Hands-on PDC in Undergraduate Computing Education

TL;DR

This paper introduces a practical assignment for undergraduates to engage with real HPC infrastructure, enhancing understanding of parallelism and multithreading through hands-on experience with the HiPerGator supercomputer.

Contribution

It presents a detailed HPC-based assignment and evaluates its impact over three years, demonstrating improved student comprehension of PDC concepts.

Findings

Students gained practical experience with high-performance computing environments.

The assignment improved students' understanding of parallelism and multithreading.

Structured access to HPC resources enhances learning outcomes in undergraduate courses.

Abstract

Parallel and Distributed Computing (PDC) is a critical yet conceptually challenging area of the undergraduate computer science curriculum. While students often encounter these concepts in theory, few gain exposure to experience in real high-performance computing (HPC) environments. Research shows that when students are engaged in project-based learning they retain knowledge more effectively. They also develop a deeper understanding of concepts taught in the classroom. This paper presents a practical assignment in which students engage directly with the University of Florida's HiPerGator supercomputer to implement and benchmark matrix multiplication using Python and C (via POSIX threads and OpenMP). Students navigate batch scheduling, core allocation, and performance tuning, experiences that are rarely accessible at the undergraduate level. We describe the assignment in detail and provide a three-year evaluation across multiple course offerings, highlighting how structured access to real HPC infrastructure can deepen student understanding of parallelism and multithreading.