Case Study: Using Project Based Learning to Develop Parallel Programing and Soft Skills

In today's environment, where every computer, including cell phones, are multicore, it is essential that students develop parallel programming skills. It remains a challenge to develop effective techniques for teaching parallel programing skills. Another challenge is finding time within already packed lectures to cover additional material. To that end, we investigate the effectiveness of using Project Based Learning (PBL) to teach parallel programming skills early in the curriculum by developing and incorporating a PBL module into CSc 3210 (Computer Organization and Programming). This is a core course taken by all computer science majors and is a prerequisite to many of our senior-level classes. In our case study, 124 students are organized into 26 diverse groups, with four or five students per group, and assigned five project assignments, each of two-weeks duration. Given a Raspberry PI, students will explore its multicore architecture and create programs for shared memory parallelism using OpenMP and C language. Our results show that incorporating this PBL module has a significant and direct effect on the student's growth in parallel programming skills. As a side benefit, we also show that there is a direct improvement on a student's personal growth in terms soft skills, which is essential in the professional development and success in the workplace. By having students experience PBL in an early class, close to the midpoint of the academic program, it can serve as a mini-capstone project. Furthermore, students can collaboratively learn by themselves (through teamwork) and apply the fundamentals of parallel programming skills without the need for separate lectures, labs, or workshops.