ConferenceSIGCSE Virtual 2024

Papers

Position and Curricula Initiative

The primary purpose of Position and Curricula Initiative (PCI) papers is to present a coherent argument about a computing education topic, including, but not limited to curriculum or program design, practical and social issues facing computing educators, and critiques of existing practices. PCI papers should substantiate their claims using evidence in the form of thorough literature reviews, analysis of secondary data collected by others, or another appropriate rhetorical approach. PCI contributions should be motivated by prior literature and should highlight the novelty of the presented work. However, in contrast to Computing Education Research (CER) papers, PCI papers need not present original data or adhere to typical rigorous qualitative or quantitative research methods. Moreover, PCI papers differ from Experience Report and Tools (ERT) papers in that they do not necessarily report on individual experiences, programs or tools, but rather they may focus on broader concerns to the community.

If you have questions about any of these policies, please contact sigcsevirtual2024-program@sigcse.org for clarification prior to submission.

Computing Education Research

The primary purpose of Computing Education Research (CER) papers is to advance what is known about the teaching and learning of computing. CER papers are reviewed relative to the clarity of the research questions posed, the relevance of the work in light of prior literature and theory, the soundness of the methods to address the questions posed, and the overall contribution. Both qualitative and quantitative research is welcomed, as are replication studies and papers that present null or negative results.

If you have questions about any of these policies, please contact sigcsevirtual2024-program@sigcse.org for clarification prior to submission.

Experience Reports and Tools

The primary purpose of Experience Reports and Tools (ERT) papers is observational in nature, and ERT papers should carefully describe the development and use of a computing education approach or tool, the context of its use including the formative data collected, and provide a rich reflection on what did or didn’t work, and why. ERT contributions should be motivated by prior literature and should highlight the novelty of the experience or tool presented. ERT papers differ from CER papers in that they frame their contributions to enable adoption by other practitioners, rather than focusing on the generalizability or transferability of findings, or threats to validity.

If you have questions about any of these policies, please contact sigcsevirtual2024-program@sigcse.org for clarification prior to submission.

Doctoral Consortium

The doctoral consortium (DC) provides an opportunity for doctoral students studying computing education to explore and develop their research interests in a workshop environment with a panel of established researchers in the field. Students are encouraged to apply early in their doctoral program (e.g., 1st year of a 3 year program or 2nd year of a 5-6 year program).

DC participants will meet virtually 9am-4pm Central Standard Time (3pm-10pm UTC) on 8 December 2024. The DC submissions are limited to 2 pages plus references. These are shared with all DC participants/mentors and will not be published.

If you have questions about any of these policies, please contact sigcsevirtual2024-dc@sigcse.org for clarification prior to submission.

Panels

Panel sessions provide an opportunity for expert panelists to present their views on a specific topic, and then to virtually discuss these views among themselves and with the audience. A panel session starts with a brief introduction of the topic by the panel moderator, followed by short presentations by the panelists giving their views. Panel sessions are scheduled for 60 minutes total, but keep in mind that successful panels must allow sufficient opportunity (at least 20 minutes) for an interactive question-and-answer period involving both the panelists and the virtual audience.

When assembling a panel, we encourage authors to carefully consider ACM’s guidance for Building Diverse Teams. A typical panel will consist of four participants, including the moderator. Limiting a panel to four participants allows sufficient time for audience questions. Proposals with more than four panelists must convincingly show that all panelists will be able to speak, and the audience able to respond, within the session time. All panels will follow a synchronous format. The panel presentation time will ideally be coordinated with the time zone convenient to the institution of the lead panelist.

If you have questions about any of these policies, please contact sigcsevirtual2024-panels@sigcse.org for clarification prior to submission.

Lightning Talks and Posters

Lightning Talks are expected to explore tentative or preliminary work, or even ideas for possible work. Lightning Talks describe works in progress (tentative or preliminary work), new and untested ideas (ideas for possible work), or opportunities for collaborative work. Presentations of mature work will not be considered. The purpose of a Lightning Talk can be to start a discussion, find collaborators, or receive input and critique about an idea.

Talks will be followed by a question and answer “poster session” allowing “give and take” with conference attendees allowing a chance to discuss and receive feedback on work in progress that has not been fully developed into a paper. Ideas for lightning talks and posters should not be previously published, as a paper or a poster.

If you have questions about any of these policies, please contact sigcsevirtual2024-lt-posters@sigcse.org for clarification prior to submission.

Working Groups

A Working Group is an intense collaboration between five to ten researchers from around the world who come together with a common goal of producing a high-value research report on a topic of interest in computing education.

A Working Group begins with the submission of a proposal written by up to four Working Group leaders. Members are recruited for accepted proposals. Working Group work starts early August 2024 and continues for around 10 months. Further details can be found in the Call for Working Groups

If you have questions about any of these policies, please contact sigcsevirtual2024-WG@sigcse.org for clarification prior to submission.

Additional Notes

Authors submitting work to SIGCSE Virtual 2024 are responsible for complying with all applicable conference authorship policies and those articulated by ACM. If you have questions about any of these policies, please contact sigcsevirtual2024-program@sigcse.org for clarification prior to submission.

ACM has made a commitment to collect ORCiD IDs from all published authors (https://authors.acm.org/author-resources/orcid-faqs). All authors on each submission must have an ORCiD ID (https://orcid.org/register) in order to complete the submission process. Please make sure to get your ORCiD ID in advance of submitting your work.

Call for Working Groups

SIGCSE Virtual 2024

What is a working group?

A working group is an intense collaboration between five to ten researchers from around the world who come together with a common goal of producing a high-value research report on a topic of interest in computing education.

Before the conference

A working group begins with the submission of a proposal written by up to four working group leaders. The proposals are reviewed by the working group chairs, who decide which proposals will proceed. The selected working groups recruit members through the working group pages on the conference website and by other means.

Once applications close, the working group leaders select their group’s members from the list of applicants. There is then a short period of negotiation during which the working group chairs try to resolve any groups that are oversubscribed or undersubscribed. The final working group consists of five to ten researchers, including the working group leaders.

