At SIGCSE 2009 Micheal Wrinn clearly defined the goal: Make parallel computing normal. In addition to sharing the exceptional examples from your classes, I'm also wondering about the "normal" everyday exercises that have worked for you.
What do you do to introduce the concepts of parallel programming? Tell us what you've done to bring parallelism to the classroom.
Dr. James Long, Oregon Institute of Technology says:
Undergraduate education is typically light on threading and scheduling, especially when it gets down to the nuts and bolts of coding for multithreaded programs. The addition of multi-core environments into the mix is amplifying this shortcoming in undergraduate programs. I have worked directly with Intel engineers to tailor curriculum to my undergraduate students in a way that will captivate their interest and, at the same time, develop programming skills fundamental to multi-core platforms. The introduction of Game Engine Development and Threading Concepts into our curriculum is proving to be a popular topic for students. While they are working on an area of extreme interest, I, as a Professor, am getting in needed threading lessons using Intel tools and technologies for exploring thread synchronization, core performance, deadlocks, and thread optimization. This is proving to be a "win-win". The students are enjoying the programming challenge, and I am enjoying working with these concepts in a hands-on laboratory environment. Thanks to Intel for the tool support, programming samples, and relevant, timely information.
James N. Long
Associate Professor
CSET Department
Oregon Institute of Technology
Jennifer,
During my studies, my professor has given a class on algorithms and data structures. The last chapter of this class was about parallel algorithms. (The German script of this class can be downloaded.) I think that this was already a very good step in the right direction as it provided the theoretical background. However, the content felt very dry and irrelevant withouthands-on labs.
Idealy however, parallel algorithmss would not be handled as a separate subject in a separate chapter, but integrated throughout the whole class on algorithms and data structures.
Kind regards
Thomas
Jennifer,
During my studies, my professor has given a class on algorithms and data structures. The last chapter of this class was about parallel algorithms. (The German script of this class can be downloaded here.) I think that this was already a very good step in the right direction as it provided the theoretical background. However, the content felt very dry and irrelevant without hands-on labs.
Idealy however, parallel algorithms would not be handled as a separate subject in a separate chapter, but integrated throughout the whole class on algorithms and data structures.
Kind regards
Thomas
I am in the pre-final year of Computer Science and Engineering@ Reva Institute of Technology and Management, Bangalore, India.
With Regards,
Pramod S G
Microsoft Student Partner,
Bangalore
Yes, Think Parallel -to make this happen we have had a discussion on Parallen Programming using C - OpenMP and Message Passing Interface(MPI) these libraries make parallel computing normal. Choosing right examples in the text was difficult task, however ISN has helped lot.
Thank you.
Prasanna
In Mexico at University Autonomous of Guadalajara ( http://www.uag.mx ) I'm teaching on computer science faculty. I bring parallel programming at subject "distributed systems" using C, C++, C# and Java ( all with threads ) .
Regards
Jesus Ambriz
Quoting - Jennifer Teal Levine (Intel) At SIGCSE 2009 Micheal Wrinn clearly defined the goal: Make parallel computing normal. In addition to sharing the exceptional examples from your classes, I'm also wondering about the "normal" everyday exercises that have worked for you. 
When I found out about TBB, my fear about concurrent programming is no more. When one has learned in depth about C++ and especially generic programming, taking on a library like TBB is quite logical.
This is a great discussion. A good set of resources to learn more about what a variety of community members are doing to introduce parallelism is found in the Teach Parallel video series on ISN TV. http://www.intel.com/software/TeachParallel
And Jose, we definatly need to get you on the show!
Paul Steinberg
Academic Community Manager
Best regards