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	<id>https://www.hpc-carpentry.org/</id>
	<title>HPC Carpentry</title>
	<updated>2025-01-22T08:15:22+00:00</updated>

	<subtitle>HPC Carpentry is a set of teaching materials designed to help new users take advantage of high-performance computing systems. No prior computational experience is required - these lessons are ideal for either an in-person workshop or independent study.</subtitle>

	
		
		<author>
			
				<name>The HPC Carpentry Team</name>
			
			
				<email>discuss-hpc@lists.carpentries.org</email>
			
			
				<uri>https://www.hpc-carpentry.org/</uri>
			
		</author>
	

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		<entry>
			<id>https://www.hpc-carpentry.org/blog/2024/08/llnl-workshop-blog-post.html</id>
			<title>HPC Carpentry at LLNL</title>
			<link href="https://www.hpc-carpentry.org/blog/2024/08/llnl-workshop-blog-post.html" rel="alternate" type="text/html" title="HPC Carpentry at LLNL" />
			<updated>2024-08-13T00:00:00+00:00</updated>
			
			<author><name>Andrew Reid</name></author><author><name>Trevor Keller"</name></author><author><name>Jane Herriman</name></author>
			<summary>We ran the full user workshop at LLNL!</summary>
			<content type="html" xml:base="https://www.hpc-carpentry.org/blog/2024/08/llnl-workshop-blog-post.html">&lt;h2 id=&quot;hpc-carpentry-at-llnl&quot;&gt;HPC Carpentry at LLNL&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;In the first week of June, 2024, instructors from &lt;a href=&quot;https://hpc-carpentry.org/&quot;&gt;HPC Carpentry&lt;/a&gt;
taught our full workflow workshop for the first time. Over a four-day
stint at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, we delivered this
content not once, but twice!&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;It was immensely rewarding to see all this material come together in
one place. Traveling to teach in person, while not without hiccups, was
extremely worthwhile. We believe we served our learners pretty well, and
we learned a few lessons relevant to future workshops.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3 id=&quot;workshop-structure&quot;&gt;Workshop Structure&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Each workshop ran over two days. On the first day, we did the &lt;a href=&quot;https://swcarpentry.github.io/shell-novice&quot;&gt;Unix Shell
intro&lt;/a&gt; lesson from Software Carpentry in the morning, and our own
&lt;a href=&quot;https://hpc-workshops.github.io/llnl-hpc-intro/&quot;&gt;HPC Intro&lt;/a&gt; lesson in the afternoon. On the second day, we did a
variant of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://xorjane.github.io/maestro-workflow-lesson/&quot;&gt;workflow lesson&lt;/a&gt;, adapted for the Maestro workflow
tool (rather than Snakemake), because it is developed and used at LLNL.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The instructor team consisted of Andrew Reid and Trevor Keller from
the HPC Carpentry steering committee, and Jane Herriman from LLNL,
along with helpers from the LLNL community.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;While split-terminal tools exist, we used vanilla &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/tmux/tmux/wiki&quot;&gt;tmux&lt;/a&gt; with two
terminals attached to the same session. This allowed the instructors to type on
their own laptop while referencing the lesson webpage and selectively sharing
the terminal. Learners followed along on the enhanced terminal displayed at the
front of the room. Note: to “scroll up” in &lt;code class=&quot;language-plaintext highlighter-rouge&quot;&gt;tmux&lt;/code&gt;, press 
&lt;kbd&gt;Ctrl&lt;/kbd&gt;+&lt;kbd&gt;b&lt;/kbd&gt;, &lt;kbd&gt;[&lt;/kbd&gt;, then arrow-key around.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h4 id=&quot;maestro&quot;&gt;Maestro&lt;/h4&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Maestro is a capable workflow engine, and one we would not have explored had
Jane not ported the Snakemake lesson so expertly. Maestro favors
reproducibility, running every step of the task from scratch at every
invocation. This is a significant difference from Snakemake which, like Make,
does not re-execute completed “targets.” A significant benefit of Maestro is
that the tool does not persist while jobs execute: it generates and submits
native Slurm jobs, with tooling in place to check the status of running
workflows. This is much more HPC-compatible, for large-scale or time-consuming
jobs.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3 id=&quot;learners&quot;&gt;Learners&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Learners had a range of backgrounds, from undergraduate bio-informatics
students to experienced Linux HPC users. The lessons generally went
at a slightly faster pace than expected, without leaving anyone
behind. This was in part because access to LLNL’s system &lt;code class=&quot;language-plaintext highlighter-rouge&quot;&gt;Ruby&lt;/code&gt; was by means
of pre-authorized RSA tokens, removing a lot of the friction
from the initial connection process that has been time-consuming in other
versions of the workshop. The instructors live-coded plenty of mistakes, opening
discussions on some interesting tangential topics. LLNL runs a pool of “login
nodes” per HPC system, rather than a single machine, which made for interesting,
early discussion of networked filesystems. The sheer number of nodes also made
the output of &lt;code class=&quot;language-plaintext highlighter-rouge&quot;&gt;sinfo&lt;/code&gt; tricky to comprehend at-a-glance, which is awesome.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3 id=&quot;lesson-feedback&quot;&gt;Lesson Feedback&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;One major take-away is that the workflow lesson in particular is
vulnerable to learners losing the thread if they miss a step. This lesson,
in either its Maestro or Snakemake version, builds up an increasingly
sophisticated workflow specification file, incrementally demonstrating
workflow concepts in the context of the tool. Consequently, a learner
who misses a step and falls behind can find themselves unable to recover,
since the remainder of the lesson builds on precisely the content that was
missed. The Workflow lesson differs in this respect from the Shell and
HPC intro lessons, where later steps can better stand on their own.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The solution to this, which we already started to implement for the
second workshop, was to have a shared online notepad with “checkpoint”
versions of the file, to which learners can refer if they fall behind,
with helpers bridging the content gap for them. Also, LLNL supports and
uses the &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/hpc/give&quot;&gt;&lt;code class=&quot;language-plaintext highlighter-rouge&quot;&gt;give&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/a&gt; tool, allowing users to easily pass files around:
it’s nifty!&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The hands-on Carpentries approach proved itself once again, building
muscle memory and vocabulary in learners, who could then move on to their
LLNL summer research projects with greater confidence in their ability
to productively use the shared high-performance computing resources.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;For the project, it was confirmation that the HPC User workshop can
work, including the valuable feedback about checkpoint files and a
shared notepad.  We look forward to teaching this workshop more, and
getting it out of beta status and into our main curriculum.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;!-- links --&gt;
</content>
			
