Unplugged Parallelism for First-Year CS Majors

Abstract

We use "unplugged" activities to introduce parallel concepts in a first-year seminar for Computer Science majors. Student teams explore parallel approaches to computational tasks. Pre- and post-activity surveys, and a reflection paper, measure the impact of these activities on students' views about parallel programming. Our goal is to encourage parallel thinking about programming tasks before sequential approaches become ingrained. Computer Science curricula have traditionally focused on sequential approaches to programming, which were well matched to earlier computer systems. However, current systems almost all use multiprocessor CPUs, and are frequently used in clusters or networks of multiple computers. Recent curricular guidelines from organizations such as ACM and ABET recommend exposure to parallel computing concepts.