 This is a short video hangout about submitting a proposal to the ALT Annual Conference 2016. My name is Maaren Deepwell and I'm joined here by my colleague Martin Hoekse, hello Martin. We're going to talk you through how to submit a proposal to our annual conference. We're going to cover conference themes and session types, how to submit a proposal and what's required, review and publication and also common mistakes and tips on how to avoid them. But before we get started, we want to give a big shout out to this year's conference co-chairs, Nikola Witten and Alex Mosley. Hi guys, thank you for leading our efforts on the conference and all members of our program committee who have been helping us promote this call far and wide. As a response, we've had quite a lot of inquiries about how to submit proposals, really common questions. So we thought this short video might help you trying to get your proposal together and if you watch with us for the end of the video, you'll probably also get some good news unless you're watching this after the 21st of March in which case it's old news. But without further ado, we'll start on conference themes and session types. So let's look at the conference themes to start with. So hopefully you're already reasonably familiar with the theme this year. So it's connect, collaborate and create. So there are a couple of themes that we've given you to build around with this conference title. So connecting data and analytics to hands learning. So if you've been looking at some of the results from the Alt Annual Survey, you'll appreciate that data and analytics is something that's very much on the mind of many of the people within our sector. So we've got a theme there for you where you can put stuff into there. We also have collaboration and innovation in the open. Again, we see a lot of stuff happening in the opening, in the open, sorry. And again, we have another theme there for you. It's also important to just point out, this is a sharing lesson. So it might necessarily be things that go right. It might be things that go wrong. These are all very valuable things for us to hear presented at the conference. I agree. We're particularly looking for people who are brave enough to share some of the things that may have not gone ideal that have not won stars or prizes. So if you want to come to the conference and say we've had an ambitious project and these are the lessons we've learned of maybe what not to do, I'm sure that would be a very popular session. So if you're looking at the work you've done over the last year, what you're going to be doing before September, take some risks and make us some innovative proposals that are really open about the realities of using learning technology. Yes. And so we've also got creating new learning and teaching opportunities. If you're familiar with our commerce co-chairs, Nick Whitten and Max Mosley, you will know that they're interested in the playful side of learning. So we're kind of tapping into this as well. We're looking for very playful experimental kind of discovery experiences that you can talk about the work that you're doing. And we have a wildcard. So I'm excited about the wildcard. No one will be able to say that their work doesn't fit within the theme or so we hope. Which is something we get quite at least one person every year says my stuff doesn't fit. It's really useful. It's really interesting. So this is the wildcard. This is for them. And we'll go into more details about submitting to the wildcard later on. So you've got no excuses this year. Or every encouragement depending on how you look at it. But I think it's a great opportunity too for maybe individuals who work in industry who are at the cutting edge of research who are looking at policy work internationally or here in the UK. So if you're thinking actually you're maybe not in a teaching role. Maybe you have a leadership role or governance role. This is the wildcard for you. We're still looking for you to address connect, collaborate, create as our overarching theme. But it's no boundaries this year to getting involved in the conference. So let's look at actually submitting something. Do you want me to take this one now? Definitely go for it. So poster sessions. So it's slightly different. If you've done posters before we're still expecting a poster to be produced and they'll be on display throughout the entire conference. But as well as that we're going to give you a 10 minute slot within the conference program to actually talk about your work. So as I've jumped the head man here. That's okay. I don't think anybody is as excited as you about the posters. But on the other hand, I think it's a great innovative format. But as if you posters are not your thing, you can also have a standard session. So last year we had 15 minutes this year you get five minutes more to encourage discussion and questions. Or you can double it up and have 40 minutes, which is twice the amount of talking and twice the amount of discussion. Or then the longest session within the program that you can make a proposal for is a whole hour where we're looking at really different themes and topics. And Martin and I will go into the details of each type right now with a minimum of three contributors. So for those of you out there who are working in partnership with learners, with colleagues, with industry, this is the session for you. But it's also the most competitive category because a whole hour of real estate on the conference program is a big deal to get. So should we go and jump back to the posters and you can talk more about what they involve? So with all these session types, you're going to need to submit a 500 word proposal or up to 500 word proposal. So the posters will be displayed throughout the conference. But we also give you a 10 minute standing up