We welcome you to the fourteenth annual International Computing Education Research Conference, ICER 2018, sponsored by the ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE). Espoo, Finland is the host city for this year's conference, with sessions taking place on the Aalto University campus.
ICER stands as the premier ACM forum for dissemination and discussion of the latest findings in computing education research across the globe. ICER research papers represent significant, rigorous contributions to the field. One hundred twenty-five research papers were submitted, with twenty-eight papers accepted for publication (a 22% acceptance rate) in the conference proceedings in the ACM Digital Library. All papers were double-blind peer reviewed by three members of the program committee. In addition, each paper received a meta-review by a member of the senior program committee, with the two Program Co-Chairs making final acceptance decisions.
In addition to the research paper presentations, ICER includes Lightning Talk and Poster sessions as a way for ICER attendees to present early results, gain feedback from conference attendees, find collaborators on a topic, and/or spark discussion among conference participants. The conference also serves a vital mentoring and advising role for upcoming discipline-based computing education researchers through the Doctoral Consortium. The Work in Progress workshop is a dedicated one-day workshop for ICER attendees to provide and receive friendly, constructive feedback on research during formative stages of development.
Associated co-located workshops with external sponsorship at ICER 2018 include Building Your Team of Change Champions and Computing Science Educational Infrastructure: Crossing the Borders.
We are honored to welcome Kirsti Lonka, the Professor of Educational Psychology in the Faculty of Education at the University of Helsinki, Finland to present the ICER 2018 keynote address. For the past 30 years, she has been investigating various aspects of learning in higher education, medical education, teacher education, and postgraduate education (PhD students). In the area of academic writing, her work has focused around conceptions of writing, note taking, process writing, portfolios and writing across curriculum (writing as a learning tool). Professor Lonka's keynote, Growing minds - 21st century competences and digitalization among Finnish youth?, discusses her recent research concerning the digital technology background among Finnish school children and its relation to their activities and attitudes. The keynote addresses the intensive reforms, both in research-based teacher education and at school that are going on in Finland. In addition to the new Finnish curricula, the latest developments in education, innovative pedagogical methods, technologies in education and new learning environments will be presented.
