Extending access to HPC skills through a blended online course

Extending expertise in parallel computing is critical to all those using high performance computing to gain insights into science and engineering problems. Many campuses do not offer such a course because of course load limits, a lack of faculty expertise, and/or lack of access to appropriate computing resources. MOOCs for this type of course are difficult to scale both because of constraints on computing resources as well as the need for individual attention with programming problems. Using a blended online course with collaborating faculty that offer academic credit for their students, we have been able to facilitate course participation at many institutions that might not otherwise have covered the topic. This has had a significant benefit for both the faculty and students. Our paper summarizes the nature of these impacts and offers some insights on best practices for extending technical courses to multiple institutions.