A new emphasis & pedagogy for a CS1 course

Abstract

A CS1 course introduces students to fundamental aspects of computing science. Invariably, these aspects are ones of content (subject matter). There is an alternative, and arguably more beneficial, role for a CS1 course - it could introduce the fundamental processes and concepts which pervade all computing science content domains, and which have but different instantiations in the different domains. This article considers the identification of these aspects, and suggests a pedagogy suitable for their emphasis. This pedagogy is applied to a traditional CS1 programming-content domain, resulting in a proposal for a new CS1 curriculum.