9414309 Kurtz Louisiana Tech University will develop an entirely new sophomore-level course on parallel and distributed computing and five knowledge units designed to be added to existing courses in the upper division curriculum. The early introduction of concurrency will allow the transfer of current research results into upper division courses. Instructional support materials including sample lecture notes, laboratory manuals, software, and multimedia aids will be produced. In particular, an extensive software environment for the new sophomore-level course where students will be able to experiment with the various methods of concurrency and different connection topologies will be developed. A CD-ROM disk for instructors that will introduce them to the various public domain software packages already available over the Internet will be provided as well as advice on using these packages in their courses, and sample problems and solutions. Louisiana Tech has also solicited the participation of Grambling State University (GSU). Faculty from GSU will participate in the development of course materials. These materials will be designed so that they can be used in Computer Science programs at a wide variety of schools. There will be no dependency on having a massively parallel computer; rather, simulations of parallel architectures will be used. Distributed processing over local area networks will also be stressed. Course materials will be tested at both Louisiana Tech and Grambling. Collaboration with the University of Central Florida has also been arranged. ***