The viable groups (ones who have recruited sufficient members) then begin their collaboration and work until the time of the conference. During this time the working group leaders will provide regular short progress reports to the working group chairs. It is expected that the work will have been completed, and a solid draft report must be submitted, before the conference commences.

Immediately before the conference

Working group leaders will submit a solid draft of their final report to the working group chairs.

During the conference

All working group leaders and members must be registered for the conference and attend the plenary conference sessions. During the virtual conference some working group members may present conference papers or chair sessions. Working groups will not continue to work during the conference to allow members to attend the sessions.

The conference will include a session in which each working group gives a brief presentation of their project.

After the conference

Following the draft submission and the conference, the working group chairs will provide broad feedback on the overall direction and scope of the work and inform groups that will not continue to publication. While for most working groups this work culminates in progressing to a rigorous peer-review stage it is important to note that some reports may not be accepted and continue to final publication.

Reports accepted following the working group chair reviews are given time to continue their work and update the report in response to chair’s suggestions. These revised reports are then submitted for peer-review.

Groups whose reports are accepted following peer-review are given a few weeks to respond to the reviewers’ suggestions and the camera-ready reports submitted for publication in a supplement to the conference proceedings.

Proposal Format

The proposal for SIGCSE virtual is comprised of two parts, a two-page proposal and an additional one-page practical organization plan. Both are considered in the proposal review phase. The following list summarizes the requirements for a Working Group proposal, details follow the list.

• The proposal must use the same format as for paper submissions and include citations.
• The two-page proposal is an extended abstract with these topics:
  • background and related work
  • goals of the proposed work
  • proposed methodology
  • expected deliverables
  • references
• The proposal concludes with the one-page organization plan that includes:
  • inclusion criteria for member selection
  • details of how virtual communication and collaboration will be enabled,
  • a detailed work-plan
  • a short account of each working group leaders prior working group experience

Proposal

A successful working group proposal is based in existing literature, topical so of interest to the computer science education community and proposes meaningful work worthy of a working group effort. Additionally, it should be clear the methodology is appropriate, and the expected results are both reasonable (achievable) and meaningful.

Proposal Body

The essential components of a working group submission are:

• the title
• the names and affiliations of up to four leaders
• an abstract of up to 250 words describing the group’s goal and its approach to achieving that goal. If a working group is accepted to proceed to the recruitment stage, these details will be displayed on this website to recruit interested members to the group.

The remainder of the two-page proposal body should be used to explain the background of the work, the goals, the proposed methodology, and expected deliverables. This can, and should, read like the beginning of a research paper as the working group should be conducting research. Note: A successful proposal can result in two publications: 1) an extended abstract published with the conference papers, and 2) the full final report published after the conference. These two publications must have two different titles. (Save your preferred title for the full report.)

If a working group is accepted to run, a two-page extended abstract will be published in the conference proceedings. This will not be the same as the initial proposal. At the very least it will include the names and affiliations of the other working group members besides the leaders. This is an opportunity to expand on the subject matter and ensure the abstract is camera-ready.

Organisation Plan

The practical organization plan should allow for fair access (inclusive) for participants to contribute, considering e.g. time zones, institutional credentials, pricing, and participant experience. The practical organization plan should briefly describe the following (maximum one page):

• How different time zones will be handled
• Identify suitable collaboration technology (and alternatives) and how this choice will allow for inclusive, engaged participation
• A plan for work prior to the conference:
  • Introduction meeting details
  • Number of expected meetings (dates and details) prior to the conference
  • Expected state of report (milestones) at multiple stages prior the start of the conference and draft submission
• A tentative plan of meetings and schedule of work for after the conference
• A short account of each working group leaders’ prior working group experience

Submitting a Working Group Proposal

When your proposal is correctly formatted and ready for submission, convert it to Adobe PDF format.

Please note that proposal submission is not anonymous and working group leader names and affiliations must be provided.

Follow the instructions on the submission process at the foot of the Call for Submissions.

The initial proposal & organization plan, extended abstract, and the final report are expected to follow ACM’s Publications Policies . For more details, see the formatting requirements on the Instructions for Authors-Papers of the conference website.

Questions

If you have questions about anything discussed above, please contact the Working group chairs, sigcsevirtual2024-WG@sigcse.org.

Important Dates

Working Groups	Due
Proposal Submission	Sunday, 2 June 2024
Notification of working groups to proceed	Monday, 17 June 2024
Membership applications open	Monday, 24 June 2024
Membership applications close	Monday, 15 July 2024
Notification of WGs to run; work begins	Monday, 5 August 2024
2-page extended-abstract due	TBA
Draft report to WG chairs	Wednesday, 4 December 2024
Initial feedback from WG chairs	Friday, 10 Jan 2025
Report submission for review	TBA
Notification of accepted reports	TBA
Camera-ready submission	TBA (~ May 2025)

Call for Submissions

SIGCSE Virtual 2024

The SIGCSE Virtual conference is organized by the ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE) and is the organization’s newest conference. SIGCSE Virtual addresses issues common among educators working to develop, implement, and/or evaluate computing programs, curricula, and courses, as well as broadening participation in computing and making it more inclusive. The conference provides a forum for sharing new ideas for syllabi, laboratories, and other elements of teaching and pedagogy, at all levels of instruction. We endeavor to have a diverse selection of technical sessions and opportunities for learning and interaction.

SIGCSE Virtual 2024 will be held from 5–7 December 2024.

SIGCSE Virtual 2024 will be a purely virtual event. Online participants will be able to participate in:

• Keynotes
• Papers
• Doctoral Consortium
• Panels
• Lightning Talks and Posters

Online registration will be significantly cheaper than SIGCSE’s other conferences. Our hope is that this will allow everyone to present their work at SIGCSE Virtual 2024, as there will be no travel costs associated with participation!

