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Parallel and Distributed Computing (PDC) has become pervasive and is now exercised on a variety of platforms. Therefore, understanding how parallelism and distributed computing affect problem solving is important for every computing and engineering professional. However, most students in computer science (CS) and computer engineering (CE) programs are still introduced to computational problem solving using an old model, in which all processing is serial and synchronous, with input and output via text using a terminal interface or a local file system. Teaching a range of PDC knowledge and skills at multiple levels in Computer Science (CS) and related Computing and Engineering curricula is essential. The challenges are significant and numerous. Although some progress has been made in terms of curriculum recommendations and educational resources in computer science, trained faculty, motivation, and inertia are still some of the major impediments to introducing PDC early in computing curricula. The authors of this paper conducted a series of week-long faculty training workshops on the integration of PDC topics in CS1 and CS2 classes, and this paper provides an experience report on the impact and effectiveness of these workshops. Our survey results indicate such faculty development workshops can be effective in gradual inclusion of PDC in early computing curricula. 

As part of a 3-day workshop on training faculty members in concurrency, we developed a module for hands-on training in Java Fork-Join abstractions that had several related novel pedagogical and technical components: (1) Source and runtime checks that (a) tested whether test-aware code created by the trainees met the expected requirements and (b) logged their results in the local file system and the IBM cloud. (2) Editable worked example code along with a guide on how to understand the underlying concepts behind the code and experiment with the code. (3) The ability to follow the guide (a) synchronously, with graduate student help, in a session devoted to this module, and (b) asynchronously, on one's own, before or after the synchronous session. (4) Assignments trainees could do after experimenting with the worked example. (5) Zoom recording of the entire synchronous session. Fourteen faculty members across the country attended the session and had varying amounts of knowledge of Java and automatic assessment. Data gathered from check logs and a Zoom recording, together with novel visualizations of them, provide information to evaluate our pedagogical model and differentiate the participants. 

Learning programming in early introductory classes is challenging for first year university students, and introducing parallel programming (PDC) in early classes along with traditional sequential programming is even more challenging. Unplugged activities may help alleviate some of the difficulties for students. Unplugged activities have been shown to increase student interest, and to enhance student understanding of CS programming concepts. We have used unplugged activities to teach PDC concepts before introducing parallel programming. Our experiences show that using unplugged activities to introduce the PDC concepts reduce the barrier to learn parallel programming.