ICER 2018 Conference in Espoo

ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research (ICER 2018) was organised in Espoo on August 13-15. The conference started with co-located workshops and Doctoral Consortium (DC) on Sunday 12th. A total of 127 participants from 18 different countries attended the main conference between Monday and Wednesday. In addition, there was a Works in Progress workshop held right after the Conference, providing participants with an opportunity to gain critical and in-depth feedback on their research ideas or projects.

ICER 2018 provided a forum for presenting and publishing high-quality research in computing education. The main focus was computing education in higher education level, but research in K-12 level was also presented. Research foci were diverse covering aspects such as teaching and learning methods, software tools supporting learning, topical misconceptions, recruitment and students’ background factors, career tracks and teachers.

The conference was designed to encourage authors and audience to engage in lively discussion about each work presented. The 28 accepted research papers provided the main focus of the conference. However, the submission categories allowed for different types of participation, supporting work at different levels ranging from formative work to a completed research study. Students accepted for the doctoral consortium participated in an all-day workshop conducted by prominent leaders in the computing education research community, and presented their work at the conference in a dedicated poster session. In addition, ICER 2018 offered a track for lightning talks, 3-minute presentations that articulate an idea for a research study, provided an update on current research, or invited collaborators. The keynote speaker at the conference was Kirsti Lonka from the University of Helsinki. Her keynote addressed “Growing minds – 21st century competences and digitalisation among Finnish youth?”