Submission Information

• We will use Easychair for SIGCSE Virtual 2024.
• We will use the ACM two-column format for papers, panels, and the Doctoral Consortium.
• Submission Link: https://easychair.org/my/conference?conf=sigcsevirtual2024
• To volunteer to review for SIGCSE Virtual 2024, please visit https://tinyurl.com/SIGCSE-VIRTUAL-REV.

Keynotes: The keynotes will be available as a video ahead of time to conference attendees. The actual keynote slot will be focused on Q&A with the keynote presenter. Attendees, please watch the keynote in advance, and bring your questions to ask the presenter!

Papers: Papers will be accepted in three categories: position and curricula, experience reports, and research papers. We will ask authors to prepare a 10-15 minute presentation video, which will be available to conference attendees. The 20-minute paper “presentation” time will start with a 5-minute live presentation by the author(s) summarizing the paper’s major results. The bulk of the time will be available for Q&A with the author, and discussions among the attendees.

Doctoral Consortium: The doctoral consortium (DC) provides an opportunity for doctoral students studying computing education to explore and develop their research interests in a workshop environment with a panel of established researchers in the field. DC participants will meet virtually 9am-4pm Central Standard Time (3pm-10pm UTC) on 8 December 2024.

Panels: Panel sessions provide an opportunity for expert panelists to present their views on a specific topic, and then to discuss these views among themselves and with the audience. Please note that we will try to coordinate the panel presentation time with the time zone convenient to the institution of the lead panelist.

Lightning Talks and Posters: The five-minute lightning talks will be followed by poster sessions led by the lightning talk presenter. The “poster session” will be held in several breakout rooms where interested conference attendees will have the opportunity for discussion with the presenter. We expect these new combined lightning talks and posters to include both less fully-developed research ideas (typically the domain of posters) as well as new ideas (typically the domain of lightning talks).

Important information about conference times: Since this conference will have attendees from around the world across many time zones, we expect one day of the conference to be held at a time most convenient to attendees from North and South America, one day of the conference to be held at a time most convenient to attendees from Europe and Africa, and one day of the conference to be held at a time most convenient to attendees from Asia and Australasia. Specific timings of presentations will depend on how many papers, panels and lightning talks and posters get accepted from a particular region. Presenter preference will be considered when setting presentation times.

Submission reviewing

For SIGCSE Virtual, we try to obtain three or more reviews per submission. For the paper track, many reviewers prefer to review only three submissions. (Since submissions for other tracks are much shorter, reviewers often review more submissions.) That means we need about the same number of reviewers as submissions. This year, we are asking (but not requiring) each submission to designate at least one author who is also willing to review for the conference. Note that undergraduate students cannot be reviewers.

Interested reviewers should fill in the form at: https://tinyurl.com/SIGCSE-VIRTUAL-REV. Please direct questions or concerns to sigcsevirtual2024-program@sigcse.org.

SIGCSE Virtual 2024 papers will not be open access. SIGCSE is part of the Open Surround program https://www.acm.org/publications/openaccess#h-acm-opensurround-service. The SIGCSE Virtual 2024 papers will be freely available to the world via the DL for one month surrounding the conference.

AUTHORS TAKE NOTE: The official publication date is the date the proceedings are made available in the ACM Digital Library. This date may be up to two weeks prior to the first day of the conference. The official publication date affects the deadline for any patent filings related to published work.

Reviewing schedule round 1:

• Bid on abstracts (papers): May 28 – Jun 4, 2024
• Paper due by: Jun 3, 2024
• Review timeframe: Jun 5 - 21, 2024
• Discussion: Jun 22 - 28, 2024
• APC Recommendation Deadline: Jun 28, 2024
• Round 1 Notification to Authors (papers and panels): Monday, Jul 8, 2024

Reviewing schedule round 2:

• Submission (Lightning Talks, Posters, and Doctoral Consortium) due by: Monday, July 12, 2024
• Review timeframe: July 13 - 19, 2024
• Notifications to Authors: Monday, July 26, 2024

Abstracts

All papers must have a plain-text abstract of up to 250 words. Abstracts should not contain subheadings or citations. The abstract should be submitted in EasyChair along with paper metadata, and the same text should be included in the PDF version of the full paper at the appropriate location.

Page limits

CER and ERT papers are limited to a maximum of 6 pages of body content (including all titles, author information, abstract, main text, tables and illustrations, acknowledgements, and supplemental material). One additional page may be included which contains only references. If included, appendix materials MUST NOT be present on the optional references page.

PCI papers are limited to a maximum of 3 pages of body content, and may include an optional additional page for references.

Templates

SIGCSE Virtual 2024 is NOT participating in the new ACM TAPS workflow, template, and production system.

All paper submissions must be in English and formatted using the 2-column ACM SIG Conference Proceedings format and US letter size pages (8.5x11 inch or 215.9 x 279.4mm).

Here is an annotated PDF example that has some notes/tips and shows the required sections.

MS Word Authors: Please use the interim Word template provided by ACM.

LaTeX Authors:

• Overleaf provides a suitable two-column sig conference proceedings template.
• Please do not use the anonymous document class option, as counter-intuitive as that sounds. We’d like to ensure that author blocks appear in the submission, and that option removes them.
• Other LaTeX users may alternatively use the ACM Primary template, adding the “sigconf” format option in the documentclass to obtain the 2-column format. (ACM has recently changed the ACM template and we have not yet had a chance to verify that the new version works correctly.)
• NOTE: The default LaTeX template text shows appendix materials following the references. SIGCSE Virtual 2024 does not permit appendices on the optional page allotted for references. Authors must include all relevant content within the 6 body pages of the paper. References are the ONLY thing that can be added on page 7.

Accessibility: SIGCSE Virtual 2024 authors are strongly encouraged to prepare submissions using these templates in such a manner that the content is widely accessible to potential reviewers, track chairs, and readers. Please see these resources for preparing an accessible submission.

