PLUMED Tutorials: a collaborative, community-driven learning ecosystem

TL;DR

PLUMED Tutorials is a community-driven platform that develops, shares, and maintains online tutorials for computational software, enhancing accessibility and continuous learning through collaborative and automated tools.

Contribution

It introduces a collaborative, automated approach to creating and updating online tutorials, ensuring they stay current with software developments and are accessible to a broad community.

Findings

Tutorials are interconnected for structured learning

Automated annotations provide broader context

Repository management ensures compatibility with updates

Abstract

In computational physics, chemistry, and biology, the implementation of new techniques in a shared and open source software lowers barriers to entry and promotes rapid scientific progress. However, effectively training new software users presents several challenges. Common methods like direct knowledge transfer and in-person workshops are limited in reach and comprehensiveness. Furthermore, while the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the benefits of online training, traditional online tutorials can quickly become outdated and may not cover all the software's functionalities. To address these issues, here we introduce ``PLUMED Tutorials'', a collaborative model for developing, sharing, and updating online tutorials. This initiative utilizes repository management and continuous integration to ensure compatibility with software updates. Moreover, the tutorials are interconnected to form a structured learning path and are enriched with automatic annotations to provide broader context. This paper illustrates the development, features, and advantages of PLUMED Tutorials, aiming to foster an open community for creating and sharing educational resources.