Best Practices for NERSC Training

Workshop:Eighth SC Workshop on Best Practices for HPC Training and Education

Authors: Yun (Helen) He and Rebecca Hartman-Baker (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL))

Abstract: Due to the novel pandemic situation, NERSC began transforming our traditional smaller-scale, on-site training events to large-scale, fully virtual sessions for our 8,000 users from 800 projects in 2020. This paper describes the key practices we have developed since the start of this transformation, including: considerations for organizing events; collaborating with other HPC centers and DOE ECP training program to increase reach and impact of events; targeted emails to users to increase attendance; efficient management of user accounts for computational resources access; strategies for preventing Zoom bombing; streamlining the publication of professional-quality, closed-captioned videos on the NERSC YouTube channel for accessibility; effective communication channels for Q&A; tailoring training contents for NERSC users via close collaboration with vendors and presenters; standardized training procedures and publishing of training materials; and considerations for planning HPC training topics. Most of these practices will be continued after the pandemic as effective norms for training.

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