Requirements

Requirements for Double Anonymous Review Process: At the time of submission all entries must include blank space for all anonymous author information (or anonymized author name, institution, location, and email address), followed by an abstract, keywords, CCS Concepts, placeholders for the ACM Reference Format and copyright blocks, and references. For anonymized submissions, all blank space necessary for all author information must be reserved under the Title, or fully anonymized text can take its place (e.g. 4 lines containing Author1, Author1Institution, Author1Location, anon1@university.edu. In addition, please leave enough blank space for what you intend to include for Acknowledgements but do not include the text, especially names and granting agencies and grant numbers. Acknowledgements are expected to be part of the body content, not of the optional reference page.

Other requirements: Please provide a separate block for each author, including name, email, institution, location, and country, even if authors share an institution.

Desk Rejects: Papers that do not adhere to page limits or formatting requirements will be desk rejected without review.

Double Anonymized Review

Authors must submit ONLY an anonymized version of the paper. The goal of the anonymized version is to, as much as possible, provide the author(s) of the paper with an unbiased review. The anonymized version must have ALL mentions of the authors removed (including author’s names and affiliation plus identifying information within the body of the paper such as websites or related publications). However, authors are reminded to leave sufficient space in the submitted manuscripts to accommodate author information either at the beginning or end of the paper. LaTeX/Overleaf users are welcome to use the anonymous option, but are reminded that sufficient room must exist in the 6 body pages to include all author blocks when that option is removed. Authors may choose to use placeholder text in the author information block, but we encourage authors to use obviously anonymized placeholders like “Author 1”, “Affiliation 1”, etc.

Self-citations need not be removed if they are worded so that the reviewer doesn’t know if the writer is citing themselves. That is, instead of writing “We reported on our first experiment in 2017 in a previous paper [1]”, the writer might write “In 2017, an initial experiment was done in this area as reported in [1].

As per ACM guidelines, authors may distribute a preprint of their work on ArXiv.org. However, to ensure the anonymity of the process, we ask that you not publish your work until after you receive the accept/reject notice. If particular aspects of your paper require earlier distribution of the preprint, please consider changing the title and abstract so that reviewers do not inadvertently discover your identity.

Submissions to the papers track are reviewed with the dual-anonymous review process. The reviewers and meta-reviewers (i.e. associate program chairs or APCs) are unaware of the author identities, and reviewers and APCs are anonymous to each other and to the authors.

The reviewing process includes a discussion phase after initial reviews have been posted. During this time, the reviewers and APC can examine all reviews and privately discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the work in an anonymous manner through EasyChair. Following discussion, the APC shall draft a meta-review that holistically captures the group position on the paper, incorporating views raised in the reviews and during the discussion phase.

The SIGCSE Virtual 2024 review process does not have a rebuttal period for authors to respond to comments, and all acceptance decisions are final.

ACM Policies

By submitting your article to an ACM Publication, you are hereby acknowledging that you and your co-authors are subject to all ACM Publications Policies, including ACM’s new Publications Policy on Research Involving Human Participants and Subjects. Alleged violations of this policy or any ACM Publications Policy will be investigated by ACM and may result in a full retraction of your paper, in addition to other potential penalties, as per ACM Publications Policy.

ORCiD IDs

ACM has made a commitment to collect ORCiD IDs from all published authors (https://authors.acm.org/author-resources/orcid-faqs). All authors on each submission must have an ORCiD ID (https://orcid.org/register) in order to complete the submission process. Please make sure to get your ORCiD ID in advance of submitting your work. (If EasyChair does not request the ORCiD ID for your coauthors, you do not need to find a way to enter one.)

Abstracts

All panel submissions must have a plain-text abstract of up to 250 words. Abstracts should not contain subheadings or citations. The abstract should be submitted in EasyChair along with the submission metadata, and it should be included in the PDF version of the submission at the appropriate location.

Page limit

Panel submissions are limited to a maximum of 2 pages of body content (including all titles, author information, abstract, main text, tables and illustrations, acknowledgements, and references).

Templates

SIGCSE Virtual 2024 is NOT participating in the new ACM TAPS workflow, template, and production system.

All panel submissions must be in English and formatted using the 2-column ACM SIG Conference Proceedings format and US letter size pages (8.5x11 inch or 215.9 x 279.4mm).

Here is an annotated PDF example for Panel Submissions that has some notes/tips and shows the required sections.

MS Word Authors: Please use the interim Word template provided by ACM.

LaTeX Authors:

• Overleaf provides a suitable two-column sig conference proceedings template.
• Other LaTeX users may alternatively use the ACM Primary template, adding the “sigconf” format option in the documentclass to obtain the 2-column format.

Requirement for Single Anonymous Review Process: At the time of submission all entries should include author information, an abstract, body content, references, and placeholders for the ACM Reference Format and copyright blocks. Each author should be defined separately for accurate metadata identification.

Other requirements: Include space for authors’ e-mail addresses whenever possible on separate lines. Even if multiple authors have the same affiliation, grouping authors’ names or e-mail addresses, or providing an ‘e-mail alias’ is not acceptable, e.g., {brian,lina,leenkiat}@university.edu or firstname.lastname@college.org. Panel submissions should include from the standard ACM template: keywords, CCS Concepts and ACM Reference Format.

Desk Rejects: Submissions that do not adhere to page limits or formatting requirements will be desk rejected without review.

Accessibility: SIGCSE Virtual 2024 authors are strongly encouraged to prepare submissions using these templates in such a manner that the content is widely accessible to potential reviewers, track chairs, and readers. Please see these resources for preparing an accessible submission.

Additional Format Instructions

Authors submitting a panel should use the standardized section names and additional formatting information when preparing their proposals.

• When providing author information, indicate which of the panelists is the moderator by placing the word “Moderator” in parentheses after their name.
• Abstract: Should provide a brief summary (up to 250 words) of your panel.
• Summary: The first section should be titled Summary and should provide an expanded summary of the panel’s goals, intended audience, and relevance to the SIGCSE community.
• Panel Structure: The section following the summary should explain the panel structure and plan for audience participation, and provide sufficient time for audience interaction and questions.
• Position Statements: The subsequent sections should contain the position statements of each panelist and a brief description of their expertise and background as it relates to the panel. Title each section by identifying the panelist.
• References: Citing relevant work where appropriate is encouraged, but not required. If references are included, they should be placed in a separate section titled References and should follow the ACM formatting guidelines.