presentation slot during the conference program where you can talk about your poster a bit more. Moving on. Yeah. So the other program option for you to present the proposal for is the standard session. So again, 500 words. The session itself 15 minutes with five minutes for Q&A. So it's three 20 minute presentations within a one hour slot in our program. Hopefully, keep in mind that this is the most popular format. This is the most sessions of the conference will be in this format, but it requires for you to really think about how to engage participants in a short space of time. I think each year we have presenters who have 46 slides and 15 minutes and there's a too many. So later on, closer to the time, we'll be giving you guidance for presenters who have been accepted to the conference of how to make the most of it. But it's a good idea to think about it now before you're writing the proposal or when you're writing the proposal on how you're going to make the most into 15 minutes and pack everything in. But if 15 minutes is not enough. Long session. So these are 40 minutes long and they're free format. So they're up to you to convince us of a proposal of how you're going to fill this 40 minutes. So we want you to be, well, we encourage you to be creative and inventive and how you do that. There's various different formats that you might want to explore. Those formats even might even relate to the work that you're presenting. So if you're developing an innovative app or something else, then here's a good opportunity to showcase it. If you do opt to use your 40 minutes as a standing presentation, which might not appeal to all reviewers, we would encourage you to leave 10 minutes at the end for Q&A. Yeah, that's right. So if you have a long research project, for example, that might be a good format for you. But if there are more than one person involved, particularly if you work across institutions or with partner organizations or indeed with your learners, then our panel or symposium session, which is the one hour session, is probably the best choice for you. Again, you need to have a 500 word proposal that needs to include a really detailed breakdown of what these 60 minutes are going to be spending time on. So include bullet points on, you know, introduction, 10 minutes, this happens, 10 minutes, this happens, 15 minutes. And I think reviewers are really going to be looking for interactivity. An hour is a big commitment to make in such a parallel session dominated program. We're expecting to provide you with a room that seats about 50 to 60 participants. So have a think about, obviously, maybe not every session is going to be that busy. So have a think about how your session scales as well. If you get 20 participants or 60 participants, is it going to work equally well for all of these? And I think that's covering all different session types. So before we move on, just to recap then, we have posters, which is physical poster and the 10 minutes. We have standard presentations, which is 15 minutes, plus five minutes Q&A, then double that up for the long session. And then the longest 60 minutes is for the collaborative sessions with at least three contributors as a minimum. So you've got your proposal in your head. You might want also start to think about how this proposal is going to reach its audience. So let's talk through some of the review criteria and also the option of application route as well. So the review criteria are contained in the call for proposals documents. So if you miss this, you can go back a later date. So just to briefly outline that the process is double blind peer review. So what that means is at least two people will look at your proposal. They won't know who you are in terms of the offer. And they'll evaluate what you've written and provide some feedback and also decide whether to accept a proposal straight off or what can also happen is to accept revisions or to reject. So five broad areas that reviewers are looking at when they look at your proposal. So first they're looking at relevance. So how is your proposal related to the conference title and also importantly to the conference themes? So at the beginning, we mentioned we've got this wild card theme. So you can state it's a wild card, but we still want you to relate this to the conference title in some way. Yeah, I think that's a really important point because we've given everybody the wild card to play with this year. We still want to think about connect, collaborate, create as an overall theme. So your right mind and relevance is really important. And I think the easiest way to decide whether something is relevant or not is to think of yourself as a participant. What do you like to go to your own session at the conference? If the answer to that is yes, then it's a good job. Which touches upon the usefulness. So we want to push at the heart of the association is the idea of developing research within educational technology. So we want you to present new interesting, useful stuff to the audience. So usefulness is a key aspect of that. Also evidence-based. So even if you're not doing things like focus groups or surveys with your new work, although that is something that you can do, we need to see an evidence base of what you're actually building upon. So what's the prior work that is influencing the directions that you're taking? Sorry. I was just going to add to that. I think you're right. Evidence is really important. And I think that's why, for example, if you work in FEO schools, you might come off from an evidence-based practice perspective. And we really welcome that. But even there, you're going to hopefully be able to share lessons with colleagues or learn from the example of others. And those are the things that you can draw on. It doesn't have to be a formally funded or published