LASI Spain 2020 Doctoral Consortium 

CoVid-19 Official Statement

To authors and potential participants in LASI Spain 2020: 

SNOLA, as organizer of LASI Spain 2020 is aware of the current situation of uncertainty derived from the CoVid-19 outbreak regarding the actual celebration of the event as it is planned. In order to facilitate your plans regarding this event, we communicate these decisions: 

  • We have adapted the deadline for paper submissions (all tracks) to April, 26th May, 3rd, 23:59h CET. 
  • We will hold an event, and the authors will have the opportunity to present their work to the community. We are constantly monitoring the situation, and while we maintain at this moment the planned face-to-face format, we are ready to change it to an on-line event if the circumstances do not allow us to celebrate the face-to-face event. 
  • In case of a decision to move to a hybrid format or a fully on-line event, we will communicate the decision with enough time so that all authors will be able to adapt to the final format.
  • Accepted papers will be published in CEUR, which has opened the possibility to include virtual events, as an extraordinary measure derived from the CoVid-19 outbreak. 

We encourage all interested researchers and practitioners to maintain their plans and send their contributions to LASI Spain 2020. Regardless the final format it takes, it will be a great opportunity for scientific interchange and will help flourish the LA community in our local context.

The LASI Doctoral Consortium is a half-day event that will bring together Ph.D. candidates working on topics related to learning analytics with experts in the area that will act as mentors to provide feedback. The participants in the DC will have the opportunity to present, discuss and receive feedback about their research, both through the review process and during the celebration of the DC at LASI Spain 2020. They will be also invited to contribute to the discussion that will take place during the event.  

The intention is to support ongoing research efforts. The works presented must be at a sufficiently early stage so that the feedback received could be potentially used to make adjustments. Due to this, participants are expected to state their expected graduation date and their advisor’s name at submission time. More specifically, they should have not officially submitted their thesis before the DC (June 2020). 

Proposal Format & Submission Process

To apply to the Doctoral Consortium, student applicants should submit the following documents as one single PDF file to the Easy Chair system: 

  1. A paper (6 pages maximum) following the workshop proceedings format with the following content: 
    • An abstract (150 words) 
    • Brief background and identification of the significant problem(s) in the field that it addresses
    • Goals of the research and a clear formulation of the research question(s)
    • An outline of the current knowledge of the problem domain and state of existing solutions
    • A sketch of the research methodology
    • A description of the expected contribution and how it is better than existing approaches to the problem. 
    • Current state of the work, results achieved so far (e.g literature review, submitted or accepted papers, prototypes designed or built, experiments carried out, etc.), and an outline of future research plan. 
  1. A letter of recommendation from your supervisor/advisor with an assessment of the current status of your work and an expected date for dissertation completion will be provided with the submission.

Submissions will be reviewed after acceptance by at least two senior researchers and by one of the other accepted doctoral candidates. Additionally, one discussant will be appointed to discuss the paper in situ, during the celebration of the DC in June, 2020. 

Accepted candidates should prepare a 15-20 minute presentation, including an introductory pitch about themselves and their Ph.D. project and its main issues during the small group sessions. A subset of the accepted submissions to the Doctoral Consortium will be invited to publish their paper in the CEUR workshop proceedings of LASI Spain 2020. 

Important dates: 

  •  26 April 2020 3 May 2020 – PhD candidate application deadline
  • 25 May 2020 – Doctoral Consortium acceptance notification
  • 1 June 2020 – Doctoral Consortium reviews
  • 14 June 2020 – Doctoral Consortium at LASI Spain 2020

The Doctoral Consortium will take place during LASI Spain 2020. The format will interleave research presentations and small-group discussion, so students have opportunities for in-depth conversation about their work.