We were delighted to have been able to host WiPSCE 2023 last September in Cambridge, and the feedback we received from those who participated was very positive.
It’s now time to think about WiPSCE 2024! In full, it’s the 19th Workshop on Primary and Secondary Computing Education Research. It will be held in Munich, Germany on 16-18 September (just before Oktoberfest!). WiPSCE is an academic conference that is dedicated to primary and secondary computing education research. It’s a great opportunity to meet other researchers interested in implementing computing in school. Topics include broadening participation, teaching approaches, attitudes to learning, contexts for learning and institutional aspects, all in the context of both AI and CS education.
The Call for Papers is on the WiPSCE website, and there are various ways in which you can participate:
- The deadline for a pre-review paper is 10th March – this is designed for researchers who might like some feedback on their paper before submitting it officially. You just need to submit 2 pages with an outline of your paper including any results.
- The deadline for full papers (6-10 pages), practical reports (4-6 papers) and short, work-in-progress, papers (3-4 pages) is 29th April. See the website for more information about these. Authors can prepare their papers using LaTeX or Word (LaTeX preferred) and a 2-column template is provided. If accepted, these papers are presented at the conference and published in the ACM Digital Library.
- The final deadline for poster papers is on 16th June. These should be a maximum of two pages, again using the ACM template. If accepted, the author will prepare an A1/A2 poster about their work and be available at the conference to discuss with other researchers.
Why WiPSCE?
WiPSCE is a conference that originated in Germany and became English-speaking and internationally focused in 2012. It is a single-track and very friendly conference, meaning that everyone gets to hear all the papers.
Laurie Gale, a doctoral student at the Raspberry Pi Computing Education Research Centre, attended WiPSCE for the first time in September 2023. Below he comments on what he most enjoyed about the conference.
Laurie says:
“WiPSCE marked the end of the first year of the PhD for me, and what a way to conclude! I found most of the presentations enjoyable and relevant, but there were a couple that I was particularly gripped by. Michael Kolling’s keynote, the first talk of the conference, gave a critical look at some of the accepted difficulties of popular programming environments. The purpose of particular features in IDEs was scrutinised, giving way to Michael’s demo of “frame-based editing”. Personally, this talk reoriented how I see the role of programming environments for introductory learners and how much can be done to improve it.
I also enjoyed Luisa Greifenstein’s presentation on the role of hints in Scratch on learner’s program quality. Luisa gave hints of differing content to several groups of students to find out their effect on indicators of program quality. She found procedural hints that modelled the process of resolving a bug to be most useful in terms of student perception and the correctness of pupils’ final programs. Such hints may be useful at a primary and secondary level, but they are important to get just right. I believe self-reflection has a strong relationship with this that could be harnessed.
Overall I’d definitely recommend WiPSCE if you are interested in publishing your research in K-12 computing education, or would like to participate as an attendee.”
Find out more
More information can be found at: https://wipsce.org. Or you can follow us on X at @wipsce_
The submission site for full papers, short papers and practical reports will open on March 26 2024. The submission site for the pre-review phase is already open. Accepted papers will be published in the WiPSCE 2024 proceedings as part of the ACM International Conference Proceedings Series. The proceedings will be included in the ACM Digital Library (approval pending). You can download a PDF version of the Call for Papers here.