Training Infrastructure as a Service

Area of Science:

• Bioinformatics and computational biology education
• Scientific training infrastructure

Background:

• Hands-on scientific training requires substantial technical resources and expertise for setup and management.
• Instructors face challenges coordinating compute infrastructure, creating knowledge or labor barriers.
• Remote and hybrid teaching models complicate efficient student progress monitoring.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce Training Infrastructure-as-a-Service (TIaaS) as a user-friendly solution for bioinformatics training.
• To provide dedicated, efficient compute resources for Galaxy-based courses and events.
• To enhance the experience for instructors, learners, and infrastructure administrators.

Main Methods:

• Developed Training Infrastructure-as-a-Service (TIaaS) based on Galaxy Europe and Gallantries project.
• Implemented a system for event organizers to register courses and transparently place trainees in a private compute queue.
• Integrated a dashboard for instructors to monitor student progress during training events.

Main Results:

• TIaaS provides dedicated training resources, ensuring fast job completion through a private queue, independent of main queue load.
• An instructor dashboard facilitates remote event management and progress monitoring.
• Over 504 training events and 24,000 learners have utilized TIaaS in the last 60 months.

Conclusions:

• TIaaS significantly improves training delivery for instructors and learners in remote and hybrid settings.
• The platform ensures continuity of learning by utilizing the familiar Galaxy environment.
• TIaaS has a proven track record, supporting a large number of training events and participants.