Visualizing Parallelism in CS 2

This paper describes the incorporation of the IEEE-TCPP Curriculum Initiative into CS 2 at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. With control over only one course that requires a semi-rigid curriculum, we detail a sequence of three lessons that explore the basics of parallelism in a visual manner. We draw a contrast between standard teaching methods for parallelism and assert that our approach is more engaging and more accessible, particularly to spatial learners. We then present examples of our image-centric course material and discuss its deployment. Lastly, we reflect on the effectiveness of this technique over the past two semesters and consider its direction in the future.