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For PC₃ Participants

The PC₃ Protocol

In this protocol, you’ll find information about how PC₃ courses are delivered, what participants responsibilities are at each institution, how computing resources are managed, and how students can access support. It also outlines the course schedule, software requirements, and roles of course instructor as well as local instrcutor-on-record.

Binder and Files

Guidelines for PC₃ Participants

  1. Participating faculty members (i.e. those that have students from their institutions in the courses) will serve as the local instructor-on-record for all PC₃ courses.

  2. Local instructors-on-record have the following responsibilities:

    1. Register PC₃ courses at their university. This may be done at some institutions using existing graduate course codes.

    2. Ensure that PC₃ courses are scheduled at their institutions according to the delivery schedule agreed upon by the PC₃ working group.

    3. Provide the names and email addresses of those graduate students from their institution that are participating in PC₃ courses to the appropriate PC₃ instructors (see course outlines) and to Alireza Sadeghifar (PC₃ coordinator).

    4. Facilitate student access to DRAC/Cedar computing resources.

    5. Engage in mark reviews in the event that students from their institution make a grade appeal.

  3. PC₃ course instructors have the following responsibilities:

    1. For PC₃ courses involving multiple instructors, it is recommended that one instructor be identified as the course lead and take responsibility for assembling and submitting final course marks (this is currently done by the program coordinator). Note that for courses with six-week modules, some institutions may require marks for two such courses.

    2. Develop course syllabi, lectures, and assignments for portions of their course/module. All material related to the PC₃ modules will be shared with local instructors-on-record and with the PC₃ community.

    3. Deliver courses over Zoom at the scheduled time to all students registered in their course.

    4. Answer student questions on lecture and assignment material outside of class hours.

    5. Mark all assigned work. Marked assignments and tests should be returned to students ideally within one week of the due date.

    6. Provide final marks for the course module at least five working days before the end of the semester during which the course is offered and submit to the program coordinator.

Binder and Files
Typing on a Computer

Computing Resources and Software for Course Work

Program Expectations:

Students must have access to the Fir or Graham clusters (Digital Resource Alliance of Canada (DRAC, formerly known as Compute Canada). We are asking the local instructor-on-record to guide students from their institution to apply for a DRAC account (preferably priority queues (i.e., “rrg” allocations) so as to minimize queue wait times for students) for the assignments associated with PC₃ courses. The assignments are relatively low-demand, and instructors-on-record should not see a significant drain on their allocations.

Course instructors should provide information in their course syllabi on how to obtain access to DRAC and ensure that the software required for the assignments related to their course are either available on DRAC clusters or can be installed by students on their local computers. Students should be provided with instructions if they are required to install software.

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DRAC Support:

Visit DRAC User Roles to Access Resources for information about access to resources based on role (Faculty, grad students, etc.). To apply for an account, see here. Also, see the DRAC Account Management. For the available resources (including Fir), technical documentation, and also how to request resources in the online application form visit the followings: for available software see here, for technical support see here, and for consultation and other inquiries see here.

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