One step at a time: Parallelism in an introductory programming course

By introducing parallelism in introductory programming courses, all computer science students can receive a basic understanding of this crucial topic. Such an early introduction, however, has many challenges. This paper first presents a fall 2013 comparison of two Computer Science I (CS1) sections, leading to a conclusion emphasizing the importance of devoting sufficient time to a sufficiently small set of parallelism topics. Six additional CS1 sections are then considered, offered from spring 2014 through spring 2016 by three different instructors. Five of these removed coverage of Java thread programming due to challenges found in fall 2013, only to show measurably reduced effectiveness of the parallelism module. Thus a new thread programming integration strategy is presented, as done in spring 2016. This strategy includes active out-of-class activities that split the disparate challenges of Java thread programming into distinct exercises. Results demonstrate improved student interest and learning.