ModStore: an Instructional HPC-based Platform for National Science Experiment Big Data Challenge

In this paper, we present an instructional HPC-based platform, ModStore, for Singapore students to learn data science through National Science Experiment (NSE) big data challenge. Before the challenge, Singapore students, ranging from secondary school, high school to junior college, polytechnics and ITE, carry specially designed sensors to collect data on their daily travel and the surrounding environment during the experiment. However, most of the students do not have any programming background to do data science for this big data challenge. To address this issue, we develop ModStore, powered by National Supercomputing Centre, Singapore, which serves as a powerful tool to enable students to learn about the Internet of Things and Big Data in a drag-and-drop manner by building the workflow, analyzing the information, creating graphs, interpreting visualizations, and comparing trends. 180 students were using ModStore to participate this challenge from October to December, 2016. It has been touted as a promising instructional platform for learning Mathematics, statistics and data science.