research project in order for you to make a proposal. Indeed, we really encourage people from different sectors to share their evidence and their knowledge with our community. Which kind of leads us on to evaluation and reflection. So we want for you to start drawing out some of the lessons that you've learned or the direction that you see your work going into. If you've got any evaluation of the work that you've done, is the method that you're evaluating appropriate to what you're trying to do? Is there anything else you want to add on that? I think reviewers in recent years have often asked two questions, I think, when it comes to evaluation and reflection. The first one is the so what question. So, you know, what does it mean? Why should we care? And the other question is, you know, what difference has it really made for the learners? What's the impact on them? So I think in recent years, we've seen a much stronger learner voice coming through and evaluation and reflection. And that can be quite anecdotal or it can be more formal. But that's an element of your proposal that we really strongly advise you to consider. That's what reviewers are looking for. The so what and the what difference did it make to learners are important things to think about. And then clarity. So you have to put yourself in the shoes of the reviewer. They've got maybe 10 proposals to look at. And they want to very quickly try and understand what is that you're wanting to present at the conference. So if it isn't clear, they're not going to spend hours trying to unpick what is that you're trying to do. So clarity is a key part of that. Also, you know, we provide guidelines in terms of what is required as part of your proposal. And as part of the review process, it is looking at those requirements and making sure that you've fulfilled those. Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. If the reviewer can't tell what your proposal is about, they can't accept it. So get yourself a bit of critical feedback on your proposal too. But we were talking about research and evidence base. And this is, I think, really related. So we offer a publication route by a research and learning technology for all authors who get accepted to present papers at the conference. And the way that works is that if you have been accepted and you're presenting at the conference, you can then submit a full paper based on the conference presentation or taking also into account feedback from peers that you might get through the conference within three months of the conference taking place. So when you are presenting at the conference, you don't actually need to submit your full paper. You just need to submit the 500 word proposal. But if you want to be considered for publication and want your paper to be reviewed by research and learning technology, then you need to submit a full paper ideally within three months of the conference, so by the end of the year. And then papers will be peer reviewed according to the guidelines of the journal and then published under the usual open access model in research and learning technology. Which, critically, is there are no fees. So there are no article processing fees. So there's no additional costs to publishing through RLTE. That's right. That's really important and should really encourage researchers from all sectors to consider the publication route as a viable option. Last year we had a lot of submissions via that route, so hopefully it will be popular again this year. Also, the program committee plays an important role in supporting first-time authors. So if you've never submitted a paper for publication, and this could be your first publication, which is an exciting prospect, but you might be not entirely sure how to work up a proposal to a full paper of thousands of words. So we can provide help here in the program committee. There are really committed members who want to support early career researchers or new researchers. So don't hesitate to contact us and we can put you in touch with them and hopefully they can help you get your first publication. So, moving on, common mistakes and how to avoid them. Also, this is why we've been looking at feedback from reviewers over the last few years and we thought we'd share a few common reasons why papers are requested to make revisions or indeed rejected for the conference. So the number one reason that our reviewers find for not accepting something straight away is that the proposal is just not clear about what the session will involve or and or what participants can expect. So as we mentioned before, being clear about what the aims of your sessions are, what you can expect as a participant is really key to success. Second, we still get lots of proposals that don't really relate their topic or question to the conference themes. So it might be really interesting but there is no mention of how it relates to the conference themes or the overarching title. Again, it's a really easy mistake to make when you're focusing on your own work but do double-check that before you make a submission. Two further really common reasons for revisions are a lack of critical reflection or acknowledging limitations of the work carried out or the data presented. So for example, if you have quite a small scale piece of practice or work that you are presenting, it would be really important to reflect on that. Are there any limitations that you are aware of? If you haven't got feedback from your learners or colleagues and why is that? Are you planning to get some? Is the data you are presenting really indicative of larger trends or is it actually very useful for you to have small-scale information and what did you do with it? So try and be your own critical friend or get a colleague to be a critical friend for you and acknowledge some of the limitations of the