Birds of a Feather Session: Education and training

Date: Wednesday 21st September 2006, 11:00 - 12:15 Venue: Auditorium

Organiser: Mike Mineter and David Fergusson, NeSC

Duration: 75 mins

Chair: Mike Mineter / David Fergusson

For latest information on this BOF please see http://wiki.nesc.ac.uk/read/ahm_bof_training

The goal of the event is to accelerate the raising of awareness and the uptake of e-science technologies. It will do this by creating a roadmap of joint actions to be undertaken by BOF participants who are engaged in training and initiatives in university education.

As production grids mature so e-science technologies are poised for contributing to an ever-widening spectrum of research. Researchers need to be equipped to respond to these opportunities. This is accomplished by training for current practitioners and education for the next generation of researchers, for whom e-science technologies will form the basis of much of their work.

The BOF will facilitate this by collating insights from the experience of participants in a) empowering different new communities of users, b) in promoting grid education in academia (e.g. the ICEAGE project) , and c) in running training courses promoting production grids.

The BOF builds on previous NeSC initiatives. A BoF held at AHM 2005 (http://wiki.nesc.ac.uk/read/ahm_bof_training) helped to establish collaborations in training, including between AHESSC, NCESS, NeSC, NIEES, UCL, White Rose Grid (WRG) and the Welsh e-Science Centre. The training and education theme was also developed in a GGF16 workshop.

Participants
The target participants include potential and early adopters from a range of disciplines; those engaged in grid training and education; middleware developers interested in gaining new user communities.

Programme

1. A series of very short talks leading into discussions:

• crossing cultural gaps between e-science technologies and new domains
  - talk prepared/delivered by NCeSS and AHESSC
• how do we help enthusiasts become effective users? What enables or impedes potential users?
  - by UCL and AHESSC
• how to train and support early adopters
  - by WRG and NIEES
• grids and education.
  - by NeSC
• t-infrastructure (grids provided and used for training)
  - by NeSC

2. Creating and refining roadmaps for further collaboration.

Four routes will be amongst those that are mapped:
• E-Learning: sharing learning objects
• T-Infrastructure: building an infrastructure for training and education
• Events:
  - specific plans for collaborative training for identified communities
  - cooperation - e.g. in event advertising, registration
• Wiki: increasing the exchange of information
  - Development of http://wiki.nesc.ac.uk/read/ahm_bof_training