Special SessionsSIGCSE TS 2023

Special sessions are your opportunity to customize and experiment with the SIGCSE Technical Symposium format. Special sessions should NOT replicate existing session formats (i.e., panels, paper presentations, poster sessions, workshops, etc.) that are part of the SIGCSE Technical Symposium. They will be scheduled as hybrid events lasting 75 minutes, allowing both presenters and attendees to join either in-person or online. Within these constraints, the form is yours to design.

For example, a special session might be a seminar, a committee report, a curricular or accreditation forum, or a discussion of strategies proven to improve retention of computing topics. Possible topic areas include management of large classes, projects and assignments, teaching computer science using culturally relevant pedagogy, experiments on collaborative learning, report of an ACM committee addressing issues at two-year colleges, or special issues arising when teaching computing outside of North America.

NEW IN 2023: A single author may appear on no more than four total panel and special session submissions combined. Should more than four submissions be received with a given author, only the first four will be reviewed and all others will be desk rejected. This interim policy is intended to promote greater diversity in authorship on these tracks and will be re-evaluated by the SIGCSE TS Steering Committee following 2023.

Authors submitting work to SIGCSE TS 2023 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 program@sigcse2023.org for clarification prior to submission.

Presentation Modality

All special sessions at SIGCSE TS 2023 will be available for hybrid presentation modality. A hybrid session is a live event where in-person and online attendees can interact. Presenters and attendees in hybrid sessions may be either in-person in Toronto or online. Special Session proposals need not explicitly designate online and in-person presenters, but conference organizers will need this information shortly after notification of acceptance.

Accepted Special Sessions

Deadlines and Submission

Special session submissions consist of a 2-page extended abstract about the work including a 250-word short abstract, additional content about the work, and references. Special session submissions to the SIGCSE TS 2023 must be made through EasyChair no later than Friday, August 19, 2022. The track chairs reserve the right to desk reject submissions that are incomplete after the deadline has passed.

Important Dates

Abstracts

All special session 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 TS 2023 is not participating in the new ACM workflow, template, and production system. All special session 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: Special session 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 supplemental material).

MS Word Authors: Please use the interim Word template provided by ACM. NOTE: Each author should be defined separately for accurate metadata identification. Multiple authors may share one affiliation. Include space for authors’ e-mail addresses whenever possible on separate lines. 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

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 documentclassto obtain the 2-column format.

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. NOTE: Special session submissions may omit the following sections from the standard ACM template: keywords and CCS Concepts.

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

Accessibility: SIGCSE TS 2023 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 to the special session track should use the standardized section names and additional formatting information below when preparing the main content of their proposals.

• Overall objective of the session: Describe the topic of the special session and explain how the session will be organized (e.g., as a committee report, hands-on exercise, …). Indicate why the proposed session is important and relevant to the SIGCSE community.
• Outline of the session: Organize this section by subtopics, activities, or a similar scheme. If more than one participant is involved, label each section of the outline with the name of the participant(s) who will be presenting that section. Note that in the case of a committee report, the presenters might be a subset of the authors. We suggest that you allow at least 40 - 50% of the time for questions and answers or other interaction with the attendees.
• Expectations: State the intended audience. Indicate how much the session will cover and what the audience should learn. If feedback from the audience is desired, indicate how it will be elicited.
• Suitability for a special session: Include a brief description that justifies the inclusion of this presentation as a special session. Explain why the proposed presentation is better suited for a special session than a paper or panel or other standard track format.
• 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 formatting guidelines.

Single Anonymized Review

Submissions to the special session track 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 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 TS 2023 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 (https://www.acm.org/publications/policies/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.

Please ensure that you and your co-authors obtain an ORCID ID (https://orcid.org/register), so you can complete the publishing process for your accepted paper. ACM has been involved in ORCID from the start and we have recently made a commitment to collect ORCID IDs from all of our published authors (https://authors.acm.org/author-resources/orcid-faqs). The collection process has started and will roll out as a requirement throughout 2022. We are committed to improve author discoverability, ensure proper attribution and contribute to ongoing community efforts around name normalization; your ORCID ID will help in these efforts.

What Gets Published?

The 2-page special session proposal for each accepted submission will be published in the SIGCSE TS 2023 proceedings.

Presentation Details

All named authors for accepted special sessions must register for and attend the SIGCSE TS 2023 either in person or online. Special sessions will be facilitated through a hybrid participation format.

Further details about post-acceptance processes and presentation logistics will be provided by the time acceptance decisions are sent out.

Sample special session proposals can be found here.

