Doctoral ConsortiumICER 2021

Accepted Papers

Call for Participation

Date and time to be determined based on schedules and time zones of participants. The workshop will be held in the week before the conference and last approximately 4-5 hours. Likely two workshops following the same structure will be held to accommodate participants in different timezones.

Organizers

• Lauren Margulieux (co-chair), Georgia State University, USA, lmargulieux@gsu.edu
• Felienne Hermans (co-chair), Leiden University, Netherlands, f.f.j.hermans@liacs.leidenuniv.nl

Please use our emails to contact us.

The SIGCSE 2021 Doctoral Consortium (DC) provides an opportunity for doctoral students studying computing education concerns to explore and develop their research interests in a workshop environment with a panel of established researchers. We invite students to apply for this opportunity to share their work with their peers, the organizers, and a group of faculty mentors.

The mentors are:

• Saira Anwar, University of Florida, USA, sairaanwar@ufl.edu
• Mark Guzdial, University of Michigan, USA, mjguz@umich.edu
• Eva Marinus, Institut für Medien und Schule, Switzerland, eva.marinus@phsz.ch
• Brett Becker, University College Dublin, Ireland, brett.becker@ucd.ie

Eligibility

Doctoral students in any phase of their PhD project are welcome, as long as they will not have graduated before the event. Also, students from all disciplines are welcome as long as they conduct research on computing education. That includes, but is not limited to, students majoring in cognitive psychology, programming languages, software engineering and educational science.

Why apply?

The doctoral consortium offers many benefits:

• Provides a supportive setting for feedback on students’ research and research direction.
• Offers each student comments and fresh perspectives on their work from researchers and students outside their own institution.
• Promotes the development of a supportive community of scholars.
• Supports a new generation of researchers with information and advice on research and academic career paths.
• Contributes to the conference goals through interaction with other researchers and conference events.

We have space for up to 20 participants.

Applicants who are selected will receive free conference registration.

How to apply

To apply, you need to prepare a single PDF containing:

• A 4-page research description, exactly like you’d do an ICER paper, covering central aspects of your doctoral work, including:
  • Motivation that drives your dissertation research
  • Literature review of key works that frame your research
  • Hypothesis, thesis, and/or key ideas
  • Your research approach and methods
  • Progress on your research
• A brief letter of nomination from your dissertation advisor detailing:
  • Your year status in your program
  • Your expected timeline for completion
  • How your work relates to computing education, and
  • What help your advisor hopes the DC will provide
• Your CV. (A PDF of online CV is acceptable).

Submission is through HotCRP: https://icer2021dc.hotcrp.com/

Timeline

• May 1, 2021 – submission due (anywhere on earth, UTC-12)
• May 31, 2021 – notification of acceptance
• June 11, 2021 – camera ready copy due

Review process

We will select participants based on many factors, including:

• Your research topic
• The clarity of your writing
• The quality of your ideas
• Your status in your doctoral program
• The diversity of backgrounds and topics in the application pool
• Your institution (we are unlikely to accept more than two students from the same institution).

All submissions will be confidential. All rejected submissions will be kept confidential in perpetuity.

Publishing your abstract

Authors of accepted submissions will receive instructions on how to submit publication-ready copy of their 4-page abstract. Please note that submissions will not be published without a signed form releasing publishing copyright to the ACM. Obtaining permissions to use video, audio, or pictures of identifiable people or proprietary content rests with the author, not the ACM or the ICER conference.

The official publication date is the date the proceedings are made available in the ACM Digital Library. This date is typically one week prior to the first day of the conference. The official publication date affects the deadline for any patent filings related to published work.

Preparing a communication aid

During the DC, you’ll be presenting your work in many settings, including an elevator pitch to the entire group and describing your research in conversation. To support this, please prepare one or both of the following forms of visual aids:

• A slide (Required) - Think of this slide as a substitute for a poster. It will be used during the poster session during the DC workshop and for the poster session during the 3rd day of ICER for the entire conference. It can include elements typical to a poster (e.g., motivation, methods, results), but it should be legible while viewing on a screen. Each element will need to be more condensed than a poster, and you might want to highlight one element that you’d like to share or receive feedback on.
• A more detailed visual aid for discussion with your mentor (Optional) - You will have 12-15 minutes of one-on-one time with a research mentor. If you’d like to discuss a topic that is more visually-oriented than verbally-oriented, a visual aid might help.

The goal of these communications aids is to help explain ideas that are difficult to explain in words. For example, interactive systems might be best portrayed with demos or videos. Diagrams or data might be best presented visually on paper. Think about what part of your work might be better portrayed in one of the forms above instead of in words, and prepare it. Whatever you prepare, it should help you communicate your ideas both during the DC and the ICER conference.

At the conference

All participants are expected to attend all portions of the Doctoral Consortium for your time zone. Within the DC, each student will present his or her work to the group with substantial time allowed for discussion and questions by participating researchers and other students. Participants will practice presenting their poster and receive feedback from the group.

Key: Students will verbally present a Lightning Talk at the beginning of the 3rd day of the main conference. They will have one minute each to share their research interests and advertise for their poster, which will be presented at a poster session later in the day. In addition to the conference poster, each student is encouraged to prepare a “one-pager” describing their research (perhaps a small version of their slide) for sharing with faculty mentors, other students, and conference attendees.

Time and location

The meetings will be held on Friday, Aug. 13th, in two separate sessions:

• Europe/Australia, 9-1 CET, led by Felienne
• Americas, 9-1 PT, led by Lauren

All meeting swill be held in ICER Discord.