Training Pathways
Challenges in RSE in HPC education and training
The HPC community is constantly growing and diversifying trying to keep up with the explosion of digital research across most disciplines. Defining the level and scope of skills required from RSEs specialising in HPC is becoming less straightforward due to increasingly unique educational and professional backgrounds, and skill sets multiplying to mirror emerging and converging technologies. The educational landscape expands in every direction creating both opportunities and challenges.
Despite the quality and quantity of existing training materials, developing HPC and RSE skills can be challenging. Many professionals do not have enough time to learn new things in the right context and in a way that makes them directly applicable to their current work. Finding the right training content requires a certain degree of expertise or significant amount of time and effort, and does not guarantee that the desired skills will be obtained.
The discovery and development of professional skills can be made easier by shifting from a fixed linear style of teaching towards more personalised concept-based learning that better aligns with adult learning models (e.g. learning a specific skill to complete a specific task in a limited time frame).
This is an example pathway created for the ISC’24 BoF session - “Developing a Sustainable Future for HPC and RSE Skills: Training Pathways and Structures”. A clean worksheet can be downloaded here
Learning Pathways
Personalised learning to be effective needs to be both flexible and intentional. Certain structures are still needed to ensure learners gain specific skills in the right context without creating significant knowledge gaps that could impede the future skill progression. That’s where the concept of learning pathways comes in.
The learning pathway approach was initially developed in the context of e-learning but was quickly adapted in the business world to close the organisational skill gaps. A learning pathway can be defined as a route taken by a learner through a range of training resources or activities that allows them to obtain desired knowledge or skills in the most optimal way and most appropriate context.
Part of the challenge is that the perception of skill requirements, and discoverability and usefulness of existing training content differs significantly, not only between learners and educators, but also between learners with similar characteristics. That also means general pathways tend to be too vague to capture nuances of individuals’ learning aims but if the pathways are too highly personalised they are only valuable to a limited number of learners.
It may be impractical for training providers to design personalised learning pathways for all of their learners. The multitude and complexity of possible learning journeys combined with time restrictions and specific use cases makes the task unmanageable, unless more agency is given to the learners. The learning pathways approach forces a shift in responsibility for the overall learning process from educator to learner by giving learners more flexibility in aligning their goals with a set of required skills and building a path matching their learning needs.
For this to work on a larger scale, the training ecosystem needs to be easier to navigate for individuals who don’t have the full context of the educational landscape. Using the mountain hiking analogy - not everyone starts in the same place, walks on the same trail or even has the same goal. Some are interested in reaching the top in the shortest time possible, and others may only wish to stay close to the foot of the mountain or access a specific view point. Many don’t know where they are or where they need to go next. There are many mountains out there and not everyone has sufficient navigation skills to reach their desired location. So, what can be done to make it possible?
As a community we need to deepen our understanding of the skills required by specific categories of learners and figure out how their training needs map onto the existing training resources. However, there is still a big gap between designing learner profiles (or personas) accompanied by a list of training content and crafting personalised learning pathways. A lot of work has already been done to address the former, now to address the latter we need to focus on making the navigation through the training ecosystem less challenging.
We need to put more effort into making the training content more modular and discoverable, create more domain specific examples to make the key concepts accessible in practical terms, and provide learners with methods to identify the skills required to reach their goals and combine them with template guides for skill progression.
The UNIVERSE-HPC project is contributing to many of those activities.
Recent work: The UNIVERSE-HPC members led and contributed the following community efforts and events:
- ISC’23 BoF - Understanding Community Perspectives on HPC Skills and Training Pathways
- Survey results from the session
- JOSCE (SC’23 workshop submission)
- SC’23 BoF - Pathfinding in HPC Education and Training
- The survey used during this session resulted in the following two PEARC’24 papers (both will appear in the conference proceedings after the conference in July)
- Building HPC Learning Pathways: Understanding our community (PEARC’24 long paper submission)
- Developing HPC Learning Pathways: Challenges and Recommendations (PEARC’24 short paper submission)
- The survey used during this session resulted in the following two PEARC’24 papers (both will appear in the conference proceedings after the conference in July)
- ISC’24 BoF - Developing a Sustainable Future for HPC and RSE Skills: Training Pathways and Structures
- Slides
- Survey Results
- Exercise Worksheet
- This session attempted to outline example pathways through small group activities - the results will be processed and shared with the community shortly.
Other related initiatives