Welcome to Massively Empowered Classrooms (MEC)

We look forward to partnering with institutes and faculty members on our research initiative from Microsoft Research. Colleges, faculty, and students may use any of the material on http://www.mecr.org for classroom educational purposes free of cost. Microsoft Research is also working closely with a select few colleges for various research and learning initiatives. In addition, Microsoft Research is offering the following certification opportunities for the MEC Analysis and Design of Algorithms Course being offered from January May 2014: Institutes or Colleges have the opportunity to be recognized as MEC Community Partners Faculty members have an opportunity to get certified on MECs courses Students have the opportunity to get certificates, take an in-person exam & score internship opportunities

MEC Community Partner for Institutions: Institute has to have at least one MEC
Champion Faculty (as listed above) and have 70% class enrolled onto the portal. The department head must send an email to mecfeedback@microsoft.com with email IDs of the faculty members enrolled in MEC. This will enable us to give the faculty members instructor privileges on mecr.org. All MEC Community Partners will: 1. Receive an opportunity to connect with Microsoft Research via various other programs & initiatives from time to time. We have exciting internship opportunities for students at prestigious institutes like IITs via MSRs official Connector Channel-Research Connector (updates sent via MEC Newsletters). 2. Be awarded a plaque from Microsoft Research, if they show exemplary participation. Note: If your college is not listed, please send a note to mecfeedback@microsoft.com, and we will add your name under the University listing.

Certification for Faculty Members: In

Faculty Member, faculty members need to:

order to be recognized as a MEC Champion

1. Screen session(s) of lectures (from available lectures on www.mecr.org) in your classroom. Send us a small report with preferably a link to a video and/or pictures from the session. 2. Add content on www.mecr.org for your college: We have a MEC beginners guide that will walk a faculty member through the MEC authoring process. Please contact us for a copy of this guide. Using the guide you can author quizzes, video lessons and pdf notes that your students can access onwww.mecr.org. MSR will reward top MEC faculty champions at the end of the course, after a review. We will also recognize key contributors via our Facebook channel and newsletters.

Certification for Students:

Students can get certifications by watching videos to learn the

material, and taking online quizzes that are offered in the semester. There will be 6 planned quizzes offered in the January-May 2014 semester. All quizzes will be equally graded and will be due 10 days from the start. Each quiz can be taken only taken once, and cannot be taken after its deadline. The start date and deadline for each quiz is given below: Quiz1. Start Date: January 31, End Date: February 10 Quiz2. Start Date: February 14, Due Date: February 24 Quiz3. Start Date: February 28, Due Date: March 10 Quiz4. Start Date: March 14, Due Date: March 24 Quiz5: Start Date: March 28, Due Date: April 7 Quiz6: Start Date: April 11, Due Date: April 21

Participation certificates will be given to all those students who score above 50% (aggregate) on the quizzes. Completion Certificates will be awarded to all those students who score above 75% (aggregate) on the quizzes. Students who qualify for completion certificates will be eligible for a MEC FINAL EXAM, and the top scorers in the exam will have potential internship opportunities at Microsoft Research and other Research Organizations, enabled by www.researchconnector.net

Please write to mecfeedback@microsoft.com for any further clarifications. We look forward to having you on board as early as possible. Thanks once again for your interest.

Microsoft Research, Bangalore, India