Workshop 408 : Integrating Parallel and Distributed Computing in Early CS Courses

Workshop 408 : Integrating Parallel and Distributed Computing in Early CS Courses
at SIGCSE
March 5 (Saturday)

CDER center is organizing an in-person workshop how to integrate Parallel and Distributed Computing at SIGCSE (https://sigcse2022.sigcse.org/schedule/workshops/#block-saturday) on March 5 (Saturday) from 3:00 to 6:00 pm. Participants will receive a stipend of $300. Please email if you have any questions to Sheikh Ghafoor, Tennessee Tech University, sghafoor@tntech.edu. Following are the tentative agenda for the workshop
 

1. Parallel and Distributed Computing Curriculum Overview (15min)
   1. Rationale Goals, Process, resources
   2. Key topics, including new topics from NSF/IEEE curriculum update. 
2. Curriculum implementation exemplars (1hr 35 min.)
   1. 4 – 35-minute talks and hands-on activities
   2. Examples of implementing PDC topics in courses. Including CS Principles, CS1, CS2
   3. Participants may optionally follow code examples on their laptops.
   4. 15-minute break after the first two talks.
3. Summer 22 faculty training programs (10 min)
   1. U. Massachusetts training topics.
   2. Tennessee Tech training topics.
   3. Application process for stipend

Organizers:
Sheikh Ghafoor, Tennessee Tech University
Sushil Prasad, University of Texas San Antonio
Charles Weems, University of Massachusetts
 
Workshop 408 : Integrating Parallel and Distributed Computing in Early CS Courses
 
All computing devices that students use currently have multiple cores as well as GPU in many cases. Most of their favorite applications use multiple cores and numbers of distributed processors. However, we are still teaching them to solve problems using only sequential thinking. Why? This hands-on workshop will demonstrate how easy it is to open their eyes to exploiting concurrency in problem solving, starting in their earliest courses. You'll be participating in unplugged activities that will help students to recognize examples of Parallel Distributed Computing concepts and concurrency in the world around them. Participants will learn how freely available libraries can be used to naturally exploit parallelism, though both plugged and unplugged activities. No equipment or experience is necessary for the activities though a laptop that can run C++, Java, and python is recommended for following along with some code examples. Active learning plugged and unplugged modules that have been used successfully to teach PDC concept in early CS courses will be shared. The target audience for this workshop are faculty who teaches in undergraduate computing programs, especially early computing courses, and do not have parallel and distributed computing expertise. Participants will receive a stipend of $300 to defray their cost of registration and one-night hotel stay. Laptop required.