we that we shared uh then remember that you need to get verified and the deadline for verification is coming soon so just don't miss the deadline because then we always receive emails like oh i miss the deadline i cannot verify and then you have to wait until the next run of the course so just remember that if you want to have access to grade the assignment and exams and get the certificate and also access to the materials you need to verify before before the deadline um that is published in in both courses um and i think that's it just wanted to uh share that reminder on this um and a little peek into our next life events yeah great thanks you might definitely glad that you brought the our future events so please join us for those and and continue to add to your knowledge of supply chain management all right well thank you all thank you ray thank you kelly and thank you quang and everyone have a great day bye bye