Report on the Learning at Scale Conference Mehran Sahami Stanford University ACM Education Council – November 2013

Outline Focus of the conference Organization –Program Chairs –Program Committee –Technical Program Important dates Coordination with SIGCSE-14 Industrial support

Focus of the Conference “This conference is intended to promote scientific exchange of interdisciplinary research at the intersection of the learning sciences and computer science.” Inspired by: –Massive Open Online courses (MOOCs) –Large in-person courses Bringing together researchers from Computer Science and Education –Usability and effectiveness –Learning Sciences and Educational Data Mining –New tools and techniques –Improvements to pedagogy, learning, and community

Organization Website: March 4-5, 2014 in Atlanta, GA –Co-located with SIGCSE-14 Program Chairs: –Armando Fox (UC Berkeley) –Michelene T.H. Chi (Arizona State University) –Marti Hearst (UC Berkeley) General Chair: –Mehran Sahami (Stanford) “These aren’t the droids you’re looking for…” “He can go about his business…” “You will chair the Learning at Scale conference…”

Program Committee

Technical Program Invited Talks Full papers (8-10 pages) –Rigorous research on methodologies, studies, analyses, tools, or technologies for learning at scale Work-in-Progress Posters and Demos (1-2 pages) –Concise report of recent findings or other types of innovative or thought-provoking work that has not reach a level of completion that would warrant submission of a full paper Tutorials (1, 2, or 4 hours long) –Tutorial of a relevant tool, technology, or methodology related to learning at scale ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction special issue on topics related to learning at scale

Important Dates Nov. 8:Full paper and tutorial submissions due –Submission site opened Oct. 21 Dec. 23:Author notification for full-papers and tutorials –Includes conditional acceptance Jan. 2:Works-in-progress (poster) submissions due –Must be camera ready Jan. 14:Author notification for works-in-progress Jan. 17:All camera-ready materials due Mar. 4-5:Conference –Mar. 6:Much rejoicing! Jun. 20:ACM TOCHI special issue deadline

Coordination with SIGCSE-14 Learning at Scale created by ACM Education Board –This is novel. Traditionally, ACM conferences created by SIGs Co-location with SIGCSE-14 to jump-start community –Same conference venue –Same hotel reservation block –Discount for joint registration at both conferences –Thanks to ACM, SIGCSE Board, and SIGCSE-14 chairs who have all worked to make this possible Potentially co-locate with other conferences (e.g., education, HCI, etc.) in the future

Industrial Support Project: $60K in support needed for breakeven Google committed to sponsoring for $25K –Has employees on PC Microsoft strongly considering sponsoring at similar level –Has employees on PC Oracle also considering supporting at a lower level –No employees on PC, but education outreach group has interest Approached well-known MOOC providers –P(sponsorship | lack of profitability)  0

Conclusions Organization proceeding well Sponsorship looks promising, but not fully committed Community seems interested in this conference –Will have better idea of interest after Nov. 8 (paper deadline) Real need for this –Understanding efficacy of MOOCs –Better scaling in-person education in face of rising enrollments –Large numbers are great, but we need to understand how that impacts educational outcomes Questions?