			
				<category term="HPC Carpentry" />
				<category term="Lesson Program Implementation" />

			<published>2024-08-13T00:00:00+00:00</published>
		</entry>
	
		<entry>
			<id>https://www.hpc-carpentry.org/blog/2024/07/hpc-carpentry-incubation-announcement.html</id>
			<title>HPC Carpentry Enters Lesson Program Incubation</title>
			<link href="https://www.hpc-carpentry.org/blog/2024/07/hpc-carpentry-incubation-announcement.html" rel="alternate" type="text/html" title="HPC Carpentry Enters Lesson Program Incubation" />
			<updated>2024-07-24T00:00:00+00:00</updated>
			
			<author><name>Trevor Keller</name></author><author><name>Alan O'Cais</name></author><author><name>Wirawan Purwanto</name></author><author><name>Annajiat Alim Rasel</name></author><author><name>Andrew Reid</name></author><author><name>Toby Hodges</name></author>
			<summary>Project teaching high-performance computing skills takes another step towards joining The Carpentries</summary>
			<content type="html" xml:base="https://www.hpc-carpentry.org/blog/2024/07/hpc-carpentry-incubation-announcement.html">&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Cross-posted, with minor changes of voice, from The Carpentries Blog post:
 &lt;a href=&quot;https://carpentries.org/blog/2024/07/hpc-carpentry-incubation-announcement/&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;HPC Carpentry Enters Lesson Program Incubation&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;We are thrilled to announce that &lt;a href=&quot;https://hpc-carpentry.org/&quot;&gt;HPC Carpentry&lt;/a&gt; has entered Lesson
Program Incubation with &lt;a href=&quot;https://carpentries.org&quot;&gt;The Carpentries&lt;/a&gt;. This is another big
step towards the project joining Data Carpentry, Library Carpentry and Software
Carpentry as The Carpentries Lesson Program.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Toby Hodges, The Carpentries Director of Curriculum, said:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;blockquote&gt;
  &lt;p&gt;I am delighted to see HPC Carpentry move a big step closer to joining The
Carpentries. I attended my first HPC Carpentry workshop in Dublin in 2018 –
the day before the first ever CarpentryCon! – and have been enthusiastically
following them ever since. I know from previous roles how challenging it can
be for researchers to get to grips with high-performance computing
environments, and the positive impact good-quality training in these skills
can have on the scale and reproducibility of their work. So I find the
prospect of adding HPC Carpentry workshops to the list of training offered by
The Carpentries really exciting. The project is also supported by an
inspiring community that shares the values of our own: adopting the project
as an official Lesson Program and merging our two communities will strengthen
both groups.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Alan O’Cais, a member of the HPC Carpentry Steering Committee said:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;blockquote&gt;
  &lt;p&gt;I organised that first workshop in Dublin in 2018! Even before then, there
were others in the community working hard for a Carpentries direction for HPC
training. Given all those incremental efforts of different people over the
years, it’s really satisfying to see the tree they planted and nurtured start
to blossom in the way they hoped. Of course this is only the beginning, but
we are now in a place where we can really address the pedagogical and
technical challenges that an HPC Carpentry Lesson Program raises. I look
forward to a time when any lingering sense of eliteness around HPC is gone,
and it is seen for what it should really be: just another tool in our
learners’ box!&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;

