A fundamentals-based curriculum for first year computer science

Abstract

At Wits we are concerned about offering a good computer science degree but at the same time making our degree programme accessible to all students who have the potential or ability to cope with the material. This paper discusses a new first year curriculum which has been developed to address some of the problems which the course that we offered from 1990 to 1998, with minimal changes, has begun to encounter. The most important of these problems is that of student perceptions of our old course. The new course stresses fundamentals of computer science and is structured around teaching basic principles and competencies.