Single Anonymized Review

Submissions of a panel are reviewed with the single-anonymous review process. Submissions should include author names and affiliations. Thus, the author identities are known to reviewers, but reviewers are anonymous to each other and to the authors.

The reviewing process includes a discussion phase after initial reviews have been submitted. During this time, the reviewers can examine all reviews and privately discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the work in an anonymous manner through EasyChair. This discussion information can be used by the track chairs in addition to the content of the review in making final acceptance decisions.

The SIGCSE Virtual 2024 review process does not have a rebuttal period for authors to respond to comments, and all acceptance decisions are final.

ACM Policies

By submitting your article to an ACM Publication, you are hereby acknowledging that you and your co-authors are subject to all ACM Publications Policies, including ACM’s Publications Policy on Research Involving Human Participants and Subjects. Alleged violations of this policy or any ACM Publications Policy will be investigated by ACM and may result in a full retraction of your paper, in addition to other potential penalties, as per ACM Publications Policy.

ORCID ID

ACM has made a commitment to collect ORCiD IDs from all published authors (https://authors.acm.org/author-resources/orcid-faqs). All authors on each submission must have an ORCiD ID (https://orcid.org/register) in order to complete the submission process. Please make sure to get your ORCID ID in advance of submitting your work.

The SIGCSE Virtual 2024 doctoral consortium (DC) provides an opportunity for doctoral students studying computing education to explore and develop their research interests in a workshop environment with a panel of established researchers in the field.

We invite doctoral students to apply for this opportunity to share their work with a community of students in a similar situation. Students are encouraged to apply early in their doctoral program (e.g., 1st year of a 3 year program or 2nd year of a 5-6 year program). This is an excellent opportunity to get feedback on a research topic, or ideas on future direction, from senior researchers in the field.

Contact the DC chairs, sigcsevirtual2024-dc@sigcse.org for further information.

What is the doctoral consortium?

The DC has the following objectives:

• to provide a supportive setting for feedback on doctoral research and research direction;
• to offer each candidate comments and fresh perspectives on their work from researchers and other students outside their own institution;
• to promote the development of a supportive community of scholars;
• to support a new generation of researchers with information and advice on research and academic career paths.

Students attending the DC will be required to review the extended abstract from other participants. Further details on this will be given following acceptance.

Application for DC participation

An application for doctoral consortium should be a single PDF consisting of two sections.

Section 1

A two-page research description (the extended abstract) covering central aspects of your PhD work, which must use the ACM Template. Only one author should be named on this description: the candidate applying for participation in the DC.

Key points include the following, with the recommended section headings in bold: - an abstract of approximately 50 words which gives readers a preview of your work; - context and motivation that drive your proposed dissertation research; - a brief background / literature review of key works that frame your research; - a hypothesis and/or problem statement; - research goals; - research methods; - current and expected contributions; - a paragraph or few questions to describe what you hope to get guidance on during the DC (i.e., a feedback request); - a list of references.

Section 2

The following appendices. These will be used by the selection committee to identify suitable participants for the DC. These do not need to conform to any particular template:

• Appendix A: a letter of nomination from your primary dissertation advisor, indicating support for your participation in the DC, an explanation of how your work connects with the SIGCSE community, and the expected timeline for the completion of your doctorate.
• Appendix B: your concise current curriculum vitae (1-2 pages).

Submitting a DC proposal

Once you have assembled – and checked – your PDF file, follow the instructions on the Submit your PDF through EasyChair being sure to choose the Doctoral consortium submission category. The deadline for submissions is Friday July 12, 2024.

Doctoral consortium review process

The review and decision of acceptance will consider the quality of your proposal, and where you are within your doctoral education program. However, it will also consider external factors, so that the group of accepted students will exhibit a diversity of backgrounds and topics. Your institution will also be considered: we are unlikely to accept more than two students from the same institution. Confidentiality of submissions is maintained during the review process. All submissions not accepted will be kept confidential in perpetuity.

Authors of accepted submissions will receive instructions on how to submit a revised version of their two-page extended abstract to be shared with all DC participants/mentors. You will also receive information about attending the DC.

Before the conference

Since the goals of the doctoral consortium include building scholarship and community, participants will be expected to read the extended abstracts of all accepted participants: being accepted into the consortium involves a commitment to giving and receiving thoughtful commentary.

At the conference

All participants are expected to attend all components of the doctoral consortium. This year’s DC will be held online, like the rest of the conference.

Within the DC, all students will present their work to the group, with substantial time allowed for discussion and questions by participating researchers and other students.

Questions

If you have questions about anything discussed above, please contact the doctoral consortium chairs, sigcsevirtual2024-dc@sigcse.org.

Types of Submissions

Papers

Papers describe an educational research project, classroom experience, teaching technique, curricular initiative, or pedagogical tool in the computing content domain. There are three different paper types at SIGCSE Virtual: Computing Education Research (CER), Experience Reports and Tools (ERT), and Position and Curricula Initiative (PCI).

Panels

Panel sessions provide an opportunity for expert panelists to present their views on a specific topic, and then to virtually discuss these views among themselves and with the audience. A panel session starts with a brief introduction of the topic by the panel moderator, followed by short presentations by the panelists giving their views. Panel sessions are scheduled for 60 minutes total, but keep in mind that successful panels must allow sufficient opportunity (at least 20 minutes) for an interactive question-and-answer period involving both the panelists and the virtual audience.

Lightning Talks and Posters

Lightning Talks are expected to explore tentative or preliminary work, or even ideas for possible work. Lightning Talks describe works in progress (tentative or preliminary work), new and untested ideas (ideas for possible work), or opportunities for collaborative work. Presentations of mature work will not be considered. The purpose of a Lightning Talk can be to start a discussion, find collaborators, or receive input and critique about an idea.

