Lorna Rivera

Training, education, and outreach-raising the bar

To accelerate scientific discovery, the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE) aims to enhance researcher productivity, increase its user base, and prepare new generations of researchers to use advanced digital technologies. Accordingly, XSEDE is educating diverse populations of new users through regional workshops targeted at large populations of those traditionally underrepresented in the use of XSEDE resources.

Training, education, and outreach: raising the bar

This paper describes our efforts to help expand computational and data-enabled science and engineering by educating faculty, students, and staff at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) to advance scientific discovery through the use of cyberinfrastructure. The best practices used to plan, execute, and evaluate the workshop are discussed, and the results of a professional assessment of the workshop are presented. The two-day regional workshop held at UTEP on February 19 and 20, 2013 attracted 100 registrants. It was the largest, most diverse, and most comprehensive workshop that XSEDE has conducted to date. Since the workshop was located at UTEP, it addressed the inclusion of communities that are traditionally under-represented and under-served in STEM, including women and minorities. Note that UTEP is a Hispanic-serving institution with a student population that mirrors the region, i.e., it serves 22,700 students, 77% of whom are Hispanic. In addition, because of its focus, this effort also is meaningful in terms of sustaining a large and diverse scientific, academic, and industrial workforce.

The initial role of evaluation in a large-scale multi-site project

The initial role of evaluation in a large-scale multi-site project is presented. The evaluation utilized an educative, values-engaged approach (EVEN) [4]. This paper also presents the evaluation questions and metrics used to structure an evaluation of this scale. The evaluation team has initiated the process of addressing the evaluation questions by including stakeholders in constructing a detailed evaluation matrix, conducting data collection, and regularly presenting formative information to project leads and managers to guide program improvement. This process as well as how this evaluation addresses key issues in evaluating STEM training, education, and outreach while contributing to advances in the field is also discussed.

XSEDE Training: Achieving Access and Inclusion

An XSEDE strategic goal is to extend use of high-end digital services to new communities by preparing the current and next generation of scholars, researchers, and engineers in the use of advanced digital technologies via training, education, and outreach. The mission of XSEDEs Under-Represented Community Engagement (URCE) program is to raise awareness of the value of advanced digital research services and recruit users from new communities. In collaboration with XSEDE training and education programs, the URCE program works with faculty and students that are non-traditional users of XSEDE resources and helps them utilize XSEDEs advanced digital research services and ecosystem. Over the past five years, the URCE program organized and facilitated training across the country at a variety of institutions ranging from small private Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) such as Philander Smith to the University of Texas at El Paso, a large public Hispanic Serving Institution. Every URCE-led training workshop included extensive formative and summative evaluation, including longitudinal tracking of participant progress in engaging with XSEDE services in order to identify growth and persistence as well as barriers and opportunities. 85% (209/245) of URCE-led training event participants were first time XSEDE training registrants. After attending, 14% of attendees obtained access to XSEDE resources and more than 18% registered for additional training activities. This paper presents the strategies used to achieve these results.

Extending access to HPC skills through a blended online course

Extending expertise in parallel computing is critical to all those using high performance computing to gain insights into science and engineering problems. Many campuses do not offer such a course because of course load limits, a lack of faculty expertise, and/or lack of access to appropriate computing resources. MOOCs for this type of course are difficult to scale both because of constraints on computing resources as well as the need for individual attention with programming problems. Using a blended online course with collaborating faculty that offer academic credit for their students, we have been able to facilitate course participation at many institutions that might not otherwise have covered the topic. This has had a significant benefit for both the faculty and students. Our paper summarizes the nature of these impacts and offers some insights on best practices for extending technical courses to multiple institutions.

Integrating Performance Measurement and Program Evaluation to Promote Understanding

In this extended abstract, we describe the trend in reporting performance assessments of publicly funded social programs as a result of public demands for accountability and its effect on evaluation. XSEDEs Training, Education, and Outreach Services (TEOS) external evaluation team outlines the differences between performance measurement and program evaluation, makes a case for their integration, and describes their effort to design and implement such an evaluation within XSEDE. Plans for integrating the developing performance measurement system and program evaluation within TEOS are discussed as well as initial steps toward integration to date.