The CHI Tutorial Program: Building on Common Ground
Marian G. Williams*, Mark W. Altom**
- *Computer Science Department
- University of Massachusetts Lowell
- Lowell, MA 01854 USA
- +1 508 934-3628
- williams.chi@xerox.com
- **AT&T Bell Laboratories
- 200 Laurel Ave., Room 4K-539
- Middletown, NJ 07748 USA
- +1 908 957-6204
- altom.chi@xerox.com
KEYWORDS:
SIGCHI, tutorials, education, continuing education, HCI professional issues.
INTRODUCTION
The CHI tutorial program is an evolving organism. Each year, the conference organizers try to make it better than the year before. This SIG is your opportunity to help guide the evolution of the tutorial program.
At this SIG, we hope to gather opinions and experiences that will help us look at the tutorial program as a whole. This is not the place to compliment or criticize an individual tutorial. Rather, it is a place to help shape the future of the CHI tutorial program.
The formal feedback that is traditionally available to the tutorial program planning committee comes from survey questionnaires filled out by tutorial attendees at prior conferences. The surveys are extremely valuable for helping the tutorial committee decide whether individual tutorials meet the needs of attendees. The SIG, however, provides a higher-bandwidth channel for interested persons to voice their opinions about the future of the tutorial program.
The SIG is not a CHI '97 planning meeting. Rather, it is a continuation of the on-going discussion that was begun at a similar SIG last year [1]. However, ideas put forth in the SIG may well influence the nature of next year's tutorial program.
GOAL OF THE SIG
The goal of the SIG is to provide a comfortable forum in which interested people, no matter what their relationship to the tutorial program, may contribute ideas for guiding the evolution of the CHI tutorial program.
WHO SHOULD ATTEND
We invite all interested conference participants to attend the SIG. Please come if you are an experienced or prospective tutorial presenter, reviewer, or attendee -- or if you simply have an interest in CHI professional education.
HOW THE SIG WILL BE CONDUCTED
SIG participants will fill out a brief survey about the tutorial program and will engage in small-group and whole-group discussions.
ISSUES
The SIG will address some issues that cannot be adequately addressed by the feedback questionnaires that tutorial attendees fill out. These issues include, but are not limited to, a review of this year's innovations, the experience of this year's tutorial presenters, future innovations, data collection and dissemination for evaluating the tutorial program, and meeting the needs of tutorial attendees from outside the US and Canada. Here is the way we will approach these issues during the SIG.
This year's innovations
Innovations this year include the awarding of Continuing Education Units for CHI tutorials, more tutorials scheduled for Saturday night, a new mix of topics influenced by requests from CHI '95 attendees, far more feedback to CHI '95 instructors, and more timely and complete planning information provided to this year's instructors. Did these innovations succeed?
Tutorial presenter's experience
What are the rewards of giving a tutorial at CHI, and do the benefits outweigh the hard work?
Future innovations
How should the tutorial program evolve to better meet the needs of attendees and presenters?
Data collection and dissemination
Is our collection of feedback information adequate, and do we make effective use of the data we collect?
Non-US and non-Canadian attendees
Are there ways that the tutorial program can better meet the needs of attendees from outside the US and Canada?
REFERENCE
- Altom, Mark and Marian G. Williams, "The CHI Tutorial Program: Just What Is the 'Common Ground'?" CHI '95 Conference Companion, p. 330.
