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由并行和分布式计算(PDC)技术组成的大型、异质且不断发展的生态系统。然而，今天从计算机课程毕业的大多数大学生几乎没有接触到PDC的概念和实践。因此，存在一个迫在眉睫的风险，即新兴的科学工作者在使用和开发对进步至关重要的计算基础设施方面准备不足。在大学课程中尽早有效地教授PDC是出了名的困难，部分原因是需要在实际的PDC平台上为学生提供接触和有意义的动手学习机会。该项目依靠模拟技术直接应对这一挑战：它为学生提供不需要访问任何PDC平台的动手学习机会。这使得在全国任何一所高等教育机构有效地教授PDC的所有概念性和实践性主题成为可能。该项目正在开展的教学活动可以融入现有的大学课程，也为从一年级开始开发新课程提供了良好的基础。正如NSF的使命所述，通过支持教育以实现科学劳动力的现代化，该项目促进了科学的进步。多年的网络基础设施研究和开发产生了一套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。至关重要的是，向学生提供实践教学活动，通过这些活动，他们可以获得PDC概念和实践知识，以便加入开发和使用这种网络基础设施的工作队伍。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获得可用于教育目的的安全、有代表性的、稳定的、可能的大型部署。这项工作背后的主要见解是，模拟既促进了参与性，也促进了教学，因为它允许学生体验任意的网络基础设施场景，只需要他们能够访问标准的笔记本电脑。这是可行的，因为最近开发了仿真框架，用于轻松开发复杂分布式系统的仿真器，这些仿真器提供了在教学上准确和可扩展的仿真。鉴于这种洞察和最近的发展，该项目为一系列学生学习目标(SLO)开发了模拟驱动的互动教学活动，从标准的PDC SLO以及与当前和新兴的网络基础设施实践相关的SLO。这些活动是以有先决条件的结构的模块组织的，并提供了从一年级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，学生可以沿着不同的叙事路径，使用可配置的细节级别来执行交互模拟。研究问题包括确定哪些策略、哪些级别的模拟细节对哪些SLO最有效。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势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.