Powering bioinformatics training with (free) computational infrastructure
The computational infrastructure needed to run data analysis training is now readily available at no cost to Australian educators and researchers. Galaxy Australia has a simple offer: you provide the training, we provide the infrastructure and support. Their "Training Infrastructure as a Service”, or TIaaS, makes training simpler to organise and run. Trainers no longer need to provision virtual machines for each trainee nor find a suitable computer training lab. Galaxy Australia is web accessible, allowing trainees to use any web enabled device to access training.
Trainees get access to the computational power they need and their jobs are optimised to ensure they run quickly. All histories and important data remains accessible on Galaxy Australia after the workshop finishes so new skills can be immediately put to use.
Trainers use a customised dashboard to track their student’s work, allowing for real time control of the workshop progress, whether training in person or remotely. Galaxy Australia administrators also monitor the training event behind the scenes and can fine-tune any resourcing required for the best experience.
Training materials can be selected from the library of tutorials developed and maintained by the worldwide community on the Galaxy Training Network (GTN), or trainers can bring their own curriculum. The GTN materials are written by experts and are regularly refreshed and highly reliable, so trainers can be confident the tools will work. Galaxy Training materials are being used by educators internationally in a growing range of different learning environments.
Training support is offered by the Galaxy Australia team and via a friendly international community who are active on lots of different channels and who welcome participation via working groups and collaborative training events like the Galaxy Smörgåsbord. A free online Train-the-trainer workshop covering learning principles and techniques is also being offered by the international Galaxy community in June.
Australian BioCommons workshops have been testing the TIaaS service for some time now. Training and Communications Officer, Dr Melissa Burke, recommends the service to others organising training events:
“TIaaS helps keep workshops on track. Trainers have live insight into how participants’ jobs are running and can identify sticking points almost before they happen. The special training queue means that everyone has a consistent experience. Even large jobs submitted simultaneously from all around Australia run fast.”
Dr Melissa Burke, Training and Communications Officer
Australian BioCommons
TIaaS recently supported a class of over 70 Protein Chemistry students at La Trobe University to analyse their own proteomics data on Galaxy using the Morpheus database search tool.
“The students ran their analyses right away and I could see there were no unexplained problems. Thanks to the advice of the Galaxy Australia team I made several public histories ahead of time for the students, giving them quick access to their own proteomics mass-spectra file to work on.”
Dr Rohan Lowe, Mass-Spec Facility Manager (Proteomics)
La Trobe University-Proteomics and Metabolomics Platform
Dr Matt Padula, Director University of Technology Sydney Proteomics Core Facility, also makes extensive use of Galaxy Australia for proteomics training. Alongside his technical support and instrumentation services, Matt regularly uses TIaaS to keep track of concurrent tasks, facilitating his tailored support of individual students.
TIaaS frees trainers from setting up and maintaining computational resources for their training events. With Galaxy Australia providing the compute and back-end support for data analysis training, trainers can focus on student needs and learning outcomes. All costs are covered by the Australian BioCommons for Australian users.