Message from the Chair

LAK 2016 welcomes workshop and tutorial proposal submissions. Workshops provide an efficient forum for community building and sharing of ideas on emerging research topics or specific questions. Tutorials aim to educate stakeholders in a specific Learning Analytics topic. Due to ACM regulations only the workshop summaries will be published in the conference proceedings.

IMPORTANT DATES

All the dates are hard deadlines. No extensions for submissions will be granted.

All conference submissions are done via EasyChair.

• 31st October 2015 (HAST) – Proposal submission deadline
• 30th November 2015 (HAST) – Notification of workshop and tutorial acceptance
• 5th February 2016 (HAST) – Deadlne for revised workshop proposals
• Workshop submissions: – Check individual workshop websites for workshop paper submission deadlines

Leah Macfadyen, Faculty of Arts, The University of British Columbia, Canada (leah.macfadyen@ubc.ca)

Jeremy Knox, Lecturer in Digital Education, University of Edinburgh, Scotland (jeremy.knox@ed.ac.uk)

Preparations

Each workshop or tutorial should preferably have at least two organizers. Proposals should describe in a maximum of 3 pages the following information to judge the importance, quality, and benefits for the LAK community. Please use the ACM style guidelines to describe the workshop proposal an example can be found in the previous LAK proceedings.

Cover page including:

• Workshop or tutorial title
• Name, affiliation, full postal address, homepage and e-mail address for each organizer
• Identification of the primary contact person(s)
• Short biography of each organizer stating their qualifications related to the workshop or tutorial topics
• Expected participants and domains addressed
• Required equipment for the workshop / tutorial
• Dissemination activities (e.g. #hashtag of the event, mailing lists, etc.)

Description of the workshop / tutorial:

• Motivation: What is the overall topic of the workshop or tutorial? Why is this topic of particular interest for LAK 2016? What is it’s contribution to the research field?
• Objectives: What are the objectives that the workshop or tutorial aims to achieve? If a similar workshop or tutorial has been organized in the past at LAK or another conference, please give details (audience, URL) and describe how your proposal builds upon these past events.

Target group:

• A brief explanation of why and to whom the workshop or tutorial is of interest: target audience, areas from which the participants are expected to come.
• Indicate how you plan to reach and attract your target group. Estimate the number of participants, if possible, give a list of tentatively confirmed participants.
• Names and contact information of PC members, if available.

Format:

• A description of the proposed workshop or tutorial format, including the planned activities, as well as how these activities address the objectives.
• Provide a preliminary schedule with estimated times. Design your schedule for a length of 3 hours (half-day) or 6 hours (full-day) with a lunch break and one or two coffee breaks, respectively.

Submission steps

• Prepare workshop/tutorial submission in accordance with ACM Proceedings format.
• Access the EasyChair LAK16 submission system and register or sign in.
• Click the “New Submission” menu tab and follow the on-screen instructions. NOTE: Please copy and paste the presenter information, title, abstract, keywords and deployment summary into the online form as well as including them in the PDF.

Reviewing Process

Workshop/tutorial selection will be handled competitively; proposals will be ranked according to five criteria:

1. Relevance to LAK
2. Innovativeness
3. Extent of interaction
4. Overall quality
5. Comprehensiveness of planning

Workshop/tutorial organizers are encouraged to propose innovative and interactive formats, which will be given priority in the selection process. The proposals will be reviewed and evaluated by the workshop and tutorial chairs and the LAK 2016 organizing team. In case of overlapping proposals, the workshop chairs might propose to merge two workshops or tutorials into a single one.

If the proposal is accepted

If your workshop/tutorial proposal is accepted, you will be responsible for identification of participants, any call for workshop/tutorial contributions and the review/selection process. As for LAK16 generally, any paper submissions must follow ACM guidelines and should be reviewed by at least two reviewers. We recommend that you manage the submission process through a conference management system like EasyChair. Workshop and tutorials can be full or half days. The length of accepted events will be finalised according to the number of papers and registration numbers. Each workshop/tutorial needs to provide a #hashtag to enable tracking of online communication in an early stage.

At the Conference

Workshop/tutorial organizers are responsible for scheduling sessions, making sure the presenters are contacted in advance, ensuring that slides are available online with the #hashtag of the workshop, and that the local organizers are sufficiently informed to prepare the workshop/tutorial rooms appropriately. In addition, each workshop is expected to produce an open access document (for example, a Google Doc or a slide pack) synthesising the key outcomes and agreed follow-on activities.

After the Conference

Workshop organizers who plan to publish workshop Proceedings are asked to manage the preparation and editing of their workshop collected papers according to their own workshop needs and timelines, and to establish these Proceedings as a CEUR Workshop Proceedings volume according to the guidlines given on the CEUR website [http://ceur-ws.org/]. In addition, a special issue will be organized for the best papers of each workshop in the International Journal for Learning Analytics. Half day workshops may select two best papers and full day workshop three best papers for the special issue. It is the responsibility of the workshop organizers to manage the selection process for the best papers of each workshop. The selected papers need to extend the previously published workshop papers sufficiently (at least 25-30% of new contribution) to be considered for publication in the special issue.