Teaching Parallelism With Gamification in Cellular Automaton Environments

Abstract

Parallel programming within the computer science degree is now mandatory. New hardware platforms, with multiple cores and the execution of concurrent threads, require it. Despite the above, the teaching of parallelism with the usual methods and classical algorithms, make this topic hard for our students to understand. On the other hand, teaching complex topics through the techniques of gamification has already demonstrated, in a reliable way, a positive reinforcement of the student in front of the learning of complex concepts. In this work we demonstrate a way to convey the teaching of parallelism to undergraduate students using gamification in microworlds. The results obtained by the students who followed this model, compared to a control group that followed the standard model, show a statistically significant advantage in favor of the teaching of parallelism, using a gamification with microworlds model.