[Users] minutes on ET workshop and school at NCSA discussion of 2017-05-01

[Roland Haas]

Hello all,

Present: (at least) Pablo, Frank, Gabrielle, Eloisa, Roland, Ian, Qian,
Manuela, Erik

Dates: 5 days during either the week of July 24th or week of July 31st
Poll: please indicate your preferred dates by checking at least 5
consecutive days in in this doodle poll (Mo starting times will be
prioritized, you can use ifneedsbe for secondary choices): 

http://doodle.com/poll/p7deb9npmgwwfbmv

Please respond no later than *Thursday* as well will finalize room
bookings for the lecture halls on Friday.
If you would like to serve as an instructor/TA please let us (Roland
Haas, Eliu Huerta, Gabrielle Allen or just list) know as well. 

Summary 
-------
Dates; 5 days of school (3 days) and developer workshop (2 days),
during weeks of July 24th or July 31st
Location: NCSA/UIUC, Urbana, IL, US
target audience: students interested in numerical relativity in
general and students working in groups that use the ET
topics: 
* keep it hands on, provide theory enough to understand what the ET
  implements, eg 3+1 decomposition but not full derivation of BSSNOK
  formalism, similar for hydrodynamics
* aim to teach students how to run the ET, make simple additions and
  modifications to existing code or add simple new thorns, stay clear
  of scheduling and AMR related details if possible, unless asked for
  by students
* possibly have more formal lecture in the morning with more lectures
  interspersed with handson exercises in the afternoon, late morning.
  Detailed breakup into theory and hands-on still fluid and open for
  discussion.
* include a visualization section of ~0.5 days
* include data analysis of ET data in LIGO using the LIGO provided
  ipython notebooks even if only shown how to do this with sample data
  and including running the simulation
  https://losc.ligo.org/s/events/GW150914/GW150914_tutorial.html

Detailed notes:
* dates should be no earlier than July 24th due to restrictions and no
  later than 2nd week of August to avoid running into issues with
  students being in courses already
* expect fewer students than in Trento (~45 students), mostly from Noth
  America, NCSA has room for about 50 participants we expect ~25
  students
* send questionnaire to students *before* school to gauge their level of
  expertise and what they hope to gain from attending the school. Use
  this to guide the level of detail of the course and exercises
* pair up students so that knowledgeable and new users are paired up
  (this includes both science knowledge and also knowledge on eg
  command line tools and the ET)
* ideas for topics:
- see if track1 + track2 approach with more basic and more advanced
  exercises and topics is possible
- consider intro into the ET and Cactus to (briefly) outline philosophy
  behind it
- send or hand out questionnaire to students on last day to provide
  feedback on experience
* provide some afternoon entertainment, eg tour of Blue Waters,
  organize dinner etc.
* more hands-on approach on teaching likely works better with younger
  teachers that have more time to prepare, more formal lectures may
  work better with persons that have more experience teaching
* aim to have extra TAs in classroom to help out students, aim for many
  TA (between 5-10 students per TA)

Yours,
Roland

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