NeSC Training Team
Enabling, facilitating and delivering quality
training in the UK and Internationally
Enabling Grids for E-science in
Europe (EGEE) project
• Framework 6 project
• To create ‘production’ grid in Europe for eScience (24/7)
fully supported.
• Derived partly from European DataGrid
• Supporting the LHC experiments
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Background
• The NeSC training team was formed in April 2004.
• With initially two staff it has now grown to five dedicated
trainers.
• Members of the training team are supported by EU and
Research Council grants.
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Scope of training
• The training team has delivered training
ranging from:
ƒ introductory material on grids
ƒ to advanced courses for application
developers
ƒ and research leaders in other fields.
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Courses delivered
• In the 6 months since its inception the training team has directly
delivered:
ƒ 5 training events in the UK
(35 trainees - advanced)
• At NeSC and the University of Stafford
• For JISC and EGEE
ƒ 6 training events in Europe
(183 trainees – introductory/advanced)
• At CERN, FZK Karlsruhe, CNB Madrid, Lithuania and Italy.
• For EGEE
ƒ Also dissemination presentations to introduce people to the concept of the
grid
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Coordination of training in Europe
• The NeSC training team is the leading partner for the
training effort in the EGEE project.
• It coordinates and provides quality assurance for training
with 22 partner institutions in 13 countries.
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EGEE training delivery
EGEE NA3 has trained more than 400 people in courses ranging from
introductions to EGEE (induction) through Application Developer to Advanced
level.
Total number of trainees
400
300
200
advanced total
100
app devel total
0
26/04/2004
induction total
26/05/2004
26/06/2004
NeSC is committed to maintaining and developing the quality of training. To
do this feedback is collected from the users of courses.
Overall feedback assessment
26
/0
4/
20
03
04
/0
5/
20
10
04
/0
5/
20
17
04
/0
5/
20
24
04
/0
5/
20
31
04
/0
5/
20
07
04
/0
6/
20
14
04
/0
6/
20
21
04
/0
6/
20
28
04
/0
6/
20
05
04
/0
7/
20
12
04
/0
7/
20
04
6
5
4
3
2
1
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Example: GGF Summer School
The NA3 training team made a
central contribution planning,
organising and presenting the
2004 GGF Summer School.
Presentations were given on
“High-level Grid applications:
a portal based approach”;
“Introduction to Web Services”;
+ a tutorial “Introduction to the
GENIUS portal and the GILDA
Test bed” and “An Introduction
to Data Services & OGSA-DAI”
The event was attended by 84
selected advanced
international students.
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Internationally recognised teaching
quality
• Example: NeSC training staff shared sessions at the GGF
summer school with some of the leaders in the
development of grid computing.
eg. Carl Kesselman and Miron Livny
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Demand for courses
• Many of the courses delivered by the training team have
been heavily over subscribed.
• For instance the recent Madrid Web Services course was
planned for 20 students and had 60 applications (300%
oversubscription).
• Current demand for repeat courses outstrips the teams
resources
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Enabling training in the UK and
Europe
NeSC is providing
web support for the
EGEE training
activity.
Web traffic:
Average successful requests for
pages/day = 49.
Distinct file requests/week = 116
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Web site
• Central list of all training courses planned and historic
throughout Europe
• Central site for registration to courses
• Monitor of training performance
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Community support
• The EGEE training material is being made available to the
whole community at:
http://www.egee.nesc.ac.uk/trgmat/index.html
• A training materials repository allowing flexible searches of
the available material is currently under development and
testing.
ƒ Database design documentation available
ƒ SQLServer Database created and populated
ƒ Coldfusion interface under development
ƒ Full attributions supported in the database
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UML diagram of NA3 materials
repository
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Relation to other archives (1)
As the resources available for this project are strictly limited
and there is a need for a functional system to be created as
quickly as possible, it is important to limit the design to a
minimal set of core functionality.
This will allow a usable prototype to be created rapidly which
can be modified to cope with future requirements, as long
as extensibility is built into the system.
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Relation to other archives (2)
There are many on going projects aimed at producing
generalised materials repositories for education. These
tend to have a number of features which are not required
for the current EGEE repository.
For example:
• The ability for many users to make depositions to the
archive.
• Flexible access controls to facilitate copyright control.
• Support for many different user communities.
• Generalised support to cope with all possible forms of
material.
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Relation to JISC online repository for
materials (JOCUM) (1)
• The proposed EGEE repository can be viewed as a minimal
set which corresponds with the definition of a Learning
Object
• {quoted by JORUM as : “an aggregation of one or more
digital assets, incorporating metadata, which represents
and educationally meaningful stand alone unit”}.
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Relation to JOCUM (2)
• Ability to map to Learning Object Metadata Core (LOM)
• Greatly simplified sub-set of LOM
• Many of the mappings will be static
ƒ (particularly at higher level)
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Mapping to LOM
•
LOM mandatory fields
ƒ Catalogue
ƒ
ƒ
ƒ
ƒ
ƒ
ƒ
ƒ
ƒ
ƒ
ƒ
ƒ
•
Language
Description
Lifecycle
Contribute/Role
Entity
Date
Meta-Metadata
Identifier
Technical
Location
Rights
LOM Optional fields
ƒ Keywords
ƒ Educational/Difficulty
ƒ Resource type
ƒ Relation
ƒ Kind
ƒ Annotation
not currently supported
(higher level)
to be added
present
to be added
present (authors)
present (organisation)
present
not present (higher level)
present
present (equipment/personnel)
present
always open
present
present (level)
present
present (module/course)
present (various)
present (comments)
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GILDA/GENIUS testbed
• INFN, Italy runs a grid test bed (GILDA) and portal
(GENIUS)
• This is available and used for training by EGEE
• Used for directed and self paced learning
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Involvement in research projects
• In order to maintain a high level of technical awareness the
members of the training team are actively involved in
research projects linked to NeSC
• For instance BRIDGES and EDINA.
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Future plans
•
The NeSC training team expects to be coordinating a further 16 courses for
EGEE by the end of February 2005
•
Two more advanced courses will be delivered at NeSC by the end of February
2005.
•
Modes of training are being developed to support local training at the UK
eScience centres and other centres of excellence
•
The training team is involved in developing teaching excellence for a grid MSc
at Glasgow & Edinburgh Universities.
•
The training team will be contributing to the NeSC workshop on Education and
Training in UK e-Science
•
Mechanisms to support eLearning for EGEE
•
Installing a training grid resource for EGEE and the UK.
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