Pervasive Parallel And Distributed Computing In A Liberal Arts College Curriculum

We present a model for incorporating parallel and distributed computing (PDC) throughout an undergraduate CS curriculum. Our curriculum is designed to introduce students early to parallel and distributed computing topics and to expose students to these topics repeatedly in the context of a wide variety of CS courses. The key to our approach is the development of a required intermediate-level course that serves as a introduction to computer systems and parallel computing. It serves as a requirement for every CS major and minor and is a prerequisite to upper-level courses that expand on parallel and distributed computing topics in different contexts. With the addition of this new course, we are able to easily make room in upper-level courses to add and expand parallel and distributed computing topics. The goal of our curricular design is to ensure that every graduating CS major has exposure to parallel and distributed computing, with both a breadth and depth of coverage. Our curriculum is particularly designed for the constraints of a small liberal arts college, however, much of its ideas and its design are applicable to any undergraduate CS curriculum

Missing Elements of Computer Science Curricula 2013

Rapidly expanding computing domain has forced educational institutions to up-grade existing curricula of computing degree programs. Recently, a joint task force of Association for Computing Machinery and IEEE-Computer Society has published the Strawman Draft of Computer Science Curricula 2013. The Draft has introduced some new ideas to keep computing curricula modern and relevant. The recommended curricula have designed in the light of 6% response rate of the conducted survey. This paper has pointed out some important aspects which need attention to meet the challenges of the 21st century. These aspects include an Ad-hoc approach towards the core body of knowledge, incomplete curriculum guidelines, over-ambitious contents and learning outcomes. Some other missing aspects include computing dispositions, global education, 21st century skills, guideline for inclusion and the hidden curriculum. It is believed the recommendations of this paper may generate some thought provoking ideas to make the computing curricula more robust and effective

A Generic Curriculum Model for Computing Degree Programs

The current literature shows the existing curriculum models are unable to meet the needs of the today2019;s dynami

Bringing green software to computer science curriculum: perspectives from researchers and educators

Only recently has the software engineering community started conducting research on developing energy efficient software, or green software. This is shadowed when compared to the research already produced in the computer hardware community. While research in green software is rapidly increasing, several recent studies with software engineers show that they still miss techniques, knowledge, and tools to develop greener software. Indeed, all such studies suggest that green software should be part of a modern Computer Science Curriculum. In this paper, we present survey results from both researchers’ and educators’ perspective on green software education. These surveys confirm the lack of courses and educational material for teaching green software in current higher education. Additionally, we highlight three key pedagogical challenges in bringing green software to computer science curriculum and discussed existing solutions to address these key challenges. We firmly believe that “green thinking” and the broad adoption of green software in computer science curriculum can greatly benefit our environment, society, and students in an era where software is everywhere and evolves in an unprecedented speed.Portuguese Funding Agency (FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, within project UIDB/50014/2020) and the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) under grant no. CNS-1305359. We also thank the reviewers for their valuable comments and acknowledge the support of the Erasmus+ Key Action 2 project No. 2020- 1-PT01-KA203-078646: “SusTrainable - Promoting Sustainability as a Fundamental Driver in Software Development Training and Education"

The teaching of computer ethics on computer science and related degree programmes. a European survey

Within the Computer Science community, many ethical issues have emerged as significant and critical concerns. Computer ethics is an academic field in its own right and there are unique ethical issues associated with information technology. It encompasses a range of issues and concerns including privacy and agency around personal information, Artificial Intelligence and pervasive technology, the Internet of Things and surveillance applications. As computing technology impacts society at an ever growing pace, there are growing calls for more computer ethics content to be included in Computer Science curricula. In this paper we present the results of a survey that polled faculty from Computer Science and related disciplines about teaching practices for computer ethics at their institutions. The survey was completed by respondents from 61 universities across 23 European countries. Participants were surveyed on whether or not computer ethics is taught to Computer Science students at each institution, the reasons why computer ethics is or is not taught, how computer ethics is taught, the background of staff who teach computer ethics and the scope of computer ethics curricula. This paper presents and discusses the results of the survey

Modeling Women's Elective Choices in Computing

Evidence-based strategies suggest ways to reduce the gender gap in computing. For example, elective classes are valuable in enabling students to choose in which directions to expand their computing knowledge in areas aligned with their interests. The availability of electives of interest may also make computing programs of study more meaningful to women. However, research on which elective computing topics are more appealing to women is often class or institution specific. In this study, we investigate differences in enrollment within undergraduate-level elective classes in computing to study differences between women and men. The study combined data from nine institutions from both Western Europe and North America and included 272 different classes with 49,710 student enrollments. These classes were encoded using ACM curriculum guidelines and combined with the enrollment data to build a hierarchical statistical model of factors affecting student choice. Our model shows which elective topics are less popular with all students (including fundamentals of programming languages and parallel and distributed computing), and which elective topics are more popular with women students (including mathematical and statistical foundations, human computer interaction and society, ethics, and professionalism). Understanding which classes appeal to different students can help departments gain insight of student choices and develop programs accordingly. Additionally, these choices can also help departments explore whether some students are less likely to choose certain classes than others, indicating potential barriers to participation in computing

Comparison of Existing Computing Curricula and the New ACM-IEEE Computing Curricula 2013

The ACM-IEEE Computing Curricula 2005 was published by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the Association for Information Systems (AIS) and the Computer Society (IEEE-CS). After few years and many updates, the new version was published at the end of 2013 year. This last version can be named ACM-IEEE Computing Curricula 2013 (CC2013). In this paper, we present a comparison of the computing curricula degree programs from five countries (Ecuador, France, Germany, Poland and Spain) and the CC2013. The comparison takes into account both the duration and the content of the studies. This comparison can provide several benefits. Firstly, this comparison highlights the differences that exist among the five analysed countries; it can be used to define correspondence tables between different degree programs. Secondly, this comparison also shows the differences from the CC2005 and the following updates (e.g. CC2013) and it shows what should be changed to align with the latest updates.This work has been partially supported by the Prometeo Project by SENESCYT, Ecuadorian Government. This work has been partially supported by the GEODAS-BI (TIN2012-37493-C03-03) project from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness

Teaching Concurrency and Parallelism Concepts with CMRE

Possible methodologies for teaching the concepts of processor heterogeneity and its impact on speedup and efficiency in a parallel system are discussed, as well as energy efficiency of parallel algorithms based on processor power. CMRE (Concurrent Multi Robot Environment) is expanded to be able to consider different virtual clocks in each robot (processor), as well as the cost – both in relation to time and energy consumption – of the operations carried out by the robots (Move, Put Down / Pick Up / Message / Inform). In this paper, we analyze some examples to show how concepts are introduced to students.Facultad de Informátic

Teaching Concurrency and Parallelism Concepts with CMRE

Possible methodologies for teaching the concepts of processor heterogeneity and its impact on speedup and efficiency in a parallel system are discussed, as well as energy efficiency of parallel algorithms based on processor power. CMRE (Concurrent Multi Robot Environment) is expanded to be able to consider different virtual clocks in each robot (processor), as well as the cost – both in relation to time and energy consumption – of the operations carried out by the robots (Move, Put Down / Pick Up / Message / Inform). In this paper, we analyze some examples to show how concepts are introduced to students.Facultad de Informátic

Integrating Security into the Undergraduate Software Engineering Curriculum

This research included a thorough examination of the existing software assurance or what is commonly called software security knowledge, methodologies and what information security technologies is currently being recommended by the information technology community. Finally it is demonstrated how this security knowledge could be incorporated into the curriculum for undergraduate software engineering