Process of workshop proposal submission is closed
To see the list of accepted workshops click here

Question-Oriented Organization

A workshop should yield tangible results of lasting value. Such a workshop yields a better return on the investment of the organizers and participants than the more frequent "miniconferences" that offer little more than a series of loosely related, noninteractive presentations

To this end, each workshop should have the goal of answering a small number (e.g., 3) of questions that have been formulated in advance by the organizers. These questions will play a key role in focusing the workshop's organization in all phases:

1. The questions should be submitted as part of the workshop proposal.
2. Authors submitting contributions to the workshop should be required to address at least one of the questions explicitly.
3. During the workshop, the contributions made to the questions should be collected (for example, on a whiteboard or in the form of slides made during the workshop).
4. The final part of the workshop (e.g., 1 hour) should be devoted to an integrative discussion of the questions that yields at least tentative answers.
5. At the beginning of the main conference program, the organizers of each workshop will be given an opportunity to summarize the results of their workshop in a presentation. This summary should present the questions that were addressed and summarize the answers that were worked out.
6. The web site summarizing the results of the workshop should likewise be organized in terms of the questions and answers.

Content of the Proposal

Each proposal should be 2-4 pages in length and should contain at least the following information:

• Background and Motivation: What is the overall topic of the workshop? Why is this topic of particular interest at this time?
• Questions to Be Addressed: Identify the specific questions on which the workshop will focus (see the section Question-Oriented Organization above). For clarity, each question should be formulated explicitly as a complete sentence that ends with a question mark. For example, for a workshop on "Learner Control in Student Modeling", one question might be: "Which student modeling methods make it especially difficult to provide control to learners?"
• Format: Give a description of the proposed workshop format, specifying the mix of events such as position statements, invited talks, panels, demos, and general discussion. Indicate whether the intended duration is a half day or a full day. State how participants and presentations will be recruited and selected. Make it clear that the workshop will have a question-oriented organization and that it will not be just a miniconference.
• Potential Participants: State your estimate of the number of participants. If possible, give a list of tentatively confirmed participants.
• Organizers: List the names and the full contact information of each of the organizers, and give short descriptions of their relevant expertise and experience.

Organizers' Responsibilities

The organizers of a workshop will be responsible for:

• Producing and distributing a Call for Participation. It should be made clear that all workshop participants are required to register for both the UM'03 conference and for the workshop.
• Selecting the workshop participants and the contributions to be included in the workshop proceedings.
• Producing a one-page abstract for inclusion in the conference proceedings.
• Scheduling and coordinating the activities of the workshop.
• Producing the workshop notes. The notes must be distributed in printed form to the workshop participants at the conference site, at or before the beginning of the workshop. They must also be made available to interested nonparticipants, both on the web and in printed form (e.g., as a technical report).
• Presenting a summary of the workshop's results at the beginning of the main conference program.
• Creating and maintaining a web site that contains the materials from the workshop and a summary of its results.

Submission Instructions

Proposals should be submitted electronically in a platform-independent format (e.g., plain text or PDF) to the workshop cochairs:

• Frank Wittig, wittig (at) cs.uni-sb.de
• Anthony Jameson, jameson (at) dfki.de

Important Dates