C-Level View | Feature

Internet2's CLASS: Helping Researchers Move Forward with the Cloud

A Q&A with Amanda Tan

• By Mary Grush
• 05/22/24

It's a familiar question: As higher education IT professionals who serve researchers and enable their work, how can we attract those researchers to the cloud? How can we help them become more productive with cloud services on our campuses?

Internet2's Cloud Learning & Skills Sessions (the CLASS program) offers the perfect venue for researchers and IT professionals to come together to foster cloud learning and adoption in the research and education community. 

Amanda Tan is Internet2's research engagement program manager for CLASS, and as a former senior data science fellow, cloud technology lead, and research scientist at the University of Washington's eScience Institute, she's been a long-time champion of cloud learning for research settings. CT asked her how the CLASS program can help the higher education and research community navigate the quickly changing cloud knowledge base.

Mary Grush: What is Internet2's CLASS program and how does it work towards its objectives?

Amanda Tan: Originally CLASS was offered primarily as a cloud training program to help people who support research. It was specifically for research facilitators and other research computing and data professionals who needed to develop cloud skills.

That was about three and a half years ago. Since then, the CLASS program has evolved to include more comprehensive scientific computing skills. It now incorporates additional research computing tools and technologies that the research and higher education community can utilize — usually in the cloud, but with an eye toward holistic scientific workflows — to arrive at bigger and better science, faster.

So the cloud, coupled with other relevant technologies, is a means to an end — it's not seen as an end in itself. The focus is to help people step up to scientific research challenges and respond to those challenges better and faster.

The cloud, coupled with other relevant technologies, is a means to an end… to help people step up to scientific research challenges and respond to those challenges better and faster.

Grush: In general, what formats do you use to facilitate and structure your CLASS meetings?

Tan: Right now most of our offerings are virtual, but highly interactive, with a clear pathway for learners. We are, as our central goal, democratizing access to cloud learning. And that's not just one of many goals. It is truly the core of our foundational tenets of what CLASS is. We want to make the cloud more accessible for everyone in the community. And so, for us, as we develop CLASS programs, it's all about building a pathway for beginning all the way to advanced learners.

We are, as our central goal, democratizing access to cloud learning.

CLASS is made up of four different learning modules. It starts with CLASS Essentials, which is a foundational workshop that gets you "from zero to cloud." If you're starting with very little to no cloud experience, knowledge, or skills, this is where you can get, in just three hours, a basic understanding of what you're able to do in the cloud.

That foundational program is open to anyone who works in a higher education research environment. Its curriculum is very researched-focused and higher ed-specific.

After you've passed through the foundational module, we have several different programs at the intermediate and advanced levels. These include three- and four-hour workshops that are targeted to specific skill sets learners will need to develop to use the cloud effectively or to leverage some of those related research computing tools I mentioned earlier that enable researchers to do their science. Those include tools like containers, infrastructure as code, and artificial intelligence and machine learning pipelines.

At the highest technical level, we offer CLASS Advanced, which is a two-week immersive program for a cohort of select participants. Advanced participants focus on developing skills needed to address real-world academic use cases such as cloud networking, multi-cloud architecture, security, identity management, AI, and working with large datasets.

Finally, we have a program called the CLASS Certification Pathway. Many commercial cloud providers have certificates that they offer. While CLASS doesn't offer certificates right now, we do enable people who work on campuses and are interested in becoming cloud architects or solutions architects, to learn how to work toward that goal.

And here I think it's important to reiterate that CLASS is an evolving program. Every year we're getting advanced cohorts that are stronger and stronger. That means we have to be agile to address greater, and sometimes broader, technical skills and needs.

CLASS is an evolving program. Every year we're getting advanced cohorts that are stronger and stronger.

But getting back to my initial comment about democratizing access to cloud learning, I'd like to note that even as the program evolves to address more technical and broader skill sets, we are watchful to ensure that we're also addressing the needs of those who aren't yet approaching our advanced or even intermediate levels.

Grush: Where will we find CLASS sessions that address current cloud topics? What are some of the topic areas that interest researchers most?

Tan: These days, popular topics often fall in the broad areas of AI or machine learning. And specific favored or highly requested topics right now include GitHub Copilot and language models.

You can find a list of upcoming CLASS workshops online, covering the next couple months.

You can find a list of upcoming CLASS workshops online.

Grush: There are some major cloud companies offering training on their products, of course. Is CLASS different from that training? Does CLASS fill a special place, or even close a gap in cloud learning?

Tan: CLASS is differentiated by two main things. One is that CLASS is hyper-focused on research and higher education. That is very different from the training that's available commercially. We focus on higher ed case studies and discussions that resonate most with the community… Something like, "If I want to be a cloud architect, how do I do that effectively based on the needs and challenges for campus IT?" Or, "If I want to learn about containers, how can I go about working with data most applicable to the research taking place on my campus — like healthcare or satellite data?"

The second thing that differentiates CLASS is that all our programs are considered vendor-neutral. We look at all the different cloud platforms and tools, ranging from industry-leading commercial offerings, all the way to federally funded research clouds like Jetstream2.

Grush: Internet2 is known for its emphasis on serving the research and education community and on building communities of practice within specific knowledge areas. Is the research cloud one of those knowledge areas, as some would say, "built by researchers for researchers"? And is Internet2 finding that the cloud expertise in the community is adding significantly to the cloud knowledge base?

Tan: Yes and yes.

Internet2 actually has multiple cloud communities of practice. Other programs at Internet2 are focused on building cloud communities of practice for campus IT, for example.

For CLASS, we're very focused on building a sustainable community of practice specifically for research in the cloud. And as we do so, we're able to leverage other Internet2 communities of practice to help break down silos across different skill sets, domains, and institutions.

For CLASS, we're very focused on building a sustainable community of practice specifically for research in the cloud… We really are built by the research community, for the research community.

As I've worked in the CLASS program over the past three years, I've seen that it has enabled people to learn, discuss, and go think about solutions they can continuously build on. Then the next cohort comes in, often with new challenges, and continues the evolution even further.

Over the years, CLASS has been building the scaffolding for more expertise in the research cloud. We really are built by the research community, for the research community.