4^th Keeping up with Technology: Teaching Parallel, Distributed and High-Performance Computing

GUEST EDITORS

• Sushil Prasad, University of Texas, San Antonio, sushil.prasad@utsa.edu
• Sheikh Ghafoor, Tennessee Tech University, sghafoor@tntech.edu
• Alan Sussman, University of Maryland, als@cs.umd.edu
• Charles Weems, University of Massachusetts, weems@cs.umass.edu
• David Bunde, Knox College, dbunde@knox.edu

SCOPE

This special issue is devoted to the progress in one of the most important challenges facing education pertinent to computing. The work published here is of relevance to those who teach computing technology at all levels, with greatest implications for undergraduate education.

Parallel and distributed computing (PDC) has become ubiquitous to the extent that even casual users depend on parallel processing. This necessitates that every programmer understands how parallelism and distributed programming affect problem solving. Thus, teaching only traditional, sequential programming is no longer adequate. For this reason, it is essential to impart a range of PDC and high performance computing (HPC) knowledge and skills at various levels within the educational fabric woven by Computer Science (CS), Computer Engineering (CE), and related computational science and engineering curricula. However, rapid changes in hardware platforms, languages, programming environments, and advances in research increasingly challenge educators to decide what to teach and how to teach it, in order to prepare students for their careers in technology.

In recognition of the importance of the issue coupled with its challenges, in 2012 the IEEE Technical Committee on Parallel Processing (TCPP) released its Curriculum on Parallel and Distributed Computing for undergraduates following a preliminary version in 2010. The curriculum includes a list of core topics on parallelism for undergraduate studies. In 2011, to facilitate sharing of findings and experiences and fostering the community, the EduPar workshop series was established at TCPP’s flagship IPDPS conference. Inaugurated in 2013, the EduHPC workshop series at SC conference, with greater emphasis on HPC, followed the success of EduPar. Reflecting the truly global nature of the community, in 2015 and 2018 the workshops were expanded with Euro-EduPar, and EduHiPC in conjunction with EuroPar and HiPC for European and South Asian audience. In summary, there are now four workshops per year devoted to PDC and HPC Education. The workshops are very successful, which indicates community’s interest in Parallel and Distributed Computing, in accordance with the necessity of initiating today's students to a technology they will work with in their professional life.

This special issue seeks high quality contributions in the fields of PDC and HPC education. Submissions should be on the topics of EduPar 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, EduHPC 2019, 2020 2021, 2022 and EduHiPC 2019, 2021 workshops, but the submission is open to all. Submissions extending the regular and keynote presentations in these workshops are particularly encouraged, with the expectation of at least 30% new material beyond the content presented at the workshops. This is an opportunity for these authors, whose contributions were already found valuable to the advancement of PDC/HPC computing education, to provide an update on their ongoing work and bring their contributions to the much broader audience of a prestigious archival journal.

TOPICS:

The topics of interest include, but not limited to

• Curriculum design and models for incorporating PDC and HPC topics in core CS/CE curriculum
• Experience with incorporating PDC and HPC topics into core CS/CE courses
• Experience with incorporating PDC and HPC topics in the context of other applications learning
• Pedagogical issues in incorporating PDC and HPC in undergraduate and graduate education, especially in core courses
• Novel ways of teaching PDC and HPC topics, including informal learning environments
• Pedagogical tools, programming environments, infrastructures, languages and projects for PDC and HPC
• Education resources based on high-level programming languages and environments such as Python, CUDA, OpenCL, OpenACC, SYCL, oneAPI, Hadoop, and Spark
• Parallel and distributed models of programming/computation suitable for teaching, learning and workforce development
• e-Learning, e-Laboratory, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC), Small Private Online Courses (SPOC)
• PDC and HPC experiences at non-university levels; secondary school, postgraduate, industry, diffusion of PDC and HPC
• Employers’ experiences with and expectation of the level of PDC and HPC proficiency among new graduates
• Parallel and distributed models of programming and computation suitable for teaching, learning, and workforce development
• Issues and experiences addressing the gender gap in computing and broadening participation of underrepresented groups
• Challenges in remote teaching and evaluations, including those related to meaningful engagement of students and fair assessments
• Issues and experiences with AI/ML vis-a-vis PDC and HPC education

IMPORTANT DATES

• Letter of intent (title and author list due to Guest Editors): Feb 28, 2024 March 31, 2024 (optional)
• Submission of manuscripts to the journal due: May 31, 2024 June 30, 2024
• First round review results: July 30, 2024 August 31, 2024
• Revised manuscripts due for submission: August 30, 2024 September 30, 2024
• Second round review results: September 30, 2024 October 30, 2024
• Final version of accepted papers: October 31, 2024 November 15, 2024
• Publication: December, 2024

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

All manuscripts submission and review will be handled by Elsevier Editorial System Submission site for Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing. All papers should be prepared according to Guide for Authors - Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing. Manuscripts should be no longer than 40 double-spaced pages, not including the title page, abstract, or references. It is important that authors select "VSI:PDC/HPC Education" when they reach the “Article Type” step in the submission process.

For further questions or inquiries, please contact the Guest Editors.