Employing Student Retention Strategies for an Introductory GPU Programming Course

Abstract

Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) have become a vital hardware resource for the industry and research community due to their high computing capabilities. Despite this, GPUs have not been introduced into the undergraduate curriculum of Computer Engineering and are barely covered in graduate courses. Bridging the gap between university curriculum and industry requirements for GPU expertise is ongoing, but this process takes time. Offering an immediate opportunity for students to learn GPU programming is key for their professional growth. The Northeastern University Computer Architecture Research Lab offers a free GPU programming course to incentivize students from all disciplines to learn how to efficiently program a GPU. In this paper, we discuss the methods used to keep students engaged in a course with no academic obligations. After applying these strategies, we were able to retain more than 80% of the students who started the course. Moreover, the students gave positive feedback on these strategies.