This work explores the applicability of Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs) for scaling High Performance Computing (HPC) training and education. Most HPC centers recognize the need to provide their users with HPC training; however, the current educational structure and accessibility prevents many scientists and engineers who need HPC knowledge and skills from becoming HPC practitioners. To provide more accessible and scalable learning paths toward HPC expertise, the authors explore MOOCs and their related technologies and teaching approaches. In this paper the authors outline how MOOC courses differ from face-to-face training, video-capturing of live events, webinars, and other established teaching methods with respect to pedagogical design, development issues and deployment concerns. The work proceeds to explore two MOOC case studies, including the design decisions, pedagogy and delivery. The MOOC development methods discussed are universal and easily replicated by educators and trainers in any field; however, HPC has specific technical needs and concerns not encountered in other online courses. Strategies for addressing these HPC concerns are discussed throughout the work.

The HPC community has always considered the training of new and existing HPC practitioners to be of high importance to its growth. This diversification of HPC practitioners challenges the traditional training approaches, which are not able to satisfy the specific needs of users, often coming from non-traditionally HPC disciplines, and only interested in learning a particular set of competences. Challenges for HPC centres are to identify and overcome the gaps in users' knowledge, while users struggle to identify relevant skills. We have developed a first version of an HPC certification program that would clearly categorize, define, and examine competences. Making clear what skills are required of or recommended for a competent HPC user would benefit both the HPC service providers and practitioners. Moreover, it would allow centres to bundle together skills that are most beneficial for specific user roles and scientific domains. From the perspective of content providers, existing training material can be mapped to competences allowing users to quickly identify and learn the skills they require. Finally, the certificates recognized by the whole HPC community simplify inter-comparison of independently offered courses and provide additional incentive for participation.

The ever-changing nature of HPC has always compelled the HPC community to focus a lot of eort into training of new and existing practitioners. Historically, these eorts were tailored around a typical group of users possessing, due to their background, a certain set of programming skills. However, as HPC has become more diverse in terms of hardware, software and the user background, the traditional training approaches became insucient in addressing training needs of our community. This increasingly complicated HPC landscape makes development and delivery of new training materials challenging. How should we develop training for users, often coming from non-traditionally HPC disciplines, and only interested in learning a particular set of skills? How can we satisfy their training needs if we don't really understand what these are? It's clear that HPC centres struggle to identify and overcome the gaps in users' knowledge, while users struggle to identify skills required to perform their tasks. With the HPC Certication Forum, we aim to clearly categorise, dene, and examine competencies expected from procient HPC practitioners. In this article, we report the status and progress this independent body has made during the rst year of its existence. The drafted processes and prototypes are expected to mature into a holistic ecosystem benecial for all stakeholders in HPC education.

The International HPC Certication Program has been ocially launched over a year ago at ISC'18 and since then made signicant progress in categorising and dening the skills required to prociently use a variety of HPC systems. The program reached the stage when the support and input from the HPC community is essential. For the certication to be recognised widely, it needs to capture skills required by majority of HPC users, regardless of their level. This cannot be achieved without contributions from the community. This extended abstract briey presents the current state of the developed Skill Tree and explains how contributors can extend it. In the talk, we focus on the contribution aspects.

The goal of the HPC Certification Forum is to categorize, define, and examine competencies expected from proficient HPC practitioners. The community-led forum is working toward establishing a globally acknowledged HPC certification process, a process that engages with HPC centres to identify gaps in users' knowledge, and with users to identify the skills required to perform their tasks. In this article, we introduce the forum and summarize the progress made over the last two years. The release of the first officially supported certificate is planned for the second half of 2020.