I remember Helios on transputers, IIRC very little need for OCCAM as there was a "parallel C" language variant bundled for transputer work so most stuff I did was with that rather than OCCAM... That was when transputers / parallelism were "the next big thing" & on the degree course they wanted us to get a feel for parallel programming methods (& could well have been similar case to other commentards where new to the lecturers too, hence C focus more than OCCAM in the practical work)