Specialty Area

Programming

Example Course Pathway

In this section, we present examples of how to package this content into meaningful course sequences across particular specialty areas. The boxes in each diagram represent discrete courses.

Course Definitions

This section contains example courses and descriptions, with the assumption that individual schools and districts may modify the offerings to meet local contexts and needs.

Content Progression

The model content progression developed for students who are interested in continuing to learn CS broadly, such as those intending to major in CS and potentially become a computer scientist or software engineer.

Foundational CS Content

Programming skills
Inclusive collaboration while programming
Ethics and social impact
Testing and debugging
Designing, composing, and interpreting algorithms
Preparation and use of data in programming
Cybersecurity basics
Hardware and devices

Fundamentals

Decomposition
Problem solving
Conditions, iterations, selection, functions
Abstractions and models representing a system
Arrays and data structures
Unit testing
Debugging
Usage of IDEs
Algorithm optimization

Specialty

Programming skill development
Software development processes (e.g., Agile/Scrum)
Application development (e.g., mobile apps, virtual reality apps)
Team project skills
Collaborative source control
Correctness and provability of algorithms

Possible Careers:

Computer Scientist, Software Engineer, Data Scientist, Artificial Intelligence Specialist, Cybersecurity Specialist, Network Specialist, Roboticist, CS Teacher/Instructor/Professor, CS Education Researcher