&lt;h2 id=&quot;how-you-can-get-involved&quot;&gt;How You Can Get Involved&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;h3 id=&quot;help-with-workshops&quot;&gt;Help with Workshops&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;During Lesson Program incubation, the HPC Carpentry community will continue to
teach and gather feedback on their workshops.  You can help with this!&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;If you are interested in teaching an HPC Carpentry workshop to your local
community, hosting a workshop taught by other Instructors, or getting involved
in an existing workshop as an Instructor or Helper, &lt;a href=&quot;mailto:maintainers-hpc@lists.carpentries.org&quot;&gt;HPC Carpentry wants to
hear from you&lt;/a&gt;!&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3 id=&quot;contribute-to-lessons&quot;&gt;Contribute to Lessons&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;HPC Carpentry is looking to expand its community of contributors to the
existing lesson projects. Many members of The Carpentries community will have
expertise and experience to bring to the project’s lessons. During the
Incubation phase, HPC Carpentry will be establishing and polishing its core
curriculum, and you can help to guide the ongoing development of the lesson
program.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3 id=&quot;tell-your-friends&quot;&gt;Tell Your Friends!&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Do you know somebody who may be interested in contributing to HPC Carpentry, or
who could benefit from learning the skills it teaches? If so, tell them about
it and share the information below about how they can learn more and get
involved.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;ul&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Contact:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;mailto:maintainers-hpc@lists.carpentries.org&quot;&gt;maintainers-hpc@lists.carpentries.org&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Website:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://hpc-carpentry.org/&quot;&gt;hpc-carpentry.org&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Community Calls:&lt;/strong&gt; 11:00 &amp;amp; 21:00 UTC on the first &amp;amp; third Thursdays of every month
    &lt;ul&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://carpentries.org/community/#community-events&quot;&gt;Find these calls in the Community Calendar&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
    &lt;/ul&gt;
  &lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;

&lt;h2 id=&quot;more-about-hpc-carpentry&quot;&gt;More About HPC Carpentry&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;As computational power has exploded, and with it the size of problems that can
be solved computationally, High Performance Computing (HPC) has become
fundamental science lab equipment. &lt;em&gt;Not&lt;/em&gt; using HPC is likely to put you at a
disadvantage, but new users are often unable to engage because of the
complexity of HPC resources and the lack of formal curricula to teach HPC
skills. The mission of HPC Carpentry is to lower the barrier to entry to HPC
operations for a wide range of users, so that more learners can benefit from
the increasing availability of increasingly sophisticated computer systems.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The core curriculum of HPC Carpentry bridges the gap between using a laptop and
wielding a supercomputer through 3 lessons:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;ul&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;the &lt;a href=&quot;https://swcarpentry.github.io/shell-novice&quot;&gt;Software Carpentry Unix Shell&lt;/a&gt; lesson,&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;an &lt;a href=&quot;https://carpentries-incubator.github.io/hpc-intro/&quot;&gt;Introduction to High Performance Computing&lt;/a&gt; lesson, and,&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;a lesson on &lt;a href=&quot;https://carpentries-incubator.github.io/hpc-workflows/&quot;&gt;HPC Workflow Management&lt;/a&gt; (with Snakemake)&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;

&lt;h2 id=&quot;more-about-the-incubation-process&quot;&gt;More about the Incubation Process&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;After several years of development and informal communication between the
organisations, HPC Carpentry applied for and was invited to enter the
Incubation process to formally join The Carpentries. Incubation is the second
of three phases in a process that onboards new projects into The
Carpentries. During this phase, a new Lesson Program has 18 months to
demonstrate high-quality curriculum, demand for workshops, a healthy community
of contributors, and structures and policies that can align with The
Carpentries existing governance. We’re excited to take this step towards
onboarding another Lesson Program into The Carpentries and invite you to
support the efforts of HPC Carpentry as they continue to build out their
community and lesson infrastructure!&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Learn more about the Lesson Program Incubation process in the
&lt;a href=&quot;(https://docs.carpentries.org/topic_folders/governance/lesson-program-policy.html)&quot;&gt;Community Handbook&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;!-- links --&gt;
</content>
			
