Towards a Technical Skills Curriculum to Supplement Traditional Computer Science Teaching

Abstract

It is commonplace for students to enter university with skills deficiencies. However, this is cause for growing concern in the context of South Africa, as these `deficient' students are becoming more numerous. Public secondary schools in South Africa are failing to create students with adequate skills for careers in the STEM fields. This paper isolates these skills deficiencies to a subset of technical skills for problem-solving. The problem-solving skills are divided into content groups, which are then aligned to existing Computer Science content. A solution is proposed that demonstrates how the content can be presented without the need for extensive curriculum changes to established course content.