Improving global participation in the sigcse technical symposium

Amber Settle, Brett A. Becker, Rodrigo Duran, Viraj Kumar, Andrew Luxton-Reilly

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference article in proceedingsScientificpeer-review

9 Citations (Scopus)
185 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

SIGCSE is a global organization with members from well over 100 countries, but attendance at SIGCSE conferences is not always reflective of membership as a whole [5]. Attendance at the SIGCSE Technical Symposium (called the Symposium here) is overwhelmingly from the United States, with more than 92% of all attendees in recent years having a U.S. affiliation. Roughly half of the remaining 8% of attendees come from Canada with only 4% of attendees from the rest of the world, as shown in Figure 1. Researchers from the U.S. co-author 86.80% of all Symposium contributions, which includes 79.10% of all Symposium papers and 92.90% of all other Symposium contributions. This is well above what one would expect from SIGCSE membership which is on average 80% American. There is reason to be concerned with geographic representation at SIGCSE conferences. Conferences are the most common outlet for research in the computing education community, and if participation is geographically limited the research will not include or reach everyone it should. One of the benefits of conference attendance is networking, and the absence of SIGCSE members from certain countries may be impeding innovation for the community as a whole. SIGCSE conferences are also a driver for membership, which is crucial for the health and future of the organization.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationSIGCSE 2020 - Proceedings of the 51st ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education
PublisherACM
Pages483-484
Number of pages2
ISBN (Electronic)9781450367936
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 26 Feb 2020
MoE publication typeA4 Conference publication
EventACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education - Portland, United States
Duration: 11 Mar 202014 Mar 2020
Conference number: 51

Publication series

NameAnnual Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education, ITiCSE
ISSN (Print)1942-647X

Conference

ConferenceACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education
Abbreviated titleSIGSE
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityPortland
Period11/03/202014/03/2020

Keywords

  • Attendance
  • Inclusiveness
  • International
  • Membership
  • Participation
  • Sigcse
  • Special interest group
  • Symposium

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