High Performance Computing (HPC) and, in general, Parallel and Distributed Computing (PDC) has become pervasive, from supercomputers and server farms containing multicore CPUs and GPUs, to individual PCs, laptops, and mobile devices. Even casual users of computers now depend on parallel processing. Therefore, it is important for every computer user (and especially every programmer) to understand how parallelism and distributed computing affect problem solving. It is essential for educators to impart a range of PDC and HPC knowledge and skills at multiple levels within the educational fabric woven by Computer Science (CS), Computer Engineering (CE), and related computational curricula including data science. Companies and laboratories need people with these skills, and, as a result, they are finding that they must now engage in extensive on-the-job training. Nevertheless, rapid changes in hardware platforms, languages, and programming environments increasingly challenge educators to decide what to teach and how to teach it, in order to prepare students for careers that are increasingly likely to involve PDC and HPC.

This workshop invites unpublished manuscripts from academia, industry, and government laboratories on topics pertaining to the needs and approaches for augmenting undergraduate and graduate education in Computer Science and Engineering, Computational Science, and computational courses for both STEM and business disciplines with PDC and HPC concepts. Recently the workshop also extended its focus to data science and computational science education. Additionally, we highly encourage manuscripts that validate their innovative approaches through the systematic collection and analysis of information to evaluate  their performance and impact.

The workshop is particularly dedicated to bringing together stakeholders from industry (both hardware vendors and employers), government labs, and academia in the context of SC-18. The goal is for each to hear the challenges faced by others, to learn about various approaches to addressing these challenges, and to have opportunities to exchange ideas and solutions. In addition to contributed talks, this workshop may feature invited talks on opportunities for collaboration, resource sharing, educator training, internships, and other means of increasing cross-fertilization between industry, government, and academia.

This effort is in coordination with the NSF/TCPP curriculum initiative on Parallel and Distributed Computing and the Center for Parallel and Distributed Computing Curriculum Development and Educational Resources (CDER).

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

1. Pedagogical issues in incorporating PDC and HPC in undergraduate and graduate education, especially in core courses
2. Novel ways of teaching PDC and HPC topics
3. Data Science and Big Data aspects of teaching HPC/PDC including early experience with data science degree programs.
4. Evidence-based educational practices for teaching HPC/PDC topics that provides evidence about what works best under what circumstances.
5. Experience with incorporating PDC and HPC topics into core CS/CE courses and in domain Computational Science and Engineering courses
6. Pedagogical tools, programming environments, infrastructures, languages, and projects for PDC and HPC
7. Employers' experiences with and expectation of the level of PDC and HPC proficiency among new graduates
8. Education resources based on higher-level programming languages and environments such as X10, Chapel, Haskell, Python, Cilk, CUDA, OpenCL, OpenACC, Hadoop, and Spark.  
9. Parallel and distributed models of programming and computation suitable for teaching, learning, and workforce development.
10. Projects or units that introduce students to concepts relevant to Internet of Things, networking, or other topics in mobile devices or sensor networks.
11. Issues and experiences addressing the gender gap in computing and broadening participation of underrepresented groups.

Travel support: 10-15 travel awards of up to $1500/award for the NSF/TCPP Curriculum Early Adopter authors of papers, peachy assignments or posters.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

We are accepting submissions for Full papers (8-10 pages) and Peachy Parallel Assignments (1-page abstract) categories. Please see details below.

Papers: Authors should submit 8-10 page papers in pdf format through the submission site at https://submissions.supercomputing.org/?page=Submit&id=SC18WorkshopEduHPCPapersSubmission&site=sc18. Submissions should be formatted as single-spaced, double-column pages (IEEE format), including figures, tables, and references. All accepted papers will be published in the IEEE TCHPC Proceedings and will be included in the IEEE Xplore digital library. Accepted papers will be available from the CDER website approximately 2 weeks before the workshop so attendees can read papers before attending the talks. Authors may optionally (modestly) revise their papers to incorporate feedback from the workshop.

SC Reproducibility Initiative: Considering SC’s focus on reproducibility, we highly encourage authors to provide an artifact description appendix (up to two pages) along with their manuscript, describing the details of their software environments and computational experiments to the extent that an independent person could replicate their results. More information on the reproducibility initiative can be found here. In the context of the educational research, the artifact description appendix may contain the detailed description of the tools or techniques, classroom evaluation settings, metrics, evaluation results etc.

Peachy Parallel Assignments: Course assignments are integral to student learning in computing and also play an important role in student perceptions of the field. Instructors love to give exciting assignments that highlight important applications while emphasizing important principles and techniques. Unfortunately, creating great assignments is time-consuming and even our best efforts do not always succeed.  With this in mind, EduHPC is introducing a session showcasing "Peachy Parallel Assignments" - high-quality assignments, previously-tested in class, that are readily adoptable by other educators teaching topics in parallel and distributed computing. This effort is inspired by "Nifty Assignments" (http://nifty.stanford.edu).