Talks will be followed by a question and answer “poster session” allowing “give and take” with conference attendees allowing a chance to discuss and receive feedback on work in progress that has not been fully developed into a paper. Ideas for lightning talks and posters should not be previously published, as a paper or a poster.

Submission System

The review process for SIGCSE Virtual 2024 will be done using the EasyChair submission system (https://easychair.org/my/conference?conf=sigcsevirtual2024) . Reviewers will be invited to join/login into EasyChair, update their profile, and select 3-5 topics that they are most qualified to review. To do so, reviewers select SIGCSE Virtual 2024 > Conference > My topics from the menu and select at most 5 topics. More topics make it harder for the EasyChair system to make a good set of matches. Reviewers also identify their Conflicts of Interest by selecting SIGCSE Virtual 2024 > Conference > My Conflicts.

Roles in the Review Process

• Reviewers write reviews of their assigned submissions, evaluating them against the review criteria.
• Associate Program Chairs (APCs) write meta-review for their assigned submissions and provide a recommendation (accept/reject) and feedback to the Program Chairs.
• Program Chairs make the final decisions on the program based on recommendations from the APCs (for papers) and from other chairs (for panels, lightning talks and posters).

The Program Chairs invite and appoint the Reviewers and APCs. The number of submissions per Reviewer/APC depends on the number of volunteers and the size of the submissions pool.

The goals is for each paper submission to receive at least three reviews and a meta-review. All reviews are submitted through the submission system.

General Review Guidelines

Reviewers provide high-quality reviews for submissions to provide authors with feedback so they may improve their work for presentation or future submissions. While authors will not receive your comments directly, the chairs are likely to use your comments from the rationale in providing advice to the authors. As such, please ensure that all criticism is phrased in a constructive manner.

For each review, you will be asked for three elements:

• Recommendation: Your recommendation for this submission. After all the recommendations are gathered, a slate of proposals will be put forward to accept and then ask reviewers to discuss that slate.
• Rationale: Your rationale for your recommendation. Authors will NOT see your complete rationale. However, chairs may use text from your rationale in providing feedback to authors.
• Confidential remarks for the program committee: If you wish, you may add any remarks intended only for committee members. These remarks will only be seen by the committee members having access to reviews for this submission. They will not be sent to the authors. This field is optional.

We strongly recommend that you prepare your rationale in a separate document; EasyChair has been known to time out.

Please provide constructive feedback and clearly justify your choice of rating to help the authors. A review that gives a low score with no written comments is not helpful to the authors since it simply tells the authors that they have been unsuccessful, with no indication of how or why. Reviewers will be asked to summarize the work, provide their familiarity with the submission topic, describe the expected audience, identify strengths and weaknesses of the submissions, and provide an overall evaluation. Reviewers may provide confidential comments to the program committee to address concerns about the submission. These comments will not be shared with submitting authors.

While your review text should clearly support your scores and recommendation, please do not include your preference for acceptance or rejection of a submission in the feedback to the authors. Instead, use the provided radio buttons to make a recommendation (the authors will not see this) based on your summary review and provide any details that refer to your recommendation directly in the confidential comments to the APC or track chairs. Remember that as a reviewer, you will only see a small portion of the submissions, so one that you recommend for acceptance may be rejected when considering the other reviewer recommendations and the full set of submissions.

Paper Review Guidelines

There are three different paper types at SIGCSE Virtual: Computing Education Research (CER), Experience Reports and Tools (ERT), and Position and Curricula Initiative (PCI). Each type of paper has its own review criteria.

All papers will be considered relative to criteria for motivation, use of prior/related work, approach, evidence, contribution/impact, and presentation. Each paper type review criteria has guidance about how reviewers should consider these criteria relative to the goal of the type.

Panel Review Guidelines

Please consider the issues below as you write your review.

1. Relevance and Interest
   • Is the panel topic clearly stated?
   • Are the benefits to the SIGCSE audience clearly indicated?
   • Is the panel topic of interest to the SIGCSE community?
2. Structure & Plan for Audience Participation
   • Is there an overview of the panel structure?
   • Does the proposed structure include time for a brief introduction of the topic and the panelists?
   • Does the proposed structure include time for panelists to present their views?
   • Does the proposed structure allow sufficient time (at least 30 mins) for an interactive question and answer period between the audience and panelists?
   • Could the panel still be effective if given a shorter session?
   • Do the panelists have a viable plan for a hybrid format?
3. Panelist considerations
   • Does the proposal clearly identify the panelists (i.e., name and affiliation) and describe their expertise related to the topic?
   • Will the panel be well positioned to present multiple views on the topic, representing the diversity of perspectives within the SIGCSE community? Note: Please refer to “ACM’s definitions of diversity and inclusion”. Please also refer to “ACM’s recommended considerations when forming diverse teams” (or diverse panels in this case).
   • Does the proposal clearly identify no more than four panelists, including the moderator? Otherwise, are each of the panelists needed for representing a full range of perspectives on the panel topic?

Lightning Talks and Posters Review Guidelines

Review the proposal based on the following questions:

• Does the proposed talk fit into the 5-minute time frame?
• Is the subject of interest to the SIGCSE audience?
• Does the talk present a timely and innovative idea?
• Is it clear what the proposer intends to gain from presenting the talk?
• In the event that a proposal contains a link to a website with supplementary materials, reviewers should not consider these materials in their review as the abstract should be self-contained and sufficient.

Conflicts of Interest

SIGCSE Virtual takes conflicts of interest, both real and perceived, quite seriously. The conference adheres to the ACM conflict of interest policy (https://www.acm.org/publications/policies/conflict-of-interest) as well as the SIGCSE conflict of interest policy (https://sigcse.org/policies/COI.html). These state that a submission to the SIGCSE Virtual Conference is a conflict of interest for an individual if at least one of the following is true:

• The individual is a co-author of the paper
• A student of the individual is a co-author of the paper
• The individual identifies the paper as a conflict of interest, i.e., that the individual does not believe that they can provide an impartial evaluation of the paper.

