Collaborative Research: CyberTraining: Implementation: Small: Integrating core CI literacy and skills into university curricula via simulation-driven activities

21世纪的科学和社会进步依赖于一个庞大的、异构的、不断发展的并行和分布式计算（PDC）技术生态系统。然而，今天大多数从计算机专业毕业的大学生几乎没有接触过PDC的概念和实践。因此，一个迫在眉睫的风险是，新兴的科学劳动力在使用和开发那些对进步至关重要的计算基础设施方面准备不足。众所周知，在大学课程中尽早有效地教授PDC是非常困难的，部分原因是需要为学生提供在实际PDC平台上有意义的实践学习机会。该项目通过模拟技术直接解决了这一挑战：它为学生提供了不需要访问任何PDC平台的动手学习机会。这使得在全国任何高等教育机构有效地教授PDC概念和实践主题的全部范围成为可能。在这个项目中开发的教学活动可以纳入现有的大学课程，并为从大一开始开发新课程提供坚实的基础。通过支持教育以实现科学队伍的现代化，该项目促进了科学的进步，这是美国国家科学基金会的使命。多年的网络基础设施研究和开发已经产生了一组丰富的抽象和可互操作的软件实现，可以利用广泛的硬件平台。为学生提供动手教学活动是至关重要的，通过这些活动，他们可以获得PDC概念和实践知识，这是他们加入开发和使用该网络基础设施的劳动力所必需的。要求在实际的硬件和软件堆栈上进行这些活动限制了参与，因为只有少数机构能够访问可用于教育目的的安全、稳定和可能的大型部署。这项工作背后的主要观点是，模拟促进了参与和教学，因为它允许学生体验任意的网络基础设施场景，只需要他们有一台标准的笔记本电脑。这是可行的，因为最近开发了仿真框架，可以很容易地开发复杂分布式系统的模拟器，从而提供教学上准确和可扩展的仿真。鉴于这一见解和最近的发展，该项目为一系列学生学习目标（slo）开发了模拟驱动的交互式教学活动，范围从标准的PDC slo到与当前和新兴的网络基础设施实践相关的slo。这些活动以模块的形式组织，具有先决条件结构，并具有从大一开始融入现有大学课程的指导方针。采用了几种教学策略，通过这些策略，学生可以沿着各种叙述路径执行具有可配置细节级别的交互式模拟。研究问题包括确定哪种策略，哪种级别的模拟细节，最适合哪种slo。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Scientific and societal progress in the 21st century relies on a large, heterogeneous, and evolving ecosystem of Parallel and Distributed Computing (PDC) technologies. And yet, most college students graduating today from computing curricula have little exposure to PDC concepts and practices. There is thus an imminent risk that the emerging scientific workforce will be ill-prepared for using and developing those computing infrastructures that are key to progress. Teaching PDC early and effectively in university curricula is notoriously difficult, in part due to the need to provide students with access to and meaningful hands-on learning opportunities on actual PDC platforms. This project addresses this challenge directly by relying on simulation technology: it provides students with hands-on learning opportunities that do not require access to any PDC platforms. This makes it possible to teach the full gamut of PDC conceptual and practical topics effectively and at any higher education institution in the nation. The pedagogic activities being developed in this project can be integrated into existing university courses and also provide a sound basis for developing new courses, starting at freshman levels. By supporting education in a view to modernizing the scientific workforce, this project promotes the progress of science, as stated by NSF's mission.Years of Cyberinfrastructure research and development have resulted in a rich set of abstractions and interoperable software implementations that can leverage a wide range of hardware platforms. It is crucial to provide students with hands-on pedagogic activities through which they can acquire the PDC conceptual and practical knowledge necessary for them to join a workforce that develops and uses this Cyberinfrastructure. Requiring that these activities be conducted on actual hardware and software stacks limits participation because only few institutions have access to secure representative, stable, and possibly large deployments that can be used for educational purposes. The main insight behind this work is that simulation promotes both participation and pedagogy because it allows students to experience arbitrary Cyberinfrastructure scenarios, only requiring that they have access to a standard laptop computer. This is feasible due to the recent development of simulation frameworks for easily developing simulators of complex distributed systems that afford simulations that are both pedagogically accurate and scalable. Given this insight and this recent development, this project develops simulation-driven interactive pedagogic activities for a spectrum of Student Learning Objectives (SLOs), ranging from standard PDC SLOs as well as SLOs relevant to current and emerging Cyberinfrastructure practices. The activities are organized in modules with a prerequisite structure, and come with guidelines for integration into existing university courses, starting at freshman levels. Several pedagogic strategies are employed through which students execute interactive simulations with configurable levels of details along various narrative paths. Research questions include determining which strategies, with which levels of simulation details, work best for which SLOs.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.