Role playing in concurrent programming as a way of developing active learning

Concurrent programming is not only a programming paradigm, but a powerful structuring tool for applications that are logically comprised of asynchronous components. Although it is a conceptually simple abstraction, concurrent programming is challenging because processes interact with themselves in several obscure ways. When students are caught in the synchronization traps, they tend to blame the compiler; the operating system, the synchronization primitives, but they are not ready to discover their programming errors. We tried several methods of sequencing the material and guided problems without result; students failed to attack the concurrent issues with the necessary ingenuity. During the last term we tried a more integral "kinesthetic" way, with promissory results