Concurrent Computing in an Upper-Level Computer Science Curriculum

计算机科学(31)这个项目的主要目标是设计一套全面和灵活的课程材料，涵盖多线程、多进程、共享内存和分布式内存并行，以及在几个共同原则(例如，并发性和不确定性)下的分布式编程。这些材料可以在多个课程中使用，也可以与单一的专用课程一起使用。第二个目标是开发抽象低级别细节的软件工具，并在一个统一的界面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，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。通过统一的课程材料、教学工具和可视化系统，学生可以熟悉并发的最新技术，获得基本的知识和技能，知道如何在不同的环境下处理并发，并为在未来的职业生涯中处理并发应用程序和他们的软件开发做好准备。这项工作建立在美国国家科学基金会之前资助的一个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该项目进行形成性和终结性评估，以确定材料对学生对内容的理解和他们使用工具的生产率的影响。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。正在通过在国家和区域会议上举办教员讲习班和短期课程来实现传播。这些材料正在由一家全国性出版商开发出版。

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.