Frequently Asked Questions¶

When to follow the course¶

When should I follow this course?¶

When you want to transfer files.

When should I consider to not follow this course?¶

These are the reasons to consider to not follow this course:

Reason 1: you want to learn advanced things¶

When you have done your first file transfers and expect to learn new and more advanced things.

In this case, the course will go too slow for you.

However, you will probably be put to work by the teachers to help out other learners. If you like to test your own knowledge by teaching others, you will likely thrive in the course.

When you have social anxiety.

In this case, the course will be too social for you.

However, in this course, it is perfectly OK to give a wrong answer or to say 'I do not know'. This is what a former learner had to say on this:

You are welcome to try and leave anytime you want. The course material is made for self-study too, with videos for all exercises. Do fill in the evaluation when you leave early :-)

Prerequisites¶

Why are there so many prerequisites?¶

Because of constraints.

While planning the course, we started out with two hour to teach about login and filesystem navigation, and four hours to do actual fle transfer.

When the constraint was added that the course must be maximally three hours, it meant that we would teach what the course is about in the minority of the time. As teachers, we accepted this at first, and would only teach FileZilla and rsync.

However, then another constraint was added: there should be more file transfer tools discussed.

Instead of lecturing (we should not [Hattie, 2023]), we decided to add prerequisites instead

What are the prerequisites for following this course?¶

See prerequisites.

How can I check if I have registered?"¶

You should have gotten a welcome email within a couple of days.

When it doubt, register another time :-)

How can I check if I have a user account on a Swedish academic HPC cluster?"¶

When you can login at https://supr.naiss.se/.

How does that look like?

It should look similar to this:

A user that logged into SUPR

How can I get a user account on a Swedish academic HPC cluster?"¶

Register at https://supr.naiss.se/person/register/.

This depends on the HPC cluster you are using.

How does that look like on UPPMAX's Rackham?

For UPPMAX's Rackham, it look similar to this:

Logged into Rackham

Probably: yes

Using a website: yes
Using a local ThinLinc client: yes

Follow the instructions of your favorite HPC center or the UPPMAX instruction

How can I check if I have a good Zoom setup?"¶

You are in a room where you can talk
You talk into a (standalone or headset) microphone
Others can clearly hear you when you talk
Others can see you
You can hear others clearly when they talk

How can I get a good Zoom setup?"¶

Find/schedule/book a room where you can talk
Buy a simple headset

What if I don't have a good Zoom setup? Is that OK?"¶

No.

You will feel left out, as the course in highly interactive. It would be weird to the other learners.

Website¶

Why is the repository owner `UPPMAX` instead of NAISS?¶

Because NAISS does not have a GitHub owner page yet.

References¶

[Hattie, 2023] Hattie, John. Visible learning: The sequel: A synthesis of over 2,100 meta-analyses relating to achievement. Routledge, 2023. The effect size of lecturing can be found on page 363, which has an effect size of -0.26 with a robustness index of 4 out of 5 and is based on 3 meta analyses using 273 studies using 27,296 people, measuring for 614 effects with a standard error of 0.08. One example open access study is [Knight & Wood, 2005].
[Knight & Wood, 2005] Knight, Jennifer K., and William B. Wood. "Teaching more by lecturing less." Cell biology education 4.4 (2005): 298-310. paper