			
				<category term="HPC Carpentry" />
				<category term="Lesson Program Implementation" />

			<published>2024-07-24T00:00:00+00:00</published>
		</entry>
	
		<entry>
			<id>https://www.hpc-carpentry.org/blog/2021/12/sc21-summary.html</id>
			<title>The BoF at SC21</title>
			<link href="https://www.hpc-carpentry.org/blog/2021/12/sc21-summary.html" rel="alternate" type="text/html" title="The BoF at SC21" />
			<updated>2021-12-14T00:00:00+00:00</updated>
			
			<author><name>Andrew Reid</name></author>
			<summary>We talked to the world, and it talked back!</summary>
			<content type="html" xml:base="https://www.hpc-carpentry.org/blog/2021/12/sc21-summary.html">&lt;h2 id=&quot;the-bof-at-sc21&quot;&gt;The BoF at SC21&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The HPC Carpentry team hosted a “Birds of a Feather” session
at the &lt;a href=&quot;https://sc21.supercomputing.org/&quot;&gt;SC21&lt;/a&gt; conference.  This was a hybrid conference,
and the BoF sessions were done via Zoom, with Q&amp;amp;A done via the
Sli.do tool.  Andrew Reid was on-site and hosted the on-site
portion from the podium, while Trevor Keller, Annajiat Alim
Rasel, Alan O’Cais, and Wirawan Purwanto were on-line,
monitoring the Zoom and Sli.do questions and keeping the
session flowing for all participants.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The primary purpose of this was to try to reconnect with the
HPC user community, and gather feedback and guidance on how to
prioritize our efforts moving forward. The BoF was a success
on all counts: 20 people attended in-person in St. Louis, and
40 people attended via Zoom, with good, sometimes vibrant
participation from both “factions” 😇 in the Q&amp;amp;A.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;We imagine that the SC21 audience is probably somewhat more
performance- and hardware-aware than the Carpentries community
at large, and possibly also biased towards facility operators,
rather than novice users.  The feedback we gained is clearly
valuable;  nevertheless, we need to keep this intrinsic bias in
mind while we evaluate and act on this input.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;There were a number of survey questions planned in advance,
which were presented via the polling functionality in the
Sli.do.  This information was captured and is available
in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/hpc-carpentry/coordination/tree/main/conferences/SC21&quot;&gt;coordination repo&lt;/a&gt;.
The principal results are that attendees would like to see,
in descending order of preference:
Future lessons on containers;  Python and MPI;  Dask and
Julia;  Ability to mix and match lesson content;
Constructing half-day lessons that use the templating
capability to adapting lessons to permanent on-premise
facilities.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;After the planned polling questions were done, a more general
discussion ensued, largely captured in a &lt;a href=&quot;https://codimd.carpentries.org/9-Y8OaVIT2qpb_P47TR7Lw&quot;&gt;CodiMD&lt;/a&gt;
document.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;A number of attendees were interested in how to give feedback
on their experience with the lessons, and seemed uncertain what
feedback we’re looking for.  The answer is that we are mainly
looking for actionable feedback¹ that helps improve the lessons
for the community.  The main mechanism by which we imagine this
happening is through instructor and learner comments via poll
(to be written), Slack, and GitHub issues.  At the end of the
lesson, following usual Carpentries practice, organizers
should ask learners for positive and negative feedback, on
green or red sticky notes, and conduct a post-workshop survey.
This info, particularly the red stickies, is what we’re
looking for, and ideally would be translated into issues on
the appropriate lesson repository.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;We will be digesting the feedback received over the next few
weeks, and look forward to working through the &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/hpc-carpentry/coordination/milestone/1&quot;&gt;generated
issues&lt;/a&gt; over the coming months to ensure our
lessons benefit from this excellent community participation.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3 id=&quot;highlights&quot;&gt;Highlights&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;ul&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;One way HPC Carpentry can add value, beyond the lessons
themselves, is as a clearing house for HPC educational
resources generally.&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;The lessons and resources we choose to focus on are a
signal to the community about our priorities, so we 
should take some care in selecting these.&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;MPI, implemented with low-level programming languages 
(C, C++, Fortran), is still the most commonly-used framework 
for parallel programming.  It’s appropriate for 
HPC Carpentry to develop lessons that focus on this 
foundational material.&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;New users are increasingly unfamiliar with the command line
and file system hierarchy. Extra instructional effort may be
needed to help bridge this gap, including the effort of 
developing GUI-focused lessons based on Open OnDemand 
or JupyterHub.&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Some users still struggle with the difference in character
between distributed and shared HPC resources, and more familiar
laptop or workstation resources.  HPC is not just a big
laptop.&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Interest in cloud-based HPC resources is surprisingly high, 
driven by people with possibly-transient HPC workloads but without
institutional HPC facilities.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;