• Special Session Proposal Example (Word)

Language Editing Assistance

ACM has partnered with International Science Editing (ISE) to provide language editing services to ACM authors. ISE offers a comprehensive range of services for authors including standard and premium English language editing, as well as illustration and translation services. Editing services are at author expense and do not guarantee publication of a manuscript.

Review Timeline

Overview

Special sessions provide an opportunity for SIGCSE community members to customize and experiment with the Technical Symposium formats. Special sessions should NOT replicate existing formats (i.e., panels, paper presentations, lightning talks, and poster sessions). They are scheduled in standard conference spaces. Within these constraints, authors may design a format that meets their session’s goals. For example, a special session might be a tutorial or seminar, a committee report, a curricular or accreditation forum, a rapid-fire sequence of five-minute talks, or a hands-on demo of dance moves proven to improve retention of computing topics.

Possible topic areas include management of large classes, projects and assignments, teaching computer science in K-12, experiments on collaborative learning, report of an ACM committee addressing issues at two-year colleges, or special issues arising when teaching computing outside of North America.

Criteria used in reviewing the proposals will include the likely level of interest in the session and the suitability and feasibility of the proposed format to its topic. If the proposal is accepted, all presenters listed in the special session description will be required to register for the conference and to participate in the session.

Single-Anonymous Review Process

Submissions to the Panel track 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 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. Reviewers can refer to each other by their reviewer number on that submission’s review. 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 TS 2023 review process does not have a rebuttal period for authors to respond to comments, and all acceptance decisions are final.

EasyChair Reviewer Profile

When you receive your invitation to review for SIGCSE TS 2023, please take a few moments to update your profile and select 3-5 topics that you are most qualified for reviewing. To do so, select SIGCSE TS 2023 > My topics from the menu.

Please check at most 5 topics! More topics will make it harder for the EasyChair system to make a good set of matches.

Getting Started Reviewing

Before starting your review, you may be asked by the Track Chairs to declare conflicts with any submitting authors. Please do so in a timely manner so we can avoid conflicts during assignment.

After the submission deadline and before reviewing can begin, Reviewers will bid on submissions they are interested in reviewing. Please bid for submissions where the title and abstract are in your area of expertise. Bidding will help with assigning submissions for review that you’re qualified and interested in reviewing! If you do not bid within the allotted time window, we will use topics to assign submissions for review.

As a Reviewer, we ask that you carefully read each submission assigned to you and write a constructive review that concisely summarizes what you believe the submission to be about. When reviewing a submission, consider:

• the strengths and weaknesses,
• the contribution to an outstanding SIGCSE TS 2023 program and experience for attendees, and
• how it brings new ideas or extends current ideas through replication to the field and to practitioners and researchers of computing education.

Special Session Review Guidelines

SIGCSE special session proposals are reviewed using EasyChair. Each proposal is assigned to at least three reviewers. 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. The review form for special sessions will ask you to comment specifically on three aspects of the proposal, described below. Please refer to the prompts below as you write your review.

1. Relevance and Interest
   • Is the special session topic clearly stated?
   • Are the benefits to the SIGCSE audience clearly indicated?
   • Is the special session topic of interest to the SIGCSE community?
   • Is there a clear audience that would be interested in the session?
2. Structure & Plan for Audience Participation
   • Is there an overview of the special session structure?
   • Does the proposal state why it is better suited for a special session and how it differs from other formats used in the SIGCSE Technical Symposium (paper presentations, panels, lightning talks, and poster sessions)?
   • Does the proposal identify the intended audience?
   • What interaction with the audience is included in the proposed structure? (the suggestion is to allow 40-50% of the time for some interaction with the audience).
   • Is the plan for hybrid engagement clear, and will the proposed hybrid format be productive and engaging for audience members?
3. Presenter/Leader considerations
   • Does the proposal clearly identify the presenters/leaders of the special session (i.e., name and affiliation) and describe their expertise related to the topic?
   • Does the proposal clearly describe the role of each participant in relation to the goal and topic of the special session?

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.

Discussion

The discussion and recommendation period provides the opportunity for the Track Chairs to discuss reviews and feedback so they can provide the best recommendation for acceptance or rejection to the Program Chairs and that the submission is given full consideration in the review process. We ask that Reviewers engage in discussion when prompted by other reviewers and the Track Chairs by using the Comments feature of EasyChair. During this period you will be able to revise your review based on the discussion, but you are not required to do so. The Track Chairs will make a final recommendation to the Program Chairs from your feedback.

Recalcitrant Reviewers

Reviewers who don’t submit reviews, have reviews with limited constructive feedback, or who 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.