HPC University RAT

1. HPC University RAT Overview Prepared for TeraGrid Quarterly Meeting Austin, TX December 6-7, 2007

3. Introduction – What are we working on? HPC University RAT Charter The HPC Training RAT will identify successful paths to creating qualified, effective HPC professionals, capable of exploiting current super-terascale and upcoming petascale technologies for the advancement of scientific research. Gaps in training materials and delivery methods will be identified, and recommendations for filling these gaps will be presented. Members Bonnie Bracey-Sutton Diglio Simoni John Cobb Stephenie McLean Shawn Brown Christian Chilan Brad Armosky Sudhakar Pamidighatam James Rome John Ziebarth Mary Ann Leung Scott Lathrop Kay Hunt Subha Sivagnanam Krishna Madhavan Advisory Alina Bejan Steve Gordon Leslie Southern Robert Panoff Kristina Wanous

4. RAT Report • Catalog Map • Topics • Mastery Levels • Quality Assurance • Delivery Methodologies • Target Populations • Demographics • Disciplines • Scaling & Dissemination • Getting to Petascale

5. Catalog Map At least 10 offerings Less than 10 offerings No offerings

6. Catalog Map – Recommendations • Complete the verification and validation process for all entries in the catalog • Develop a mechanism for the continual update of the catalog to identify new sources of training materials • Make the catalog readily available to the HPC community in a persistent way

7. Quality Assurance • CSERD/NSDL Overview • Digital repository for instructional & reference materials for computational science resources • Includes comprehensive review mechanism for materials, similar to journal review process • “Solving the problem correctly” != “Solving the correct problem?” • Verification • the resource works as advertised on the computing platforms as advertised • Validation • the resource is based on current, valid scientific methods • Accreditation • the resource is appropriate for the advertised audience

8. Quality Assurance – Recommendations • Leverage CSERD/NSDL: • Broad dissemination • Formal VV&A review process. • Resource Management; i.e. identify a “primary editor” • Finding reviewers, • Organizing reviews • Publishing the resources that have passed a minimum quality level • Broadening Community Involvement • Contribute additional materials • Offer community comments on the resources • Provide feedback on the resources to TeraGrid on a regular basis

9. Delivery Methodologies Total number of offerings: 239 This is a hole

10. Delivery Methodologies – Recommendations • Plug the holes - provide a variety of teaching methods for each topic area • Allow students to customize training programs to meet their learning styles. • Redesign course materials to produce effective interactive online learning experiences • Avoid simply putting lecture-based materials online • Utilize efficient multi-disciplinary teams, including • subject matter experts • instructional designers & technologists • information technologists • tutors • faculty • project managers • Incorporate metacognitive* skills development into all training methods • Create or adopt a module that teaches students how to become aware of their most effective learning styles • Supplement these materials with guidelines on how to select the appropriate training materials based on their learning styles

11. Population Analysis • Known problems • Poorly represented demographic groups • Scientific disciplines that are not using HPC • Costs of delivery, esp. • To economically challenged populations • In temporally effective ways • In particular, we don’t have the data to know what the population issues are • TG Core Services is addressing some of this in the Core2 project

12. Population Analysis – Recommendations • Proactively support efforts to Broaden Participation across • Underrepresented demographics • Underrepresented fields of science • Broaden delivery methods • Synchronous: eliminates geographic boundaries • Asynchronous: eliminates temporal boundaries

13. Scaling & Dissemination • Train-the-trainer • Most people teach the way they were taught • BUT, most survey respondents are self-taught • So…how do we scale and disseminate HPC training? • Collaboration & Mentoring • Time-intensive for “master”, but effective methodology (long history of success) • Traditionally geographically & temporally constrained • Technology-du-jour - “Masters” may be disinclined to learn new technology • Learning curves • Versioning & dialects • “Pain threshold” for dealing with reliability issues

14. Scaling & Dissemination –Recommendations • Identify and promote Best Practices for content development and delivery • Encourage mentoring within TeraGrid • Create a Web portal for people to volunteer their services • Create a Web Portal for users to ask questions and to get a mentor • Provide real incentives for such volunteer activity • Study the social interactions in mentoring situations to provide training to make mentoring more effective • Provide support to HPC trainers • Training accounts on TeraGrid • Help with developing and critiquing course content • Provide a Web Portal for users new to HPC that would provide a roadmap of training that would lead them to their individual goals

15. Getting to PetaScale –Recommendations • Engage scaling & PetaApps experts to suggest directions for these issues • Collaborate with Petascale System vendors to provide tools that will make it easier to use their machines • Include petascale applications and scaling experiences in the case study libraries being developed as TG EOT initiatives

16. Low-Hanging Fruit • Support Pathways (EOT Supplement) to broaden participation • Case Studies • Campus Champions • TG Fellows • Workshop on “How to Teach HPC” (train the trainers) • Develop AG Training framework for well-established existing material • How to Write a TG proposal • Welcome to the TeraGrid

17. Longer-term Initiatives • Establish resource archive – make training materials persistent • Can’t just take face-to-face and make it on-line training • Establish mentoring program • Identify mentors who can make the commitment • Identify reviewers who can verify/validate existing offerings • Begin VVA process