&lt;hr /&gt;

&lt;ol&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;“Actionable feedback” may seem flip, but we mean it
sincerely: comments that include some tangible suggestion
for improvement are tremendously helpful.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ol&gt;

&lt;!-- links --&gt;

</content>
			
			
				<category term="Community" />
				<category term="Lesson development" />

			<published>2021-12-14T00:00:00+00:00</published>
		</entry>
	
		<entry>
			<id>https://www.hpc-carpentry.org/blog/2020/11/hpccarpentry-lesson-development.html</id>
			<title>Applying lesson development design principles</title>
			<link href="https://www.hpc-carpentry.org/blog/2020/11/hpccarpentry-lesson-development.html" rel="alternate" type="text/html" title="Applying lesson development design principles" />
			<updated>2020-11-12T00:00:00+00:00</updated>
			
			<author><name>Alan O'Cais</name></author><author><name>Peter Steinbach</name></author>
			<summary>Thinking about the practical application of Bloom's Taxonomy</summary>
			<content type="html" xml:base="https://www.hpc-carpentry.org/blog/2020/11/hpccarpentry-lesson-development.html">&lt;h2 id=&quot;a-workshop-with-coderefinery&quot;&gt;A Workshop with CodeRefinery&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Together with CodeRefinery (&lt;a href=&quot;https://coderefinery.org/&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;), we helped to organise
a variant of an instructor training workshop for the
EU HPC Centres of Excellence (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.hpccoe.eu/&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;) with a clear focus on HPC
related material and teaching. We discussed lesson design a number
of times during this workshop. This blog post is about a few interesting
things we realised during those discussions -
most notably using Bloom’s Taxonomy to formulate learning objectives.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The motivation to look at this was mostly spurred by Greg Wilson’s
great book, “Teaching Tech together”, (&lt;a href=&quot;https://teachtogether.tech/en/index.html&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;).
&lt;a href=&quot;https://teachtogether.tech/en/index.html#s:process-objectives&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt;, Greg
defines:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;blockquote&gt;
  &lt;p&gt;Objectives vs. Outcomes&lt;/p&gt;

  &lt;p&gt;A learning objective is what a lesson strives to achieve. A learning outcome
is what it actually achieves, i.e. what learners actually take away. The role
of summative assessment is therefore to compare learning outcomes with learning
objectives.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;

&lt;p&gt;So we want to describe what we want to teach and what we want our learners
to pick up. Typically, each Carpentries’ episode encodes this in the &lt;code class=&quot;language-plaintext highlighter-rouge&quot;&gt;yaml&lt;/code&gt;
frontmatter part of every lesson episode. For example, the
&lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/swcarpentry/shell-novice&quot;&gt;shell-novice&lt;/a&gt; defines the
following objectives for the
&lt;a href=&quot;https://raw.githubusercontent.com/swcarpentry/shell-novice/gh-pages/_episodes/02-filedir.md&quot;&gt;lesson module “Navigating Files and Directories”&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;div class=&quot;language-plaintext highlighter-rouge&quot;&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;highlight&quot;&gt;&lt;pre class=&quot;highlight&quot;&gt;&lt;code&gt;objectives:
- &quot;Explain the similarities and differences between a file and a directory.&quot;
- &quot;Translate an absolute path into a relative path and vice versa.&quot;
- &quot;Construct absolute and relative paths that identify specific files and directories.&quot;
- &quot;Use options and arguments to change the behaviour of a shell command&quot;
- &quot;Demonstrate the use of tab completion, and explain its advantages.&quot;
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

