In early 2020 we began discussing the modification of BEAR training to become modular. Our Software Carpentry courses consisted of 2 full days, which is a big commitment of time for all involved, and also meant that some participants were hearing the same content more than once as there was overlap with the Git and bash elements. So, following feedback from instructors and participants, instead of the standard 2 day courses, we will now offer shorter, modular sessions, e.g. “Introduction to Linux” and the more advanced “A Further Bash at Linux”.
When this review process started little did we know what was to come during the spring! As the impact of COVID-19 became clear, scheduled March face-to-face courses were cancelled. Having had a break from training for the last few months, we are now continuing to plan our training provision for autumn 2020 with the delivery of fully online courses. This is for the safety of our instructors and participants with current distancing in place. We believe that delivering online courses will certainly be much easier with shorter, modular sessions. Going forward into 2021 we will continue to take into account university and government advice and review our provision accordingly.
We are expecting a high level of demand for training as in previous years, and online delivery offers advantages for people working at home, or rarely on campus. We will also offer online training materials so that researchers can work at a time and pace to suit them, followed up by live Q&A sessions. There are also a number of external online resources available, including MATLAB and a wide range of topics via LinkedIn Learning.
As research restarts and continues to be a key aspect of university life, even in such uncertain times we are committed to assisting researchers with using BlueBEAR and research software.
We will update our website and notify users via the bear-updates mailing list when new dates are available for booking.
You can sign up for the bear-updates mailing list by logging in to BEAR Admin, find your account, then in the bottom left corner click the link “Subscribe to more mailing lists”, then tick the box for bear-updates and click Subscribe.
We also offer regular virtual drop-in sessions where you can come and ask questions of the BEAR team, this is another way to get software support. Or you can contact our team of Research Software Engineers for advice and coaching.
Proposed modular courses:
| Linux | Introduction to Linux A further bash at Linux |
| Supercomputer – BlueBEAR | Introduction to BlueBEAR Advanced job scripts |
| Git | Git – command line Git – R Studio Git – Python PyCharm |
| Python | Python01 Python02 Python03 |
| R | R01 R02 R03 |
| Data Management | Introduction to Data Management Anonymisation |
| MATLAB | MATLAB01 MATLAB02 |
| NVIDIA | NVIDIA01 NVIDIA02 |
| Fundamentals of Accelerated Computing with CUDA/C++ | Full day course |
| C++ course | 6 * 1 day course |