I'm honestly surprised that this was considered worthy of SIGCSE. Doesn't this seem obvious? Maybe we were blessed with Andy tearing up the phone book and Towers of Hanoi, but real life applications of algorithms seems like an obvious way to teach. I strongly believe in bringing real life examples to teaching everything, as it brings lessons closer to home. I am just not sure that this paper was really that inciteful in how to go about this. If this practice is not common, maybe the paper is a good step, but I'd be dismayed that people are really missing what strikes me as obvious.

Due to lack of communication, I fear that reinventing the wheel is commen in computer science education and that is rather unfortunate...