&lt;h2 id=&quot;a-guide-to-formulating-learning-objectives&quot;&gt;A guide to formulating learning objectives&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://teachtogether.tech/en/index.html#s:process-objectives&quot;&gt;Bloom’s taxonomy and other taxonomies&lt;/a&gt;
offer a structure or guideline, to help a lesson designer and teacher to formulate
these learning objectives. Bloom’s taxonomy itself comprises of 6 concepts which can
be paired with verbs that help guide the process.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Remembering:&lt;/strong&gt; Exhibit memory of previously learned material by recalling facts,
terms, basic concepts, and answers. (recognize, list, describe, name, find)&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Understanding:&lt;/strong&gt; Demonstrate understanding of facts and ideas by organizing,
comparing, translating, interpreting, giving descriptions, and stating main ideas.
(interpret, summarize, paraphrase, classify, explain)&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Applying:&lt;/strong&gt; Solve new problems by applying acquired knowledge, facts, techniques
and rules in a different way. (build, identify, use, plan, select)&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Analyzing:&lt;/strong&gt; Examine and break information into parts by identifying motives or
causes; make inferences and find evidence to support generalizations. (compare,
contrast, simplify)&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Evaluating:&lt;/strong&gt; Present and defend opinions by making judgments about information,
validity of ideas, or quality of work based on a set of criteria. (check, choose,
critique, prove, rate)&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Creating:&lt;/strong&gt; Compile information together in a different way by combining elements
in a new pattern or proposing alternative solutions. (design, construct, improve,
adapt, maximize, solve)&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2 id=&quot;an-hpc-inspired-exercise&quot;&gt;An HPC inspired exercise&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;During the aforementioned workshop, I (Peter) asked all participants to imagine
they want
to teach learners about &lt;code class=&quot;language-plaintext highlighter-rouge&quot;&gt;scp&lt;/code&gt; or &lt;code class=&quot;language-plaintext highlighter-rouge&quot;&gt;ssh&lt;/code&gt; (participants were able to choose). The
workshop participants were split in teams and asked to  formulate learning
objectives guided by Bloom’s Taxonomy for the topic they chose.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;As a teacher, I expected the native English speakers to complete this
task with ease and the non-native speakers to struggle. The following is directly
copied from the workshops HackMD pad.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;blockquote&gt;
  &lt;h3 id=&quot;remembering&quot;&gt;Remembering&lt;/h3&gt;

  &lt;ul&gt;
    &lt;li&gt;ssh: name the command and list it’s parameters&lt;/li&gt;
    &lt;li&gt;scp: Name the basic structure of a scp call: &lt;code class=&quot;language-plaintext highlighter-rouge&quot;&gt;command source destination&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
    &lt;li&gt;ssh: Can the student explain what does the &lt;code class=&quot;language-plaintext highlighter-rouge&quot;&gt;ssh&lt;/code&gt; acronym stand for?&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;/ul&gt;

  &lt;h3 id=&quot;understanding&quot;&gt;Understanding&lt;/h3&gt;

  &lt;ul&gt;
    &lt;li&gt;ssh: explain what the command does&lt;/li&gt;
    &lt;li&gt;scp: Paraphrase the similarity of SCP to CP - across physical limits of computers.&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;/ul&gt;

  &lt;h3 id=&quot;applying&quot;&gt;Applying&lt;/h3&gt;

  &lt;ul&gt;
    &lt;li&gt;ssh: use the command to log in to a new cluster / server&lt;/li&gt;
    &lt;li&gt;scp: Use SCP to transfer a set of files or folders&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;/ul&gt;

  &lt;h3 id=&quot;analyzing&quot;&gt;Analyzing&lt;/h3&gt;

  &lt;ul&gt;
    &lt;li&gt;ssh: compare the local environment to the remote environment (to contrast source and destination machine)&lt;/li&gt;
    &lt;li&gt;scp: Compare : compare to rsync and ability to know when to to use which (simplify this!)&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;/ul&gt;

  &lt;h3 id=&quot;evaluating&quot;&gt;Evaluating&lt;/h3&gt;

  &lt;ul&gt;
    &lt;li&gt;scp: Rate approaches to share scientific data (cloud versus shared folder on parallel filesystem versus central [ftp] server)&lt;/li&gt;
    &lt;li&gt;ssh: choose whether to use ssh to do a given task&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;/ul&gt;

  &lt;h3 id=&quot;creating&quot;&gt;Creating&lt;/h3&gt;

  &lt;ul&gt;
    &lt;li&gt;ssh: solve a security problem using ssh&lt;/li&gt;
    &lt;li&gt;scp: Design an approach to share scientific data to more than 3 destinations (on a daily basis).&lt;/li&gt;
    &lt;li&gt;ssh: Can the student modify the following ssh command to be able to log-in directly into the directory /home/dir1?: &lt;code class=&quot;language-plaintext highlighter-rouge&quot;&gt;ssh username@login.hpc.xxx.xx.uk&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;/ul&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;

