Report on the Learning at Scale (L@S) Conference

1. Report on the Learning at Scale (L@S) Conference Mehran Sahami Stanford University sahami@cs.stanford.edu ACM Education Council – November 2013

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

3. 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

4. Organization • Website: http://learningatscale.acm.org/ • 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…”

5. Program Committee

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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

9. 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

10. 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?