CS-Materials: A system for classifying and analyzing pedagogical materials to improve adoption of parallel and distributed computing topics in early CS courses

Abstract

Abstract The NSF/IEEE-TCPP Parallel and Distributed Computing curriculum guidelines released in 2012 (PDC12) represents an effort to bring more parallel computing concepts into early computer science courses. To date, it has been moderately successful, with the inclusion of some PDC topics in the ACM/IEEE Computer Science curriculum guidelines in 2013 (CS13) and mentions of PDC topics in the Computing Curricula 2020. Additionally, some universities in the U.S. and around the world have started to cover some of these topics in early CS courses. Lack of knowledge of or training in PDC topics among instructors, along with the need to align early CS course content with prescribed learning objectives in the curricula, are often cited as hurdles for adoption in early CS courses. There have been attempts at bringing PDC materials, such as textbook chapters, lecture slides, assignments, and demos to assist instructors of early CS classes. However, the effort required on the part of the instructor to figure out what is relevant to a particular class can be daunting. In this work, we contend that simultaneously classifying pedagogical materials against the CS13 and the PDC12 curriculum guidelines can address some of the challenges faced by instructors and can promote broader adoption of PDC materials in early CS courses. We present CS Materials, a system that can be used to categorize pedagogical materials according to well-known and established curricular guidelines. We show that CS Materials can be leveraged 1) by instructors of early CS courses to find materials that are similar to the one that they use but that also cover PDC topics, and 2) by instructors to check the coverage of topics (and gaps) in a course, and 3) by PDC experts to identify topics for which PDC instructional materials do not exist or are insufficient in order to inform development of additional PDC curricular materials.