&lt;h2 id=&quot;how-to-use-blooms-taxonomy&quot;&gt;How to use “Bloom’s Taxonomy”&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;It looked like all participants struggled with this task irrespective of
their English speaking capabilities. Learners asked me how I would approach
this and I provided two hints:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;ol&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;
    &lt;p&gt;Categories in Bloom’s taxonomy build upon each other. Take this prioritised
list: Remembering, Understanding, Applying, Analyzing, Evaluating, Creating.
If learners don’t remember the content that was taught, it will be hard for
them to exhibit understanding. For learners to apply content, e.g. to new
examples or domains, they first need to understand the content taught. I told
my participants that I try to balance these categories mostly by the context
of the course I am designing. For example, in the context of carpentries’
workshops, the volume to teach is often quite large and the time to dive into
details is hardly ever available. Hence, I would limit myself to “Remembering,
Understanding, Applying” for designing and organising my lessons. Anything in
the higher categories, “Analyzing, Evaluating, Creating” I often consider a
bonus.&lt;/p&gt;
  &lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;
    &lt;p&gt;I typically judge my formulation of learning objects by how amenable they are
to create assessments from. In other words, a learning objective in the
very first category of the taxonomy &lt;strong&gt;Remember&lt;/strong&gt; like “At the end of this
module, learners remember how to use SCP.” is way too broad of a formulation
to help guide me in creating lessons and produce tangible assessments. I’d
rather suggest to put it like so: “At the end of this module, learners
recognize the use of scp for transferring single files or entire folders.”
This formulation lends itself to create two assessments or exercises.&lt;/p&gt;
  &lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ol&gt;

&lt;h2 id=&quot;a-testimony-of-a-participant&quot;&gt;A testimony of a participant&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;For me (Alan), I realised that I had never really considered Bloom’s taxonomy
beyond an abstract sense. When it was time to leverage it during the exercise
to set lesson objectives, I struggled to apply it in a practical way. It raised
questions for me about what level(s) of the taxonomy we are supposed to target
in lesson episodes. After the workshop, and for this blogpost, I read up on this
a little and came across a post from the University of Arkansas (&lt;a href=&quot;https://tips.uark.edu/using-blooms-taxonomy/&quot;&gt;4&lt;/a&gt;)
that helped me to grasp the key points in the use of the taxonomy:&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;ul&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;You set Lesson Objectives for the overall lesson that target a particular level of
the taxonomy. For HPC Carpentry, this is most likely the “Applying” level.&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;In your lesson episodes you should follow the principle (trivially adapted from (&lt;a href=&quot;https://teachtogether.tech/en/index.html&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;))
    &lt;blockquote&gt;
      &lt;p&gt;Use Bloom’s Taxonomy to make sure that the verbs you choose for your (episode)
level objectives build up to the level of the verb that is in the (lesson) level
objective. The (episode) level verbs can be below or equal to the (lesson) level
verb, but they CANNOT be higher in level. For example, your (lesson) level verb
might be an Applying level verb, “illustrate.” Your (episode) level verbs can be
from any Bloom’s level that is equal or below this level (applying,
understanding, or remembering).&lt;/p&gt;
    &lt;/blockquote&gt;
  &lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;

&lt;h2 id=&quot;a-summary-and-a-request&quot;&gt;A summary and a request&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Bloom’s taxonomy appears high level at first sight. Once you sit down and try to
employ it, a lesson designer can be guided by their use to more effectively and
better formulate learning goals. The resulting goals are expected to offer more
tangible guidance once you design the teaching material in question.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;How do you feel about Bloom’s taxonomy and how we put it to use for creating
learning goals for &lt;code class=&quot;language-plaintext highlighter-rouge&quot;&gt;scp&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code class=&quot;language-plaintext highlighter-rouge&quot;&gt;ssh&lt;/code&gt;? Feel free to leave a comment below or join
the discussion on the HPC Carpentry Slack channel (&lt;a href=&quot;https://swcarpentry.slack.com/archives/CEXAZR52T&quot;&gt;5&lt;/a&gt;) (to access the channel
you first need to 
&lt;a href=&quot;https://swc-slack-invite.herokuapp.com/&quot;&gt;join the Carpentries Slack organisation&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;

</content>
			
			
				<category term="Community" />
				<category term="Lesson development" />

			<published>2020-11-12T00:00:00+00:00</published>
		</entry>
	
		<entry>
			<id>https://www.hpc-carpentry.org/blog/2020/09/task-force.html</id>
			<title>HPC Carpentry Task Force</title>
			<link href="https://www.hpc-carpentry.org/blog/2020/09/task-force.html" rel="alternate" type="text/html" title="HPC Carpentry Task Force" />
			<updated>2020-09-25T00:00:00+00:00</updated>
			