The following policies apply to conference organizers:

• The Program Chairs are not allowed to submit to any track.
• The chairs of any track are not allowed to submit to that specific track.
• All other conference organizers are allowed to submit to any track.
• All reviewers (PC members) and meta-reviewers (APC members) are allowed to submit to any track.

No reviewer, meta-reviewer, or chair with a conflict of interest in the paper will be included in any evaluation, discussion, or decision about the paper. It is the responsibility of the reviewers, meta-reviewers, and chairs to declare their conflicts of interest throughout the process. The corresponding actions are outlined below for each relevant step of the reviewing process. It is the responsibility of the chairs to ensure that no reviewer or meta-reviewer is assigned a role in the review process for any paper for which they have a conflict of interest.

Recalcitrant Reviewers

Reviewers who don’t submit reviews, have reviews with limited constructive feedback, do not engage effectively in the discussion phase, or submit inappropriate reviews will be removed from the reviewer list (as per SIGCSE policy). Recalcitrant reviewers will be informed of their removal from the reviewer list. Reviewers with repeated offenses (two within a three-year period) will be removed from SIGCSE reviewing for three years.

Format

SIGCSE Virtual will be using a shared “Lightning Talks and Posters” track. In the virtual environment, presenters need not constrain themselves to the physical dimensions of a printed poster. This track is designed to allow authors to present their preliminary work, tentative findings and even ideas for possible future work. Traditionally, posters are expected to be more formal than lightning talks; for SIGCSE Virtual both formats will be submitted in the same track.

During the conference, presenters will have the opportunity to present their work during a session, and subsequently to “break out” in individual discussions with attendees. Submissions should describe works in progress (tentative or preliminary work), new and untested ideas (ideas for possible work), or opportunities for collaborative work. Presentations of mature work will not be considered. The purpose of a Lightning Talk/Poster can be to start a discussion, find collaborators, or receive input and critique about an idea.

Topics

Any topic relevant to the conference focus areas is suitable for presentation as a poster. These include new results and insights around developing, implementing, or evaluating computing programs, curricula, and courses. However, the topic should lend itself to a short (spoken) presentation with additional details available in slides, a handout, or linked web page. You might consider a lightning talk/poster presentation of teaching materials that you would like to share or preliminary research findings, such as:

• imaginative assignments
• innovative curriculum design
• laboratory materials
• effective ideas for recruiting and retaining students
• pilot study completed
• data collected, initial results
• computing education research that is in a preliminary stage

Abstracts

All lightning talk and poster submissions must have a plain-text abstract of up to 250 words. Abstracts should not contain subheadings or citations. The abstract should be submitted in EasyChair along with the submission metadata, and it should be included in the PDF version of the submission at the appropriate location.

Submission Templates

SIGCSE Virtual 2024 is NOT participating in the new ACM TAPS workflow, template, and production system.

All lightning talk and poster submissions must be in English and formatted using the 2-column ACM SIG Conference Proceedings format and US letter size pages (8.5x11 inch or 215.9 x 279.4mm).

Page Limits: Lightning talk and poster submissions are limited to a maximum of 2 pages of content (including all titles, author information, abstract, main text, tables and illustrations, acknowledgements, supplemental material, and references). Only the 250-word abstract and the author information will be published, but proposals will be reviewed on the full submission, including the additional text, tables, illustrations, and such.

Here is an annotated PDF example for Lightning Talk and Posters Submissions that has some notes/tips and shows the required sections.

MS Word Authors: Please use the interim Word template provided by ACM.

LaTeX Authors:

• Overleaf provides a suitable two-column sig conference proceedings template.
• Other LaTeX users may alternatively use the ACM Primary template, adding the “sigconf” format option in the documentclass to obtain the 2-column format.

Requirement for Single Anonymous Review Process: At the time of submission all entries should include author information, an abstract, body content, references, and placeholders for the ACM Reference Format and copyright blocks. Each author should be defined separately for accurate metadata identification.

Other requirements: Include space for authors’ e-mail addresses whenever possible on separate lines. Even if multiple authors have the same affiliation, grouping authors’ names or e-mail addresses, or providing an ‘e-mail alias’ is not acceptable, e.g., {brian,lina,leenkiat}@university.edu or firstname.lastname@college.org. Lightning talk and poster submissions should include from the standard ACM template: keywords, CCS Concepts and ACM Reference Format.

Desk Rejects: Submissions that do not adhere to page limits or formatting requirements will be desk rejected without review.

Accessibility: SIGCSE Virtual 2024 authors are strongly encouraged to prepare submissions using these templates in such a manner that the content is widely accessible to potential reviewers, track chairs, and readers. Please see these resources for preparing an accessible submission.

Reviewing policy

The reviewing process includes a discussion phase after initial reviews have been posted. During this time, the reviewers can examine all reviews and privately discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the work in an anonymous manner through EasyChair. This discussion information can be used by the track chairs in addition to the content of the review in making final acceptance decisions.

The SIGCSE Virtual 2024 review process does not have a rebuttal period for authors to respond to comments, and all acceptance decisions are final.

ACM Policies

By submitting your article to an ACM Publication, you are hereby acknowledging that you and your co-authors are subject to all ACM Publications Policies, including ACM’s Publications Policy on Research Involving Human Participants and Subjects. Alleged violations of this policy or any ACM Publications Policy will be investigated by ACM and may result in a full retraction of your paper, in addition to other potential penalties, as per ACM Publications Policy.

ORCID

ACM has made a commitment to collect ORCiD IDs from all published authors (https://authors.acm.org/author-resources/orcid-faqs). All authors on each submission must have an ORCiD ID (https://orcid.org/register) in order to complete the submission process. Please make sure to get your ORCID ID in advance of submitting your work.

