We at CSC -IT Center for Scientific Computing hope to raise awareness of our computing and data management services that are free of charge for Finnish higher education institutes and research institutes. One way to do this is through training collaboration. This way students find out about our services and learn about data management and high performance computing early on, and can then smoothly continue using our services on research.
We organise around 70 trainings per year, both onsite and online. Lately we have developed self-learning courses, as those were wished for by our customers. We have also started our first training collaboration efforts.
Our collaborating teacher from OAMK, Manne Hannula, has collected a course package from three of our online courses. In spring 2025 this collaboration course was organised for the second time. On both rounds roughly 40 participants participated to the course. Manne introduces the topics and courses to the students, and gives the students couple of extra assignments. He then collects the course certificates as well as the students final reports. "--When we learned about the supercomputers, our smiles grew bigger, as we got access to CSC's Puhti and Mahti supercomputers and their thousands of cores and terabytes! All this within only few ssh and sbatch commands!" Manne replied when we asked how the course was going.
With Master’s Programme in Theoretical and Computational Methods in Helsinki University we have a different approach. They are adding our courses to their course portfolio, so that the master students can more easily find them and select those courses most relevant to them.
Things that Jesse and others are doing are really super too...
We have good experiences of "satellite learning" from CodeRefinery courses, and would love to add that as an option to some of our courses as well. Our "CSC Computing Environment" course is offered online in two parts twice a year. Each part takes 2 half-days. Next courses take place in October and November, and in the spring in March and April. The idea would be that local collaborators could offer a physical classroom, where they could then work with the exercises together, and when needed, ask questions from our specialists via Zoom.
We also offer tailored courses on various topics. For example, Joona Tolonen did a Linux course in XX and that was super rad ... Juha Lento 
joined the Aalto "Intro to Scientific Computing" course in June 2025 by giving a guest lecture on CSCs resources. This kind of collaboration is also possible, but is more depending on our available human resources, and thus needs to be separately agreed upon.
Our course material and self-learning courses are in free use. We also offer Noppe notebooks service as a platform for hosting course environments. Something something. Also Pouta/Rahti is used to host VMs and containers for course environments or something like that
We are happy to continue and widen our collaboration efforts! Should you be interested in getting onboard, contact Eeva Nyrövaara
→ ChatGPT'ed:
Bringing CSC Services Closer to Students Through Training Collaboration
At CSC – IT Center for Science, we’re committed to supporting Finnish higher education and research by offering powerful computing and data management services, completely free of charge for academic use. One of the best ways to raise awareness of these resources is by collaborating on training activities that introduce students to our services early in their academic journey.
Each year, we organise around 70 training sessions, both onsite and online. To better meet user needs, we’ve also launched self-learning courses, which have been well-received. Recently, we’ve taken our first steps into deeper training collaboration with universities and universities of applied sciences.
One great example is our partnership with OAMK’s Manne Hannula. He has crafted a course using a combination of our online materials and his own assignments. The course has already run twice, attracting about 40 students each time. Manne shares: “When we learned about the supercomputers, our smiles grew bigger, as we got access to CSC’s Puhti and Mahti supercomputers and their thousands of cores and terabytes! All this within only a few ssh and sbatch commands!”
Another example comes from the University of Helsinki’s Master's Programme in Theoretical and Computational Methods, where CSC courses are being integrated directly into the course portfolio, making it even easier for students to find relevant training. Integration with university teaching schemes is also being pursued in collaboration with Aalto University. Recently the CSC-driven Practical Deep Learning course was delivered at the Aalto campus, attracting a total of 57 on-site and online participants. Plans for corresponding courses are currently being drawn up with Arcada University of Applied Science. Further to directly benefiting students seeking to gain experience of deep learning workflows and CSC supercomputers, the initiatives with Aalto and Arcada contribute toward the wider LUMI AI Factory teaching and training goals.
We’re also inspired by the “satellite learning” concept, used successfully in CodeRefinery courses. We hope to apply the same model to our "CSC Computing Environment" course. The idea is simple: local teachers host an in-person classroom while connecting with our CSC specialists via Zoom for support during online sessions.
Tailored training is another way we collaborate. For example, Joona Tolonen delivered a Linux course at the University of Helsinki this spring, and Juha Lento joined Aalto University’s "Intro to Scientific Computing" course with a guest lecture on CSC resources. These collaborations are always welcome but require separate agreement depending on our available staff.
All our course materials and self-learning resources are freely available. We also offer support services such as Noppe notebooks for hosting course environments, and Pouta/Rahti for running VMs and containers.
We’re excited to continue building these collaborations across Finland. If you're interested in working with us, please contact Eeva Nyrövaara — we’d love to hear from you!
Link to this? https://www.enccb.be/interviewdirkvalkenborg
“—kun tutustuimme supertietokoneisiin, siitä se hymy voimistui kun saimme pääsyn CSC:n Puhtiin ja Mahtiin sekä pääsimme kiinni niiden tuhansiin ytimiin ja teratavuihin! Ja kaikki tämä vain muutaman ssh-komennon ja sbatchin päässä!”