Cyberinfrastructure for Curriculum

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Overview


UTech Research Computing offers account access to cyberinfrastructure for use in curriculum coursework. This provides limited resources for high-performance computing, statistical analysis, data-intensive computing, machine learning, and parallel programming. In addition to campus resources, UTech Research Computing can help facilitate access to regional and national resources including the Ohio Supercomputer Center and ACCESS.

Faculty and Instructors teaching a course that may benefit from these resources can request cyberinfrastructure through the Cyberinfrastructure Request for Coursework form or contact us directly for more information. 

Utech provides the following cyberinfrastructure for curriculum.

  • High-Performance Computing 
  • GPU Computing
  • Hadoop Data-Intensive Computing
  • RStudio Server Access
  • GENI Network Rack
  • ACCESS

The available cyberinfrastructure is separate and distinct from normal classroom resources at Case Western Reserve University. The resources provisioned for curriculum support are shared resources and are not prioritized among different courses. Requesting usage of resources does not guarantee availability. 

Support for courses includes monitoring acceptable use, account creation, installation of specific software packages, and consultation & training sessions for instructors and TAs who work with students.  

UTech provides workshops and training material to encourage optimal use of Cyberinfrastructure. We encourage contacting us to go over the anticipated coursework to ensure that the appropriate amounts of resources and support are available.

All student requests for support should be triaged first by the instructor and TAs, rather than having students contact Research Computing directly. If the issue is correctable only by Research Computing Admins or cannot be solved by the instructor or TAs, the issue can then be forwarded to UTech Research Computing for further investigation. In order to best support course participants, we encourage both course instructors and TAs to receive consultation so that Research Computing can tailor training and resource availability for the course's specific use case.

The following steps will help instructors setup cyberinfrastructure for use in coursework.

  • Determine the suitability of cyberinfrastructure resources by considering whether a large computing resource is needed by the students enrolled in the course. UTech Research Computing provides resources for high-performance computing (HPC), statistical analysis, data-intensive computing, machine learning, and parallel programming. HPC supports both interactive and long-running jobs that can be left unattended.

  • Please request use of cyberinfrastructure (Cyberinfrastructure Request for Coursework ) at least three months prior to the course being taught.

    • Let us know what resources your coursework requires
    • Let us know roughly how many students you expect. (contact us at hpc-support@case.edu if you have questions)
    • Let us know as far in advance as possible if you have specific software or storage requirements for the class.
    • Let us know who the instructors and TAs for your class will be, as well as any non-registered students who should have access. 
    • Let us know the timeline for usage of the resource including the days we should be monitoring for acceptable use.