CERAMICS:
Computing Education Research
Advancing Methods for Curricula and Systems

What is it and who is it for?

There are many categories of people who want to do CER (Computing Education Research) but are not currently PhD students in the field:

• Early-stage research-track professors, who either (a) no longer have a PhD advisor to assist them and are in fact themselves now responsible for students, and/or (b) want to grow beyond what they learned as graduate students.
• Teaching-track faculty who want to engage in research.
• PhD students/research scientists/etc. who are working in computing areas outside CER, are doing projects related to CER, and need guidance designing and executing their projects.
• People in industry (e.g., at EdTech companies) who are interested in doing research.

These people face a lack of good avenues for research mentorship. CERAMICS intends to provide a venue for such people to present and get feedback on their research ideas and plans.

What’s the overall goal?

Our goal is to increase the number of people who engage in CER and improve the quality of their work. Over time we hope to see CER become a strong, respected field of research in computing.

What is the format?

Participants will be expected to submit an initial research plan that makes clear what they are trying to find out. We ask you to do two things.

1. Try to describe your research questions. There are many pieces of advice on framing research questions; we find this document has some good examples.
2. Describe your project using one or two of these three structuring “grammars”:

1. Blumenfeld/Guzdial chart
2. Logic model (again, there are lots of good tutorials on these on the Web)
3. Conjecture map [formal paywalled citation]

These will (a) help you structure and clarify your thinking, (b) help us shape our feedback, and also (c) demonstrate that you have thought this through enough to be ready for CERAMICS.

Combine all these into a single, well-structured PDF (so it’s easy for us to find the parts).

It is possible that what you want to do doesn’t fit any of these frameworks. If so, you are still welcome to submit (and explain why).

Where and when will the events be located?

Our express goal is to be inclusive to people around the world, no matter their timezone, finances, ability to secure visas, etc. For that reason, we will run the event entirely virtually.

What is the timeline?

We expect to process applications two times a year. We will need about a month to process submissions. After that, we will either give you feedback with recommendations for sharpening your research plan, or we will invite you to a meeting with the committee. Each applicant will be scheduled separately to accommodate time zones, etc.

Our next deadline is Apr 4, 2025. We are now accepting applications!

How do I apply?

Please fill out this form.

How do I turn proposals into papers?

For now, CERAMICS is not going to be a publication venue. Instead, a subset of our expert panelists will advise you on venues that make sense for your work. These might be computing education research venues (such as TOCE or CSE), or they may be venues in other areas (like OOPSLA, SIGCHI, Learning Sciences, etc.) that we believe are receptive to CER ideas.

I have questions!

Please contact Ben and Shriram.

Who are the expert panelists?

CERAMICS is being organized by:

• R. Benjamin Shapiro, University of Washington
• Shriram Krishnamurthi, Brown University

The review committee consists of:

• Ethel Tshukudu, University of Botswana/San Jose State University
• Jan Vahrenhold, Universität Münster
• Maria Knobelsdorf, Universität Tübingen
• Neil C. C. Brown, King’s College London
• Sally Fincher, University of Kent
• Sridhar Iyer, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay