Report on summer school and its material (D6.1)

This report describes the organisation and outcome of the two ESiWACE summer schools in 2020 and 2021, in particular, the offered training sessions. Additionally, the results of the conducted surveys regarding the quality and effectiveness of the summer schools are illustrated.

The summer schools were organised as a one-week virtual event in August 2020 and 2021 due to COVID- 19 restrictions. The scope of the schools is in the training of young researchers and software engineers in methods, tools, and theoretical knowledge to make effective use of HPC environments and generate insights. The sessions included about 34 hours of lectures and 18 hours of hands-on and lab practicals.

Overall 289 people registered for the schools – 87 obtained a certificate of attendance because they attended most of the sessions in the respective school. The created videos of the sessions were published on YouTube after the event to allow even more attendees to enjoy the training. The post-event survey suggests that more than 95% of the attendees had at least a good experience and generally, a favorable appraisal was given. In the CoE proposal, we expected to host 30-40 students per school which were surpassed by the total number of attendees of the summer schools. We conclude the lectures and lab practicals were generally well-received and despite being a virtual event we successfully delivered the planned training events.