EAGER: Collaborative Research: Developing a Parallel and Distributed Computing Concepts Curriculum Enhancement for the Computer Science Principles Course

University Of Maryland, College Park, College Park MD

Investigators

Abstract

This project is initiating design of a Parallel and Distributed Computing (PDC) curriculum enhancement for the Computer Science Principles (CS0) course that is also applicable to the corresponding high school advanced placement (AP) course. Modern computing systems routinely employ high levels of parallelism (e.g., multiple cores, graphics processors) and distributed computing (e.g., cloud services). PDC significantly affects daily lives, and its importance in solving meaningful societal problems can inspire students to take a deeper interest in applying computing in STEM fields and beyond. However, most CS0 curricula are founded predominantly on older, sequential models of computing. CS0 has multiple purposes that address many audiences, and is now seen as a vehicle for increasing interest among students, especially from underrepresented groups, for studying computing in depth or to major in computer science. It has thus been the subject of an effort to create a new AP exam, with associated high school courses. Since the AP exam is still in a pilot phase, there is a brief window for amending the curriculum to reflect 21st century computing. The potentially vast impact of the AP course could quickly settle into educating students under the old sequential paradigm, acquiring an inertia that makes it difficult to change. This collaborative effort is developing PDC curriculum guidelines for CS0 and AP courses through gathering expert input and involving necessary stakeholders to ensure that an appropriate curriculum is developed and adopted. The goal is for students to gain an understanding of how modern computing technology actually functions, rather than being taught an obsolete operational model. The effort is following a process similar to the proposers' highly successful prior effort to design a PDC guideline for undergraduate curricula, which was incorporated into the ACM standard curriculum. The approach begins with a thorough survey of the state of practice in covering PDC topics in CS0. The survey is followed by a workshop attended by experts and stakeholders to draw upon their knowledge and experience. Then a select steering committee is formed that advises the investigators on the design of a curriculum and helps them identify means to bring it to fruition. The effort seeks the broadest possible dissemination of the results to have the greatest possible impact. Broad impact is the core of this effort, which seeks to expand awareness and appreciation of the important concepts at the foundation of PDC, to students in many different disciplines and in high school. Making these interesting and exciting topics more accessible to a wider range of students should generate deeper interest in the study of computer science and the application of concurrent computation in science, engineering, and commerce. Advancing PDC education further enables advances in science and engineering, which depend ever more on high performance computing, by providing the next generation of practitioners and researchers with the necessary skills and knowledge to routinely recognize how and where PDC concepts may be applied.