ACE 2023

25th Australasian Computing Education Conference

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Call for participation

We warmly invite you to submit a research or practitioner paper to the 25th annual Australasian Computing Education Conference (ACE'23). ACE is a high-quality international conference, run in-cooperation with SIGCSE, that provides a forum for educators and researchers to share innovations and insights in computing education.

ACE 2023 will run in parallel with several other events as part of Australasian Computer Science Week (ACSW), 30th January-3rd February, 2023 at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.

In addition to publishing research from leading computing education researchers, the ACE community is very welcoming and supportive of researchers who are new to computing education research, and practitioners who wish to discuss and develop good computing education practice. Topics of interest for the conference include, but are not limited to:

  • the use of technology in computing education;
  • course content;
  • curriculum structure;
  • methods of assessment and evaluation;
  • pedagogy and learning theories;
  • mobile, flexible, online learning, and
  • valuations of alternative approaches

The Program Committee will select the papers to appear based on their potential to enhance learning outcomes in computing courses. Both research papers and practitioner papers must be between 5 and 10 pages in length (inclusive of any references). To illustrate the variety of work presented at ACE, you may wish to view recent conference proceedings which are available on the ACM Digital Library:

IMPORTANT DATES

All times Anywhere on Earth - AoE)

  • Friday, 14th October 2022: submission deadline and bidding period begins
  • Tuesday, 18th October 2022: bidding period ends and reviewing begins
  • Friday, 4th November 2022: reviewing period ends and discussion begins
  • Monday, 14th November 2022: author notifications

Submissions should be in two-column format (i.e. use "sigconf" style in the documentclass for Latex) and should use the ACM SIG Proceedings template (available in Latex and Word). Submissions should be made to EasyChair in PDF format:

Submissions should be made via Easychair: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=ace23

RESEARCH PAPERS

Papers on research and innovations may be in the context of formal courses or self-directed learning; they may involve, for example, introductory programming, service courses, capstone courses, specialist undergraduate or postgraduate topics, or industry-related short courses. We welcome submissions directed at issues of current and local importance, as well as topics of international interest. Such topics may include the transition from school to university, articulation between vocational and university education, quality management in teaching, teaching people from other cultures, globalisation, attracting and retaining female students, online, mobile and blended learning. Research papers would typically describe research questions, and address these through the careful presentation of methods, results, and limitations, while clearly stating the contribution of the work.

PRACTITIONER PAPERS

In addition to research papers, ACE provides the opportunity for teachers to demonstrate new educational tools, and to share interesting teaching resources, assignments, and techniques that may be of broad interest to the community. We encourage the submission of papers that present interesting ways to teach challenging concepts, engaging activities that promote student learning, and compelling assignments. Practitioner papers would typically describe a computing education approach or tool, the context of its use, and present a rich reflection on how it worked in practice.

STUDENT PAPERS

Student authors (of research or practitioner papers) may be eligible for a CORE Student Research award. To qualify as a student paper:

  • the major contribution must be made by a student author, who must be listed as first author; and
  • at the time of submission, the authors must indicate that their paper is to be classified as a student paper, and provide a letter of confirmation from the student’s supervisor or Head of Department by email to the conference chairs (ace23@easychair.org).

REVIEW PROCESS

All research and practitioner papers will be fully refereed, using a double-blind reviewing process, by a minimum of three members of the Program Committee. Members of the Program Committee are listed on the conference website.

CHAIRS

To contact the chairs, please use the conference EasyChair email address: ace23@easychair.org, or contact them directly:

  • Paul Denny, University of Auckland
  • Nicole Herbert, University of Tasmania

Guidelines for authors

Papers must be in English and must be original contributions that have not been published previously, nor submitted to other conferences or journals in parallel with this conference.

Papers must be between 5 and 10 pages long (inclusive of any references). Papers are required to conform to the formatting guidelines of the ACM Conference paper guides. Authors should use the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) – SIG Proceedings Template:

  • LaTeX template
  • MS Word template

If you are using Latex, use the “sigconf” style in documentclass (which is the default if you create a project using the LaTeX link above). Page length includes references. The accepted format for submissions is Portable Document Format (PDF). Microsoft Word and LaTeX template files are available at the website link above. We recommend using the LaTeX template where possible, but if you choose to use MS Word, then please use the Interim Template listed on the ACM conference proceedings page listed above.

By submitting to the conference, authors accept that they are aware of the Guidelines on Research Practice in Computer Science by the Computer Research and Education Association (CORE). In particular, authors are encouraged to review the points on authorship.

Please review the Guidelines for authors on this site, before submitting.

Double-blind reviewing requirements: It is standard practice that identities of reviewers are not made known to authors. The double-blind review process extends this principle so that reviewers do not know the identity of authors. This process requires authors to refrain from identifying themselves in their own paper. Below are some guidelines for anonymising your paper.

  • If you are using the ACM template correctly, you can tell it to create an anonymous version of the pdf; this will take care of explicit mentions of the author names.
  • If you are not yet using the template (you should be!), in place of the usual author and address details, put “Author details suppressed” or something equivalent. Where there are more than three authors contributing to a paper, limit the number of author spaces to three in the anonymised version.
  • Refrain from references to your university or campus by name. If you feel that a description of your university is in some way salient to the paper, use generalities. For example, use "our University" instead of "Maintown University of Technology".
  • Avoid expressions like “In earlier work we …” followed by a citation of a paper authored by yourself.
  • If you have an acknowledgements section, omit it for the blind submission.
  • Do not link to webpages in your anonymised paper.
  • Once you have a pdf copy of your paper, see how well it is blinded. Some PDF creation software includes document properties such as the author name or institution. Some operating systems will show such document properties when the cursor hovers over the file name. Be especially careful to disguise or remove these properties.

In general, apply good judgement when preparing your submission, to maintain the integrity of the double-blind process. Submissions that allow the author to be identified may be returned to you for editing at short notice, or may be rejected outright.

Registration for ACSW: At least one author of an accepted paper must register to attend ACSW. When submitting a paper, you will be asked to nominate who will be attending ACE and presenting the paper if it is accepted. Papers not presented at ACE will be withdrawn from the proceedings. Please see the ACSW site for registration.

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