Parallel and distributed computing (PDC) education is increasingly gaining greater recognition as a core topic in undergraduate computing degrees. While the application of PDC concepts to software development involves the use of highly-technical tools and libraries typically reserved for advanced courses, PDC educators are seeking pedagogical approaches that can be used to introduce PDC concepts in earlier, introductory courses. This study presents such an approach, and aims to introduce undergraduate students to fundamental PDC concepts without the expectation that they can apply those concepts. The proposed approach is inspired by the success seen in the wider computing education literature, where analogies and visualization have helped students understand other abstract computing topics. The proposed learning resources come in the form of a series of short videos, carefully aligned to a learning activity that guides towards achieving the intended learning outcomes. In addition to being a simple activity to complete with students, evaluations illustrate its value even with minimal guidance from the instructor. The proposed approach is studied as both a synchronous in-class activity guided by the instructor, as well as an asynchronous online self-directed activity. These two studies produced different outcomes with respect to student learning, revealing an important implication for designers of instructional material to consider.

并行和分布式计算（PDC）教育作为本科计算学位的核心主题越来越受到人们的认可。虽然PDC概念在软件开发中的应用涉及通常为高级课程保留的高科技工具和库的使用，但PDC教育人员正在寻求可用于在较早的入门课程中引入PDC概念的教学方法。这项研究提出了这种方法，旨在向大学生介绍PDC的基本概念并没有期望他们可以应用这些概念。提议的方法是受到更广泛的计算机教育文献中成功的启发，在此类文献中，类比和可视化帮助学生理解了其他抽象计算主题。拟议的学习资源以一系列简短视频的形式出现，并与旨在指导实现预期学习成果的学习活动仔细对齐。评估不仅是一项简单的活动，可以让学生完成，而且即使在教师的指导很少的情况下，评估也可以证明其价值。所提出的方法既可以作为教师指导下的同步课堂活动，也可以作为异步在线自我指导活动进行研究。两项研究在学生学习方面产生了不同的结果，