Enseñando Paralelismo con Ludificación Ambientada en Autómatas Celulares

Abstract

Teaching of parallel programming to undergraduate computer science students can now be considered an inexcusable need. The current hardware platforms, which incorporate multiple cores and several execution threads, demand it. Notwithstanding the above, the teaching of parallelism through examples and classical algorithms, makes our students find it hard and complex. On the other hand, to teach 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. This work shows an experience developed by us to convey the teaching of parallelism to undergraduate students by gamification in microworlds. 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.