An Interdisciplinary Practical Course on the Application of Grid Computing

This article gives an overview of the organization and realization of an interdisciplinary practical course on grid computing. Both the lecturers and the attendees came from diverse backgrounds and disciplines including computer science, physics, medicine, and the humanities. We describe the management of the course, the assignments, the infrastructure developed and experienced in this interdisciplinary practical course at the University of Göttingen. The challenges and issues, the benefits, the expectations and their fulfillment are discussed. The experiences of the course show that diverse disciplines can be brought together to convey the benefits of grid technology by experiencing varied grid applications in production-like grid environments.