Coverage

In a sequenced, 2-semester general chemistry class, how should one best determine coverage, both which topics to cover and how beep to cover those topics?  Which topics to cover is usually established when the course is originally designed and proposed but often is established in such a way as to be sufficiently vague that almost anything in reason is allowable.  An example might be “Spend 5 days (almost 1 1/2 weeks) on Stoichiometry.  Include balancing equations, moles relationships and mole-mass conversions, percent yield, and limiting reagents.”

As the course has a pre-requisite of previous chemistry where all of these topics should have been covered in some fashion, adequate coverage can likely be accomplished in a day or two.  That leaves roughly 3 hours of instruction time to the discretion of the instructor.  Should that instructor do more simple examples that might bore the really good students in hopes of salvaging some of the really poor students, or should they expand deeper but still on-topic down roads that interest them, or down roads that likely interest the students, or down roads that the students are more likely to encounter in their future courses and careers?  Not only is each instructor of this course going to place very different merit and worth on each of these four possibilities, but for every instructor, each of these four paths will look quite different then they would to the next instructor.  How then, can we (or should we) do a better job of making sure that students completing the first semester of a sequenced course have uniform or even similar preparation when moving second semester?