Below are descriptions of the four Working Groups (WG) open for membership applications.

Please read the descriptions below, and if you find one, or more, WG you are interested in, use the link (below) to apply to participate. You can apply for one, or two, WGs in one application and you are limited to one application. Groups that attract enough members to create a viable group will proceed and work on their project virtually from early August. By the start of the conference in December a solid draft of the group’s final research report will have been produced which is reviewed by the WG chairs. The final draft of the report will be submitted for peer review the first quarter of 2025.

Pending satisfactory reviews of the report, it will be published in the Conference Proceedings. Please note that all members are expected to both participate in WG activities from August 2024 until ~ May 2025, as needed by your WG and register for the conference.

Applying to join a working group

Application Form link: https://forms.office.com/r/XmhbPi2ViQ

Application Deadline: 15th July 2024

Membership Decisions expected by: 29th July 2024

Please email (potential) WG Leaders to ask questions about a specific WG.

If you have any questions about the process please email the WG chairs: sigcsevirtual2024-WG@sigcse.org

The proposed working groups are:

1. A Survey of Undergraduate Theory of Computing Curricula
2. AI in and for K-12 Informatics Education. Life after Generative AI.
3. Developing a Playbook of Equitable Grading Practices
4. Exploring Approaches to Assessing Student Teamwork in Undergraduate Computing Projects

WG 1: A Survey of Undergraduate Theory of Computing Curricula

WG Leaders:

• Ryan Dougherty (ryan.dougherty@westpoint.edu)
• Tim Randolph (trandolph@g.hmc.edu)

Theory of Computing (ToC) is an important aspect of nearly every undergraduate CS curriculum, as it concerns what computation fundamentally means. However, there has been little research into ToC pedagogy, both within the classroom and how it fits within its institutional context. We propose in this working group to create a survey of current ToC pedagogy. Our goals are to create a standard for teaching ToC, find trends, determine under-researched areas, and to build a community among ToC educators.

WG 2: AI in and for K-12 Informatics Education. Life after Generative AI.

WG Leaders:

• Erik Barendsen (erik.barendsen@ru.nl)
• Violetta Lonati (lonati@di.unimi.it)
• Keith Quille (keith.quille@tudublin.ie)

The expedited adoption (or at least the use) of generative AI technologies has revolutionized various sectors, with informatics education being to the fore with respect to both practice and research. However, this narrow focus comes at a cost to the wider AI in and for education research space. This working group proposal aims to explore the current trends and systematically explore multiple sources of information to identify areas of AI research in K-12 informatics education that are being under-served and needed in the post-generative AI phase era. Our research focuses on three primary areas: curriculum, teacher-professional learning and policy. The denouement of this aims to identify trends and shortfalls for AI in and for K-12 informatics education.

We will first examine the current literature (using a systematic literature review) to identify themes and subsequently trends in AI education at K-12. This will be under two facets, curricula and teacher-professional learning. Secondly, we will conduct interviews with educators and AI experts to ensure that we have not omitted themes from our analysis. Thirdly we will then examine the current policy (such as the European AI Act, and European Commission guidelines on the use of AI and data in education and training as well as international counterparts), as often policy is developed by both educators and experts in the domain, thus providing a source of topics or areas that may be of value that are not currently identified in the literature and curricula. Finally, by synthesizing insights from educators, AI experts, and policymakers, as well as the literature and policy, our working group seeks to highlight possible future trends and shortfalls.

Our focus on life after generative AI is both timely and crucial. In an era of research where generative AI and Large Language models dominate the research proceedings (in many cases focusing on assessment and pedagogies for teaching traditional informatics subjects such as introductory programming), it is time to step back and examine the wider picture of AI in and for K-12 education, to identify our shortfalls and strengths as a computing research community, to support and inform future research and activities

WG3: Developing a Playbook of Equitable Grading Practices

WG Leaders:

• Stephen H. Edwards (edwards@cs.vt.edu)
• David L. Largent (dllargent@bsu.edu)
• Ben Schafer (ben.schafer@uni.edu)

Traditional points-based grading can have negative impacts. As a result, many educators are experimenting with alternative grading practices that are more equitable for students. However, educators often face challenges in implementing equitable grading practices due to a lack of clear, practical descriptions of techniques and the fact that not all techniques are universally applicable. We propose a working group that will address this problem using a three-pronged strategy: conducting a systematic literature review to gather documented techniques, compiling “recipes” or concrete descriptions of these techniques, and publishing them in an open-source, online “playbook” of equitable grading practices as a community resource for educators. This approach aims to make such practices more accessible and adaptable to various classroom situations.

WG 4: Exploring Approaches to Assessing Student Teamwork in Undergraduate Computing Projects

WG Leaders:

• Michael Scott (michael.scott@falmouth.ac.uk)
• Alexander Mitchell (A.Mitchell@falmouth.ac.uk)

Student teamwork is increasingly prominent in computing education. At the tertiary education level, per industry demand, educators use group projects to nurture professional skills and employability. However, there is considerable variance in the structure of such group projects. Courses often differ on what is being assessed and how. Emphases can be placed on the process, output, or upon reflection—and even upon individual or collective performance. This often evokes student concerns and drives considerable discourse on how to assess and grade student teams. Yet, the diversity of approaches in computing and how their varying aspects influence their reception is not well understood. There are concerns about the parity of some methods such as peer evaluation. Although, there are also intriguing opportunities which computing departments are well-placed to implement, such as version control systems and learning analytics. This working group will survey approaches to assessing student teamwork in undergraduate computing projects by reviewing the literature and then interviewing educators involved in the delivery of such courses. They will then collate an outline of the assessment models and how they differ. The group will then survey students to gather insight into the dispositions towards and potential impact of the different models. The aim is to examine global perspectives on many different approaches by conducting the work in a multi-national multi-institutional fashion, whilst also considering some dimensions of culture. This is intended to yield a set of contemporary assessment models, an evidence-informed comparison of their merits and drawbacks, and recommendations for assessment practice.