Concurrent Computing in an Upper-Level Computer Science Curriculum

本项目的主要目标是设计一套全面而灵活的课程材料，涵盖多线程，多进程，共享内存和分布式内存并行，以及在一些共同原则（例如，并发性和非确定性）下的分布式编程。这些材料可以在多个课程中使用，也可以在一个专门的课程中使用。第二个目标是开发抽象底层细节的软件工具，并在单一和统一的接口下完成所有重要的并发操作。此外，这些工具包括一个可视化组件，以帮助学生可视化并发程序的行为，以及同步协议、通信机制、时钟同步和许多其他算法的内部工作。通过统一的课程教材、教学工具和可视化系统，期望学生能够熟悉并发的最新技术，掌握基本的知识和技能，了解如何在不同的环境下处理并发，并为在未来的职业生涯中接触并发应用及其软件开发做好准备。这项工作建立在先前资助的NSF多线程编程教学项目的基础上。一个评估咨询委员会正在协助对这个项目进行形成性和总结性评估，以确定这些材料对学生对内容的理解和他们使用这些工具的生产力的影响。这些材料正在另外三个地点进行测试和评估，以评估它们对不同学生群体的有效性。传播工作是通过在国家和区域会议上举办教员讲习班和短期课程来完成的。这些材料正在编制中，准备由一家国家出版商出版。

omputer Science (31)The primary goal of this project is to design a set of comprehensive and flexible course materials that cover multithreaded, multiprocess, shared memory and distributed memory parallel, and distributed programming under a few common principles (e.g., concurrency and nondeterminism). These materials can be used across several courses or with a single dedicated course. A secondary goal is to develop software tools that abstract low-level details and accomplish all important concurrent operations under a single and unified interface. Furthermore, these tools include a visualization component to help students visualize the behavior of concurrent programs and the inner working of synchronization protocols, communication mechanisms, clock synchronization, and many other algorithms. With unified course materials, pedagogical tools, and a visualization system, it is expected that students can become familiar with the state-of-the-art of concurrency, acquire basic knowledge and skills, know how to handle concurrency under different environments, and be well-prepared to approach concurrent applications and their software development in their future careers. The work builds on a previously funded NSF project on teaching multi-threaded programming. An evaluation advisory committee is assisting in the formative and summative evaluations of this project to determine the impact of the materials on student understanding of the content and their productivity using the tools. The materials are being tested and evaluated at three additional sites to assess their effectiveness for diverse student populations. Dissemination is being accomplished by the development of faculty workshops and short courses at national and regional conferences. The materials are being developed for publication by a national publisher.