Spiraling CS2013 knowledge units across a small CS curriculum
David Reed · Journal of computing sciences in colleges · 2017
At smaller colleges and universities, where the size of the major can be small relative to research universities, curriculum designers face challenges when organizing courses to cover the breadth of the discipline. The 2013 ACM/IEEE-CS Computer Science Curriculum (CS2013) provides guidance, identifying core topics that all computer science students should know, in addition to common supporting and elective topics that round out an education. When a knowledge area has a small number of essential topics, such as in the theory of computation, a smaller college may not find it feasible or advisable to dedicate a full course to that area. Instead, a spiral approach can be taken to integrate important topics across the curriculum, while still providing context for understanding and appreciating their relevance.