Teaching parallel and distributedcomputing topics in a hands-on manner is challenging, especially at introductory, undergraduate levels. Participation challenges arise due to the need to provide students with an appr...
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Teaching parallel and distributedcomputing topics in a hands-on manner is challenging, especially at introductory, undergraduate levels. Participation challenges arise due to the need to provide students with an appropriate compute platform, which is not always possible. Even if a platform is provided to students, not all relevant learning objectives can be achieved via hands-on learning on a single platform. In particular, it is typically not feasible to provide students with platform configurations representative of emerging and future cyberinfrastructure scenarios (e.g., highly distributed, heterogeneous platforms with large numbers of high-end compute nodes). To address these challenges, we have developed a set of pedagogic modules that can be integrated piecemeal into university courses. These modules include simulation-driven activities for students to experience relevant application and platform scenarios handson. These activities are supported by simulators developed using the WRENCH simulation framework. After motivating and describing our approach, we present and analyze results obtained from evaluations performed in two consecutive offerings of an undergraduate university course. (c) 2021 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
The paper presents an approach to the design and implementation of web-based environments for practical exercises in parallel and distributedcomputing (PDC). The presented approach introduces minimal development and ...
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The paper presents an approach to the design and implementation of web-based environments for practical exercises in parallel and distributedcomputing (PDC). The presented approach introduces minimal development and operational costs by relying on Everest, a general-purpose platform for building computational web services. The flexibility of proposed service-oriented architecture enables the development of different types of services targeting various use cases and PDC topics. The generic execution services support the execution of different types of parallel and distributed programs on corresponding computing systems, while the assignment evaluation services implement the execution and evaluation of solutions to programming assignments. As was demonstrated by teaching two introductory PDC courses, the presented approach helps to enhance students' practical experience while avoiding low-level interfaces, reducing the grading time and providing a level of automation necessary for scaling the course to a large number of students. In contrast to other efforts, the exploited Platform as a Service model provides the ability to quickly reuse this approach by other PDC educators without installation of the Everest platform. (C) 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
This research is a cross university study of evaluating whether there are differences between demographic factors (gender, age, class standing) and student engagement via unplugged activities introducing parallel and ...
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ISBN:
(纸本)9781450358903
This research is a cross university study of evaluating whether there are differences between demographic factors (gender, age, class standing) and student engagement via unplugged activities introducing parallel and distributedcomputing (PDC) topics in CS1, CS2, and CS3 level courses in an undergraduate computer science (CS) curriculum. The collaboration stemmed from attending a NSF Center for parallel and distributedcomputing Curriculum Development and educational Resources (CDER) PDC Curriculum Early Adopter Grant and Summer Training Program. Initiatives by the National Science Foundation in conjunction with the Institute for Electronic and Electrical Engineers' Technical Committee of parallel Processing (NSF/IEEE-TCPP) encourage and promote the introduction of PDC concepts in the early CS undergraduate courses. The researchers used the [Wiggins, 2017: Assessing Student Perspective of Engagement in Class (ASPECT)] survey to collect data from ~105 undergraduate CS students after each unplugged activity. Demographic data (gender, age, class standing) was added to the survey to determine if there are differences in these and student engagement. For the study, the researchers designed two unplugged activities to demonstrate the fundamental concepts of PDC. The first activity help students learn the key benefits of parallelcomputing, and the limitations imposed by Amdahl's and Gustafson's law. The second activity exhibits the concepts of scheduling and load balancing. Our findings indicate there are no significant differences between gender, age, class standing and student engagement. The researchers plan to continue their research on unplugged activities and student engagement. Additional activities will be developed to introduce other PDC topics.
Computer Science students must understand parallel and distributedcomputing (PDC) concepts to be effective computer scientists in the workforce, as reflected in the 2013 ACM Curriculum guidelines. Significant work ha...
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Computer Science students must understand parallel and distributedcomputing (PDC) concepts to be effective computer scientists in the workforce, as reflected in the 2013 ACM Curriculum guidelines. Significant work has been done by CS educators to develop curriculum materials and increase access to parallel compute environments (PCEs) by leveraging and clustering a plethora of small multicore systems. Even with these resources there is a barrier to entry for students to use PCEs, namely the unfamiliar and complex system software ecosystem of modern PCEs. The OnRamp project lowers that barrier to entry for exploring PDC concepts on a variety of PCEs by abstracting away the details of interacting with the system and focuses the students' attention on the PDC concepts. This top-down approach is in contrast to existing approaches involving all aspects of PDC necessarily being taught before the key concepts can be explored. In this paper we discuss the motivation, design and implementation of OnRamp, a general purpose web portal for supporting the exploration of PDC concepts that harnesses the existing educational resources created by the CS education community. It coaches students through interactive modules that teach them about PDC concepts and PCEs while allowing them to launch parallel applications from day one. (C) 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
The reality of multicore machines as a standard and the prevalence of distributed cloud computing has signaled a need for parallel and distributedcomputing to become integrated into the computer science curriculum. A...
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ISBN:
(纸本)9781450310987
The reality of multicore machines as a standard and the prevalence of distributed cloud computing has signaled a need for parallel and distributedcomputing to become integrated into the computer science curriculum. At the same time, operating system virtualization has become a common technique with open standard tools available to any practitioners. Virtual machines (VMs) installed on available computer lab resources can be used to simulate high-performance cluster computing environments. This paper describes two such virtual clusters in use at small colleges, demonstrates their effectiveness for parallelcomputingeducation, and provides information about how to obtain the VMs for use in an educational lab setting. We have used these clusters to introduce parallelism into several courses in our undergraduate curriculum.
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