First online Elmer/Ice beginner’s course was great success
The first online Elmer/Ice beginner’s course took place from November 23 to 27, with a self-study preparation week based on instruction videos from November 16 to 20. In total there were about 40 participants from all over the world enrolled in this course, which was free of charge and supported by Institut des Géosciences de l’Environnement in Grenoble, France and CSC in Espoo.
The wide spread of timezones of the participants implied that every Zoom online session from the morning was repeated in the evening. The course material (slides, videos and input files) is still accessible via the course page and of course can be further used as reference or self-study material.
Elmer/Ice is a software package based on finite element method and is meant for ice sheet and ice flow modelling. Elmer/Ice is an add-on package to Elmer, an open source multiphysical simulation software mainly developed by CSC.
Besides some constructive suggestions on how to improve this course format, the feedback to the course was generally positive. Encouraged by these positive reactions, the Elmer/Ice team at CSC is considering to provide courses of the same online format also in the post-pandemic future.