We invite submissions of "Peachy Parallel Assignments" to highlight in this special session.  Assignments may be previously published, but the author must have the right to publish a description of it and share all supporting materials. We are seeking assignments that are

1) Tested - All submitted assignments should have been used successfully in a class.

2) Adoptable - Preference will be given to assignments that are widely applicable and easy to adopt.  Traits of                         such assignments include coverage of widely-taught concepts, using common parallel languages and widely-                       available hardware, having few prerequisites, and (with variations) being appropriate for different levels of                         students.

3) Cool and Inspirational - Peachy assignments should be fun and inspiring for students.  They encourage                               students to spend time with the relevant concepts.  Ideal assignments are those that students want to                               demonstrate to their roommate.

Assignments can cover any topics in Parallel and Distributed Computing.

Initial submissions should be a 1-page PDF document describing the assignment and its context of use. What is the main idea? What concepts are covered?  Who are its targeted students?  In what context have you used it?  What prerequisite material does it assume they have seen?  What are its strengths and weaknesses?  Are there any variations that may be of interest?

This initial description should be submitted through Linklings in the EduHPC Peachy Assignments track. https://submissions.supercomputing.org/?page=Submit&id=SC18WorkshopEduHPCPeachyAssignmentsSubmission&site=sc18

If accepted, authors will be asked to submit their (a) 1-page camera-ready paper, and (b) a poster to be presented and published on the workshop website, and (c) assignment (the file actually given to students) and any supporting materials (given code, etc.) to be archived and maintained on CDER courseware repository (https://tcpp.cs.gsu.edu/curriculum/?q=courseware_management).

Publication of Peachy Assignments  in one form or another through IEEE TCHPC is currently being investigated. Contact us for more information.

IMPORTANT DATES

Abstract Submission deadline:Monday, August 20, 2018 (11:59 pm Anywhere on Earth)

Paper Submission deadline:Monday, August 27, 2018 (11:59 pm Anywhere on Earth)

Paper Author notification: Monday, September 24, 2018 
Paper Camera-ready paper deadline: Friday, October 5, 2018

Peachy Assignment submission deadline: Friday September 7, 2018 (11:59 pm Anywhere on Earth)

Peachy Assignment Author notification: Monday, September 24, 2018
Peachy Assignment Camera Ready: Monday October 1, 2018

Early conference registration deadline: Friday October 12, 2018

Workshop: Sunday, November 11, 2018

PANELS and SPECIAL SESSIONS

Because EduHPC will be a full-day workshop, there will be some special sessions.  Please check back to the EduHPC 2018 website in the near future for details on how to participate in a special session. Proposals for panels and special sessions are also welcome.  If you have an idea for a panel or a special session, please contact the program committee chairs, Erik Saule (esaule@uncc.edu), Debzani Deb (debd@wssu.edu).

ORGANIZATION:

Organizing Committee:
Sushil Prasad, Georgia State University, USA
Martina Barnas, Indiana University, Bloomington, USA
Sheikh Ghafoor, Tennessee Technological University, USA
Anshul Gupta, IBM Research, USA
Cynthia Phillips, Sandia National Laboratories, USA
Arnold Rosenberg, Northeastern University, USA
Alan Sussman, University of Maryland, USA
Charles Weems, University of Massachusetts, USA
Ramachandran Vaidyanathan, Louisiana State University, USA

Workshop Chair: Sushil K. Prasad, Georgia State University, USA

Program Chair: Erik Saule, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, USA

Program Vice Chair: Debzani Deb, Winston-Salem State University, USA

Peachy Assignments Coordinator: David Bunde, Knox College, USA

Proceedings Chair: Satish Puri, Marquette University, USA

Program Committee: 

Joel Adams, Calvin College, USA
David Bunde, Knox College, USA
Bruce Char, Drexel University, USA
Javier Cuenca, University of Murcia, Spain
Joshua Eckroth, Stetson University, USA
Trilce Estrada, University of New Mexico, USA
Nickolas Falkner, University of Adelaide, Australia
Samantha S. Foley, University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, USA
Nasser  Giacaman, University of Auckland, New Zealand
Alfredo Goldman, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil
Ganesh Gopalakrishnan, University of Utah, USA
Anshul Gupta, IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, USA
Devangi Parikh, University of Texas at Austin, USA
Julio Sahuquillo, Universitat Politecnica de Valencia, Spain
Jawwad Shamsi, FAST National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences, Pakistan
Gokarna Sharma, Kent State University, USA
Elizabeth Shoop, Macalester College, USA
Jean-Marc Vincent, Grenoble Alpes University, France