In most fields instructors spend a lot of time on the Content of a course. Often this is phrased as Delivering Content, or Completing the Syllabus. The traditional picture, whether valid or not, is an instructor (single) broadcasting Content to students (multiple). I wonder if this is a common view of CS education. In a course like Data Structures, there a lot of things (content) that the student has to learn: Stacks, Sets, Trees, ... along with common algorithms. Normally there is a syllabus that lists all these things in some rational order. Covering it is a sort of meta-constraint (or sometimes a hard constraint) on the instructor. In the compiler course, the Content is more about technique than facts, of course, but those techniques possibly are the content: scanning, parsing, ...So, I guess the question that I would most like advice on here is:If you could order your goals in a typical undergrad course where  would Deliver  the Content fit? High, Low? What, if anything, would be above it? What would be the effect on your students if you move that goal up? down? remove it altogether? Another aspect of this is how much control does/should the professor have in the flow of the course; especially in content delivery? Absolute? None? What balance works for you? 
How important is delivering the content of a course?
best practice;undergraduate