Teaching Parallel and Distributed Computing topics for the Undergraduate Computer Science Student

Parallel and distributed systems programming skills has become a common requirement in the development of modern applications. It is imperative that an updated curriculum in computer science include these topics not only as advanced (often elective) programming courses. There is a general consensus that parallel programming topics should be spread in contents of several core courses and these topics should be included in any undergraduate computer science or software engineering curriculum. In this paper we describe how parallel and distributed computing and, specifically concurrent and parallel programming topics, are being included in the updated computer science curriculum of the degree in computer science at the Río Cuarto National University, Argentina. Also, we cover some suggested approaches for teaching parallel programming topics in a set of core courses to achieve a consistent, increasing and complete training in high performance computing. To achieve these goals, we propose a set of modules which includes basic and advanced high performance computing, parallel and distributed systems programming topics, to be included in core courses. Also, we describe the use of existing tools and the development of new high level tools suitable for teaching parallel programming which can be used in different courses. The aim of using these tools and techniques is to reduce the gap between sequential and parallel programming teaching methods. Keywords-Parallel programming, Education, Syllabus, Undergraduate Curriculum, Program skeletons.