			<author><name>Andrew Reid</name></author>
			<summary>There is an HPC Carpentry Task Force to help formally move our lessons into the Carpentries.</summary>
			<content type="html" xml:base="https://www.hpc-carpentry.org/blog/2020/09/task-force.html">&lt;p&gt;In the fall of 2020, following successful engagement at the 
Carpentries@Home conference, a number of HPC Carpentry contributors got 
together and formed an “HPC Carpentry Task Force”, with an expected
lifetime of about three months, with the goal of identifying and solving
the issues which stand between the current state of the lesson,
and incorporating our material into the mainstream Carpentries
infrastructure, though the &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/carpentries-incubator/proposals&quot;&gt;incubator&lt;/a&gt; mechanism&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;An &lt;a href=&quot;https://codimd.carpentries.org/ct7yfc_LSseoC8mEmbVEiQ?both&quot;&gt;initial meeting&lt;/a&gt; was held on Sept. 16, 2020.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Moving forward, the plan is to coordinate several co-working
sessions where volunteers can identify and clear remaining
issues with the various repositories, and also to have 
higher-level coordination meetings, approximately monthly,
where issue priorities can be discussed, and tasks requiring
higher-level coordination can be undertaken.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Discussion and coordination takes place on the 
HPC Carpentry &lt;a href=&quot;https://swcarpentry.slack.com&quot;&gt;Slack channel&lt;/a&gt;, The Carpentries’ HPC
&lt;a href=&quot;https://carpentries.topicbox.com/groups/discuss-hpc&quot;&gt;mailing list&lt;/a&gt;, and through issues on the &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/hpc-carpentry/coordination&quot;&gt;coordination&lt;/a&gt;
repository on Github.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;All are welcome!&lt;/p&gt;

</content>
			
			
				<category term="Community" />

			<published>2020-09-25T00:00:00+00:00</published>
		</entry>
	
		<entry>
			<id>https://www.hpc-carpentry.org/blog/2020/07/hpccarpentry-at-carpentrycon-at-home.html</id>
			<title>HPC Carpentry at CarpentryCon @ Home 2020</title>
			<link href="https://www.hpc-carpentry.org/blog/2020/07/hpccarpentry-at-carpentrycon-at-home.html" rel="alternate" type="text/html" title="HPC Carpentry at CarpentryCon @ Home 2020" />
			<updated>2020-07-13T00:00:00+00:00</updated>
			
			<author><name>Alan O'Cais</name></author><author><name>Peter Steinbach</name></author>
			<summary>HPC Carpentry will contribute to CarpentryCon @ Home 2020...and is looking for help</summary>
			<content type="html" xml:base="https://www.hpc-carpentry.org/blog/2020/07/hpccarpentry-at-carpentrycon-at-home.html">&lt;p&gt;Some of the HPC Carpentry team are very keen to bring HPC Carpentry into the carpentries as an
incubator project
(&lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/carpentries-incubator/proposals&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;) and eventually become a member of the Carpentries (or the Carpentry Lab (&lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/carpentrieslab/proposals&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;) at least). To start
this, they’ve proposed a breakout
session for carpentrycon at home (&lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/carpentrycon/carpentryconhome-proposals/issues/33&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;) which will take place on July 20,
2020.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Besides sampling the community for expectations and hopes, we would love to propose a way forward
to bring the community
together and focus on hpc-intro (&lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/hpc-carpentry/hpc-intro&quot;&gt;4&lt;/a&gt;). Key points of this are:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;ul&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;propose a github manager who will coordinate reviews, reviewers and issues&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;propose building a set of task forces to tackle particular issues, and asking for volunteers&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;suggest to hold co-working hours (biweekly for 60-90 minutes via zoom) to establish continuous
work on the material&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;

&lt;p&gt;With this message, we call for volunteers to help shape the session (we need at least 2 more people
since we plan to have 4
breakout rooms during the session). Please step forward and reply to the open issue in our repo
connected to the proposal (&lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/hpc-carpentry/hpc-intro/issues/123&quot;&gt;5&lt;/a&gt;) or to the proposal itself (&lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/carpentrycon/carpentryconhome-proposals/issues/33&quot;&gt;6&lt;/a&gt;) or email us at
&lt;a href=&quot;mailto:maintainers-hpc@lists.carpentries.org&quot;&gt;maintainers-hpc@lists.carpentries.org&lt;/a&gt; (can you feel how keen we are to get you involved!).&lt;/p&gt;

</content>
			
			
				<category term="Community" />

			<published>2020-07-13T00:00:00+00:00</published>
		</entry>
	
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