Call for papers

The First International Computing Education Research Workshop

To be held October 1-2, 2005

University of Washington

Seattle, WA USA

 

Sponsored by ACM SIGCSE

 

Papers Due: 15 May 2005

 

Computing education, as a research discipline, is the study of how people come to understand computational processes and devices, and how to improve that understanding. As computation becomes ubiquitous in our world, understanding of computing in order to design, structure, maintain, and utilize these technologies becomes increasingly important—both for the technology professional, but also for the technologically literate citizen. The research study of how the understanding of computation develops, and how to improve that understanding, is critically important for the technology-dependent societies in which we live.

 

The International Computing Education Research (ICER) Workshop aims at gathering high-quality contributions to the computing education research discipline. Papers for the ICER workshop will be peer-reviewed and should, as appropriate, display:

  • A clear theoretical basis, drawing on existing literature in computing education or related disciplines.
  • A strong empirical basis, drawing on relevant research methods. Papers that re-interpret and explain others’ empirical results are welcome.
  • An explication of the paper’s impact on, and contribution to, existing knowledge about computing education.

We welcome papers whose central research questions address:

Learning: Computing education is naturally concerned with how students make sense of computational processes and devices in formal education, including primary, secondary, and post-secondary institutions. Computing education also goes beyond formal education. What do adults understand about computation, and how do they come to that understanding? What do children understand about computation given their limited conceptions of time, process, and agency, and how does that affect their later formal learning about computation?

Instruction: Learning may be enhanced or impeded by instruction. Educators bring instructional methods, formal or informal theories, and values to specific learning environments and situations. As researchers we explore the educators’ role in the learning process—whether that educator is a teacher, near-peer, remote resource or the computer itself.

Computing Education Research employs methodologies from many fields, amongst them psychology, education, anthropology and statistics. As a consequence, research is frequently characterised by a diversity of methodological approaches; these may be applied directly, or may be combined and modified to suit the particular cross-disciplinary questions that we ask.

 

These categories are not intended to limit the areas of investigation of interest to this workshop, but to offer a “broad brush” characterization of topics. We welcome papers that extend, improve and refine work in these, and associated, areas.

 

Papers should be no more than 12 pages long, following the ACM SIGCSE formatting guidelines (http://www.ithaca.edu/sigcse2005/format.html).  Submit papers by PDF to icer2005@acm.org by 11:59 PM at the submitters’ local time zone 15 May 2005. (Note: this is a change from the original May 1 deadline, and will be strict.)

The First International Computing Education Research Workshop

To be held October 1-2, 2005

University of Washington

Seattle, WA USA

 

Conference Chairs

Richard Anderson, University of Washington, Seattle, WA

Sally Fincher, University of Kent at Canterbury, UK

Mark Guzdial, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA

 

Review Committee

Vicki Almstrum, University of Texas Austin, TX

Andy Bernat, Computer Research Association, DC

Shirley Booth, Lund University, Sweden

Roger Boyle, University of Leeds, UK

Mike Clancy, University of California, Berkeley

Tony Clear, Auckland University of Technology, NZ

Ann Fleury, Aurora University, IL

David Ginat, Tel Aviv University, Israel

Thomas Green, Independent Researcher

Raymond Lister, University of Sydney, Australia

Lauri Malmi, Helsinki University of Technology, Finland

Renee McCauley, College of Charleston, LA

W. Michael McCracken, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA

Marian Petre, Open University, UK

Anthony Robins, University of Otago, NZ
Stephen Seidman, New Jersey Institute of Technology, NJ

Judy Sheard, Monash University, Australia

Josh Tenenberg, University of Washington, Tacoma, WA