Center for Parallel and Distributed Computing Curriculum Development and Educational Resources PDC Curriculum Early Adopter Grant and Summer Training Program

Center for Parallel and Distributed Computing Curriculum Development and Educational Resources
PDC Curriculum Early Adopter Grant and Summer Training Program
Download Printable Version

The CDER Center is pleased to announce a summer program to help faculty incorporate Parallel and Distributed Computing (PDC) into courses for students in their first two years of undergraduate study.

Highlights:

$4250 grant to each of 16 participants
Grant recipients attend a one-week, online training workshop (August 10-14, 2020) hosted by UMass, Amherst Training includes PDC content, and educational evaluation methodology
Focus this year will be on Introductory Programming and Data Structures, courses
Recipients implement PDC course enhancements or new course(s) in academic year 2020-2021, then write and submit a paper describing their course experiment and evaluation experience
Instructors may also apply to just participate in the training, with no grant or other obligations.
Application Deadline: July 6, 2020
Notification: July 13, 2020

Program Overview

The $4250 grant is meant to be used in support of curriculum development. Because we have moved to online instruction, the grant does not include support for travel to the workshop this year. There is no fee for the workshop itself.

Training will be a combination of learning to use PDC tools, learning how to design and instrument an
experimental course for meaningful evaluation, and pedagogical approaches for engaging a diverse set of students in PDC studies.

The expectation is that grant recipients will develop experimental versions of course enhancements, or a new
course or courses, to be offered in the academic year following the training. Participants commit to preparing a paper that reports the results of their efforts, based on application of the evaluation methodologies covered in the training, and submitting it for publication. The grant is also intended to help support travel to present the paper. Any courseware that is developed will be contributed to the CDER exemplars public repository so that others may benefit from these course development efforts.

Grant Restrictions

US citizens will receive the grant as a stipend, and will be sent a 1099 miscellaneous income form at the end of the year. Non-citizens may only be reimbursed for actual expenses by submitting receipts to UMass.
Reimbursable expenditures would include, equipment, software licensing fees, supplies, guests speaker cost, etc., in support of the course development, and travel costs associated with presenting research results at a conference. Non-citizens may not use the grant money as supplemental income. We regret that we are not able, under NSF rules for disbursement of participant support costs, to route the grant through the participant’s institution. We also regret that we cannot support international participants this year. Participants from the 2019 training may apply for a new project, but priority will be given to those who have not previously received a course development grant. Because this year we are addressing the same set of courses as was covered in 2018, participants from 2018 may not reapply.

Application Process

To apply, submit a brief proposal to the CDER Center using Easy Chair. The proposal should include:

• Applicant’s name
• Academic position
• Institutional affiliation
• Address
• Email
• Phone number
• Description of institution (e.g., 4-year college, 2000 students, 100 CS majors, 8 CS faculty)
• Whether applying for grant or just to attend the training

For each course that will be enhanced with new PDC content:

• Course number and title
• Year(s) in which it is taken (Freshman, Sophomore, Junior, Senior)
• Required or elective
• Semester or quarter length (weeks)
• Number of credits
• Frequency of offering (number of terms offered per year)
• Single or multiple sections (if multiple, indicate whether you teach some or all)
• Taken by majors only, open to limited other majors, general service course
• Typical enrollment number
• If an elective for majors, indicate the fraction of a graduating class who take the course
• Indication that changes are allowed (e.g., approved by curriculum committee)
• Attach an existing course syllabus
• List the topics from the PDC curriculum you hope to introduce as a result of the enhancement.

For each entirely new course that will be created to offer PDC content:

• Course number and title
• Term it will first be offered
• Student years that it will be open to (Freshman, Sophomore, Junior, Senior)
• Will it become a requirement or is it planned to remain an elective?
• Semester or quarter length (weeks)
• Number of credits
• Planned frequency of offering (number of terms per year, or one-time offering)
• Open to majors only, open to limited other majors, general service course
• Planned enrollment size
• Indication of feasibility of offering course (e.g., “Curriculum committee is OK with trying this next Spring.”)
• Attach a preliminary syllabus (or a copy of a course proposal form) if available
• List the topics from the PDC curriculum you hope to cover in the course.
• Provide a brief (few sentences) description of your background in parallel and distributed computing, if any, and what you hope to learn from attending the training. Briefly tell us about your motivation for adding PDC content to your course curriculum.

Apply through EasyChair using CDER Summer PDC Training 2020:

https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=cdersummer2020

Also see https://grid.cs.gsu.edu/~tcpp/curriculum/?q=the-early-adopter-program.html for updates.