A Module-based Approach to Adopting the 2013 ACM Curricular Recommendations on Parallel Computing
A Module-based Approach to Adopting the 2013 ACM Curricular Recommendations on Parallel Computing
复制标题
采用基于模块的方法来采用 2013 年 ACM 并行计算课程建议
DOI：
10.1145/2676723.2677270
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发表时间：
2015
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
H. Thiry
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Martin Burtscher;W. Peng;Apan Qasem;Hongchi Shi;D. Tamir;H. Thiry
The widespread deployment of multicore systems over the last decade has brought about major changes in the software and hardware landscape. The resulting importance of parallel computing is reflected in the 2013 Curriculum Guidelines developed by the joint ACM/IEEE taskforce. The document recommends increased coverage of parallel computing and describes a new Knowledge Area on this topic. These recommendations have already been adopted by several universities in the form of new parallel programming courses. Implementing the recommendations in a complete curriculum, however, poses many challenges, including deciding on existing material to be removed, complying with administrative and ABET requirements, and maintaining caps on graduation credit hours. This paper describes an alternative approach for adopting the 2013 curricular recommendations on parallel computing. Specifically, we use a module based approach that introduces parallel computing concepts and re-iterates them through a series of short, self-contained modules taught across several lower-division courses. Most of these concepts are then combined into a new senior-level capstone course on parallel programming. Each module covers parallelism aspects in the context of a conventional computer science topic, thus enabling us to include parallel computing without a major overhaul of the curriculum. Evaluations conducted during the first year show encouraging results for this early-and-often approach in terms of learning outcomes, student interest, and confidence gains.
