Incorporating PDC Modules Into Computer Science Courses at Jackson State University

The Computer Science Department at Jackson State University (JSU) is updating its curriculum according to the new ABET guidelines. As part of this effort, the computer science faculty members have integrated modules of the NSF/IEEE-TCPP Curriculum Initiative on PDC (Parallel and Distributed Computing) into department-wide core and elective courses offered on fall 2014. These courses are: csc 119 Object Oriented Programming (core), csc 216 Computer Architecture and Organization (core), csc 312 Advanced Computer Architecture (elective), csc 325 Operating Systems (core), csc 350 Organization of Programming Languages (core) and csc 425 Parallel Computing (elective). The inclusion of the PDC modules was gradual and light weighted in the low level courses and more aggressive in the high level courses. Csc 119 Object Oriented Programming provided students with an early introduction to Java Threads: how to create and use. In csc 216 Computer Architecture and Organization students learned about GPUs and were asked to write simple problems using CUDA. Csc 312 Advanced Computer Architecture covered Instruction level and Processor level Parallelism. For csc 325 Operating Systems, mutual exclusion problems and Parallel Computing and Algorithms were introduced. In csc 350 Organization of Programming Languages, students learned about the implementation of threads in Java. Csc 425 Parallel Computing is an advanced study of parallel computing hardware and software issues. Assessment results showed that student perception of PDC concepts was satisfactory with some weakness in writing parallel code. However, students were very excited and motivated to learn about PDC. We were also able to share our experience with the Computer Engineering Department at JSU. New PDC modules will be integrated into some of their courses next fall and spring semesters. Our findings were made available on the Center for Parallel and Distributed Computing Curriculum Development and Educational Resources (CDER) website. In this paper, we will describe our experience of incorporating PDC modules into the aforementioned computer science courses at JSU.