OSSCAR, an open platform for collaborative development of computational tools for education in science

Abstract

In this paper we present the Open Software Services for Classrooms and Research (OSSCAR) platform. OSSCAR provides an open collaborative environment to develop and access educational resources in the form of web applications, for which various deployment methods are discussed and compared. To minimize efforts in the creation and use of new educational material, OSSCAR combines software tools that have emerged as standards with custom domain-specific ones. The technical solutions adopted to create and distribute content are described and motivated on the basis of reliability, sustainability, ease of uptake and use. Examples from courses in the domains of physics, chemistry, and materials science are shown to demonstrate the style and level of interactivity of typical applications. The tools presented are easy to use, and create a uniform and open environment exploitable by a large community of teachers, students, and researchers with the goal of facilitating learning and avoiding, when possible, duplication of efforts in creating teaching material. Contributions to expand the educational content of the OSSCAR project are welcome. Program summaryProgram Title: OSSCAR Interactive Notebooks for Quantum Mechanics and Computational Materials ScienceCPC Library link to program files:https://doi.org/10.17632/26py5zz9f8.1Developer's repository link:https://github.com/osscar-org/quantum-mechanicsLicensing provisions: MITProgramming language: PythonNature of problem: Among others, computational courses (e.g. on quantum mechanics) can benefit from advanced interactive visualizations of the content. However, on the one hand it might be complicated for teachers to develop such interactive content; on the other hand, students need to be able to access very quickly and efficiently the content, reducing the time needed to install libraries and dependencies that might differ between courses.Solution method: Here, we developed interactive web applications to complement teaching and encourage computational thinking for courses in computational physics, chemistry and materials science, using Jupyter notebooks and their rendering as interactive web applications. The latter is powered by a combination of Voila, to hide code and convert notebooks into live web applications, and (existing or custom) Jupyter widgets to enable interactiveness. The code is ready to be deployed via a number of open approaches.