A workshop on classifying publications in computing education research

Wollongong, Australia, Sunday 20 and Monday 21 January, 2008

Organiser: Simon
In association with the Australasian Computing Education Conference 2008 (22-25 Jan)

Most computing education researchers are aware of some sort of divide between 'research' papers and 'practice' papers. Some will even be aware of moves to increase the proportion of research papers at some conferences, necessitating a reduction in the proportion of other papers.

This two-day workshop will be directed to educational researchers who would like to know more about this divide and therefore to better position themselves to choose the directions of their future papers. The types of question that will be considered are:

*   Just what are research and practice papers?
*   When I am designing a project, how can I ensure that it will qualify as research?
*   If my paper is not a research paper, is it necessarily a practice paper?

Prior to the workshop, participants will be required to read a number of specified papers and become reasonably familiar with them. Apart from this reading, no prior knowledge will be assumed.

At the workshop, participants will be introduced to a new system for classifying computing education papers, and will use this system to classify a number of papers, including those that they have read in the preparation phase. The classification carried out here will form part of an inter-rater reliability assessment of the classification system.

Following the workshop, those participants who are interested will be invited to help classify some large corpuses of papers, such as the full set of papers published at all ten Australasian Computing Education Conferences, with a view to analysing the results and submitting them for publication.

Applications

Teachers, researchers and research students within the field of computing education are now invited to apply to take part in the workshop.

Funding to support this workshop is being pursued. There may be a small charge for the workshop.

There are upper and lower limits on the number of participants: if there are too few applicants, the workshop will not proceed; if there are too many, not all can be accepted.

Applications are due by Monday 5 November 2007.

Apply by email to simon@newcastle.edu.au. Include contact information as well as a brief description of your prior experience in computing education research and your motives for applying to attend this workshop.

For further information please contact:

Simon
School of DCIT
The University of Newcastle
PO Box 127, Ourimbah
NSW 2258
Australia

Phone: +61 2 4348 4074

Email: simon@newcastle.edu.au