A wide variety of CS-Zero programs have been developed.  While they all introduce students to some component of "computer science," they are not interchangeable. For example:

• Some courses teach 'how to assemble a computer,'
• Some teach how to use "office automation" programs, and 
• Some teach how to construct or modify programs, and
• Some survey types of careers or provide experience assessing application needs, and
• Some focus on the production of multimedia or programming of robots, and 
• Some make discrete math and common algorithms tangible activities that don't require devices, and
• Some use programming to reinforce understandings of math and physics.

Below are a few questions to consider:

• What is the target audience?
• Undeclared college students?
• All freshmen?
• Students considering study of 
• CS?  STEM?  Professional programs (i.e. nursing)? Liberal Arts?
• College, HS MS or even elementary school students?
• Students with weak math skills?
• Students delayed from entering cs or other STEM major due to weak math skills?
• Which CS or IT domain-relevant skills do students need to learn:
• Able to program or modify programs
• Breadth (survey? Of what topics?) or depth (of what topics?)?
• Familiarity w/ computing & computing careers?
• Familiarity w/ HW, Applications, OS human interfaces?
• Available academic choices/opportunities?
• Computational thinking? (which loosely translates into transforming a real-world problem into a procedure that solves it)
• How to analytically solve a problem/troubleshoot?
• How to work together in teams?
• How to precisely specify the characteristics of a problem? 
• Motivations for offering course (a meta-outcome)…
• Compensate for deficiencies?
• Increase
• Interest in cs/it studies?  By whom?
• Confidence in ability to understand cs/it?
• Understanding of some set of technical skills?
• Retention of students intending to study cs/it?
• Career guidance
• Tuning for intended audience
• Different people are  motivated by different activities.  
• Projects that emphasize the development of media or dramatic story-telling have increased the interests of girls and women in computation-related activities. However, there is little evidence that these activities increase enrollment or academic success in computer science programs.
• The career-guidance community has developed a mapping among career characteristics and proclivities, and that they matter. 

This outline was adapted from a discussion at a break-out session from the 2009 NSF/BPC meeting lead by Eric Freudenthal and includes contributions from Lijuan Cao, Hang Chen, Sarbani Banerjee, Anita Iannucci, Dan Frost, Ira Rudowsky, Enrico Pontelli, Joseph Austin, Save Struckman-Jonnson, Ann Q. Gates, and Deborah Boisvert