Schedule for SIGCSE TS 2021

Last update: Monday, May 24, 2021
All times Eastern Time Zone (North America) (Note that Daylight Saving Time in the US begins at 2:00 AM on March 14)
Click on the events in the calendar below to see more information about each session
Quick Links: Program Schedule | Keynote Speakers | Posters | Demos | BoFs | ACM SRC | Workshops | Affiliated Events | Special Events | Supporter Sessions
Suggested Session Roadmaps: Global Attendees | Community College Attendees | K-12 Attendees

March 2021
Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
Exhibit Hall and Supporter Sessions
3:00 PM-8:00 PM
16
Exhibit Hall and Supporter Sessions
3:00 PM-8:00 PM
17
Exhibit Hall and Supporter Sessions
3:00 PM-8:00 PM
18
Exhibit Hall and Supporter Sessions
3:00 PM-8:00 PM
19
Exhibit Hall and Supporter Sessions
3:00 PM-8:00 PM
20
Exhibit Hall and Supporter Sessions
3:00 PM-8:00 PM
23
24

Virtual Platform

Pathable Logo We are excited to announce that Pathable has been selected as the virtual platform for the 2021 Technical Symposium! More information on how to use Pathable for attendees, presenters, and session chairs will be made available in the coming weeks. We will also be offering free training sessions for presenters and session chairs to help you feel more comfortable before the Technical Symposium starts.

Worried that you won’t be able to see all the content you want during the week of the Technical Symposium? To help folks get the most out of the content both before and after the Symposium, we plan to open Pathable to registered attendees in early March so that you can watch prerecorded sessions, set up meetings, and start to catch up with friends before the event even begins! Also, all recorded content (both prerecorded and recorded live during the Symposium) will be available to all registered attendees for a year after the Symposium ends!

Make sure to register as soon as you can after registration opens to take advantage of the early content!

Session Descriptions and Information

For more information about each session, click on the event in the calendar above, or select from the list below. We are continuing to post more information and will update regularly.

Technical Sessions

Each Technical Session block will have eight or nine parallel Zoom webinar rooms in Pathable with paper presentations, panels/special sessions, demos, or lightning talks. (e.g. An example block could have five paper sessions, two panels, and one special session.)

Paper Presentation Sessions: Authors are asked to prerecord a 20 minute presentation of their work that will be made available before the Technical Symposium through Pathable. During the paper presentation session itself, each author will be given 20 minutes – 5 minutes for a short recap of their work with a few slides and then 15 minutes of Q&A. Five authors will present during each paper presentation session. All paper presentation sessions will be recorded and will be available on-demand through Pathable.

Panels and Special Sessions: Panels and Special Sessions will have the option of either prerecording their panel discussion and making it available before the Technical Symposium and then only having live Q&A and follow up discussion or doing the entire session live. All panels and special sessions will be recorded and will be available on-demand through Pathable.

Demos: Presenters are asked to prerecord a “teaser” presentation demo no longer than 5 minutes that will be made available to attendees roughly two weeks before the Technical Symposium begins on Pathable. Attendees will have the opportunity to access all available content during the weeks leading up to the Symposium and will have access for a year following the end of the Symposium.

Lightning Talks: Presenters are invited (but not required) to submit a 5 minute presentation of their work that will be made available to attendees roughly two weeks before the Technical Symposium begins on Pathable. Attendees will have the opportunity to access all available content during the weeks leading up to the Symposium and will have access for a year following the end of the Symposium.

Birds-of-a-Feather (BOF)

Birds-of-a-Feather flocks will each be given their own dedicated Zoom meeting room for the entire week that will be listed in Pathable and available for use for discussion or other activities throughout the Technical Symposium. Additionally, there will be an officially scheduled meeting time during one of the networking blocks that will be advertised on the schedule for the normal BoF session (as we would normally do in-person). BOF organizers will have the ability to record meetings in their Zoom rooms.

Posters

Presenters will submit a PDF of their poster and have the option to submit a 1-2minute “teaser” video to the work/research in their poster to pique the interest of registrants to attend the live presentation.

Nifty Assignments

Workshops

Affiliated Events

Supporter Sessions

In between Block A and Block B’s technical content, the virtual Exhibit Hall will be open. SIGCSE sponsors will have sessions at 3:00, 4:15, 5:30, and 6:45. Sessions at 3:00 and 6:45 will be for Platinum and Gold Level supporters, while Silver Level supporters will have sessions at 4:15 and 5:30.

Creating the SIGCSE TS 2021 Schedule

The Symposium and Program Chairs spent a great deal of time over the past few months attending other virtual conferences, talking with our planning company, and getting input from various parts of our community regarding possible formats and schedules for the Technical Symposium. There were many aspects of other virtual conferences that we felt could work well for the Technical Symposium. For example, ASEE’s (American Society for Engineering Education) 2020 Virtual Conference was the first conference that the chairs attended this summer that had authors upload prerecorded videos and then use the presentation time primarily for Q&A. We felt that this model would provide our community with more of what we wanted - interaction with other attendees. We plan to make the prerecorded presentations available before the conference, at the same time that the papers become available in the ACM Digital Library so that attendees can watch the content when it is convenient for them and then come with questions to the paper sessions.

We also were keenly aware that most (if not all) of our colleagues would likely still be teaching during the Symposium. Some schools are still deciding if Spring Break will even happen. Also, with anticipated lower registration fees and no travel costs, we hope that more of our K-12 and community college colleagues will be able to join us. Therefore, we decided that a “normal” Symposium schedule (e.g. 10:00 AM-4:00 PM) probably would not be best for us.

The “split band” block schedule was inspired by ICSE 2020 (International Conference on Software Engineering). However, while ICSE utilized three bands (Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian), we felt a two-band schedule would work better for us, due to the amount of content we would have and the geographic breakdown of most attendees. We placed Block B later in the evening Eastern Time so that K-12 colleagues from all North American time zones could theoretically attend that block, along with making things a bit nicer for our Australasian colleagues.

We understand that not all blocks are at optimal times for all time zones. To address this, our plan is to record all live sessions and make them available on-demand through the virtual platform throughout the Symposium and after the conclusion of the event.

The large supporter block in between the two technical sessions allows us to highlight the contributions of sponsor organizations to the SIGCSE community appropriately. We are asking our sponsors and exhibitors to create unique and informative sessions during these slots so that the SIGCSE community can have all the benefits of the exhibit hall we know and love.

Thank you all for your patience as we navigate a whole new way to run the Technical Symposium! We are very excited for the possibilities that a virtual platform gives us, even if we are still disappointed we cannot all be together in person.

Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns!

Mark Sherriff and Larry Merkle
SIGCSE TS 2021 Symposium Co-Chairs
symposium@sigcse2021.org

Pam Cutter, Alvaro Monge, and Judy Sheard
SIGCSE TS 2021 Program Co-Chairs
program@sigcse2021.org