Collaborative Research: CyberTraining: CDL: Preparing Instructors to Offer Experimental Courses in an Updated PDC Curriculum, and Broadening Participation

Indiana University, Bloomington IN

Investigators

Abstract

This effort will develop a cadre of college faculty to pioneer a shift in the computer science curriculum to ensure students are educated in the use of 21st century platforms that pervasively incorporate parallel and distributed computing (PDC). Twentieth century computers were mostly built on the principle of a single processor, executing a sequence of operations. That model is tightly bound into curricula, even though the last decade has seen widespread deployment of multi-core processors, graphics processors, online servers, and the internet of things, all of which depend on the much different PDC mindset for problem solving and programming. Financial, technical, scientific, engineering and medical companies, government laboratories, the department of defense, the intelligence community, and many other sectors are desperately seeking employees who can exploit PDC systems, because the existing workforce was heavily steeped in the older sequential model. Even new graduates continue to learn the old approach because of the considerable inertia in the educational system. Thus, by turning the tide toward incorporation of PDC into the early stages of computer science education, through teaching the teachers, this project will strategically serve the national interest, as stated by NSF's mission: to promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity and welfare; and to secure the national defense. It will be a significant step toward modernizing the emerging workforce to have the computing skills needed for the United States to maintain leadership in all of these areas. The Center for Parallel and Distributed Computing Curriculum Development and Educational Resources (CDER) with the IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on Parallel Processing, developed curriculum guidelines for parallel and distributed computing (PDC) that guided PDC aspects of the ACM Computer Science Curricula 2013. The guideline sought to shift courses in the first two years from the sequential model toward the PDC paradigm. In the modern world, students must see PDC as an aspect of computational problem solving from the very beginning. This project will update the curriculum guideline, with special foci on big data, energy, distributed computing, and exemplars. It will offer grants (encouraging participation by institutions serving underrepresented groups) for faculty to work on course development and attend a workshop where they will be trained in the use of PDC, and in experimental course design and evaluation. The workshops, offered each summer of the grant period, will also support attendance by industrial and government stakeholders to help build a network of relationships. Additional instructors will be offered travel support to attend the workshops, beyond the course development grants.