In the December issue of ACM Inroads, Raymond Lister has an article entitled Rare Research: Why is Research Uncommon in the Computing Education Universe? In it he correctly notes that while the SICSE Symposium typically has an attendance of roughly 1200 and ITiCSE roughly 200, ICER (the International Computing Education Researcher Workshop has an attendance that hovers around 60 each year. He suggests this may mean that people in the computing community are not interested in computing education research and speculates as to why that might be. He does not come to any firm conclusions and ends with the question “why?”
I have a possible reason, one that has little to do with the interest of computing educators in computing education research. I think it has to do with funding. My institution, DePaul University, is relatively generous in their travel funding. As long as I am in some way presenting at a conference, DePaul will pay my expenses. Part of the generosity comes from the fact that “presenting” includes papers but also panel presentations, posters, and other contributions. However, if I wish to attend a conference in which I am making no direct contribution, I must pay for it myself. I do not believe that DePaul is unusual in the stipulation that I contribute in some way in order for expenses to be paid. If anything DePaul is more generous than other institutions, something supported by a study a colleague and I did of institutional support for computing faculty.
What does this have to do with ICER? Typically before someone can begin publishing in a research area, they need to attend conferences and/or workshops in that area. He or she need to understand the research approaches, questions, and culture of the community. However, this is not necessarily the case for the SIGCSE Symposium or ITiCSE. There are multiple entries into that community, including posters, birds-of-a-feather sessions, and working groups, that do not require extensive previous knowledge for participation. Someone can then attend the Symposium or ITiCSE, learn more, and be successful in larger and more complex projects and submissions. It is not clear that this is the case for ICER. Lightning talks come the closest to the previously mentioned items at the other conferences, but a look at the titles for the talks at ICER 2012 suggest a level of sophistication that the average computing educator may not feel ready to tackle. This is compounded by the hint of snobbery that some computing education researchers convey when discussing contributions by their less research-oriented colleagues.
While I believe I have part of the answer to Raymond Lister’s “why,” I do not suggest to have the solution. How is it that ICER can make it possible for computing educators with funding restrictions to attend the workshop? Not being a part of that community (yet?), I cannot answer that question. But perhaps Dr. Lister and others who are part of the ICER community can find a solution, assuming as I am from his article, that he and others are interested in drawing more computing educators into their fold.
