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

• 05/22/24

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.