work. And finally, and I think a very frustrating reason for married authors, is submitting a proposal for the longest session formats that are an hour long but not providing a clear outline or structure of the session. I think reviewers feel really precious about an hour-long session. So a lot of commitment for participants to engage for that amount of time when they could be looking at maybe three or four other papers at the same time. And we really encourage you, if you go for an hour-long submission, to really be very clear about what participants will get out of it, how it's going to be structured and how are you going to make that work. I think that applies to lesser degrees to all session formats, but I think with the hour-long format in particular. Yeah, and that's based on the feedback from our reviewers and our program committee, the most common reasons why people need to make revisions or get rejected. But on a more upbeat note. Yes, so our tips. So both Maron and I have been reviewers on the annual conference and other conferences. So here are a couple of our tips for you. So again, just to emphasize that point about make sure the purpose of your proposal is clear. So what is your, for example, what is your research question that you're trying to answer? Following on from this, it's again, you know, you've got reviewers looking at lots of proposals. They want to see something well structured. So they want to see an introduction to the work that you're presenting. They'll want to see, you know, the body of what is that you want to do. So again, to emphasize if you're doing interactive sessions, we actually want to see the detail of how you're going to break up your session. So what are the timings going to be? And any emerging or conclusions that you've got from the work that you're presenting? What impact is the work you're doing going to have on future educational technology? Interactivity. So particularly for the longer sessions, obviously this applies less for the poster sessions, but for the longer sessions, how are you going to engage your audience? How are you going to make them feel part of your session and get value from your session as well? Four, include references. So quite often we see proposals coming in without any references and for reviewers, this can quite create question marks in terms of how well you've done to look at the existing work that's gone on, that's informing what you're doing. Also, we'd encourage you to ask one of your colleagues to look at your abstract and just give you feedback before you submit it. Ask them if it makes sense. They can also pick up any typos as well. This doesn't take long. It's something I think a lot of offers forget to do or don't consider doing, and I think it's a very useful process just in terms of if you've prepared or spent a lot of time putting your proposal together, it's a shame if it's going to be knocked back just because you haven't asked someone else to have a quick look at it. Also, certainly for the last couple of years, the proposals that get submitted are online, so you can have a look at examples of proposals that have been presented at the conference. I've included a link to a proposal I looked at which I think met a lot of these tips. It's by Andrew Middleton, so you can go to go.alt.ac.uk slash alt 2015-873 and have a look at it. Catchy URL. It's probably worth also just saying that the proposals you submit for the conference get published on the conference website, so you might be asked to do minor revisions after your revisions. That information is posted on the website, so this is going to be seen by many eyes, so we would encourage you to spend time just to make sure what you're presenting is useful, it's coherent, and basically fulfills all of these tips. That is a really good summary or lead up to our summary, which is I think a few born with us for now. You're coming very close to the end, so we'll just have a summary of what every proposal needs and then some key dates for you to come up. Every proposal needs 500 words, including references, two to six references using the Harvard system. If you're not familiar with the Harvard system, please refer to the guidelines they set out exactly how to do it. Remove identifying information from title, abstract, and references. For example, your name and your institution names are identifying information. It must not have appeared elsewhere, so we're looking for original submissions only, and you can only be the main author or presenter for one proposal at a time. We know that particularly enthusiastic presenters who've been involved in a conference for a long time find out quite a challenge, but hopefully it will encourage you to collaborate and connect and create something with someone else. So, key dates. Good news people. Totally unexpected and unprecedented news. Well, I think Martin's frozen, maybe the excitement of the extended deadline. In case we're still live online, I'm going to carry on. So the deadline for proposals is extended to Wednesday the 30th of March, and that means that you have an extra nine days over the UK Easter holiday to get in your proposals. Wednesday 30th of March is definitely the deadline. Then registering to attend. So May is the time when registration for the annual conference starts, and the deadline for presenters to register is going to be in late June, and you're going to get news on whether your proposal has been accepted or not in May, so hopefully that will give you enough time to sort out registration. And as we mentioned earlier, we really want to try and help everybody to give the past possible session at the conference for the inclusion in the conference program. So we've got a webinar for presenters coming up in August, the month before the conference, and then finally from the 6th to the 8th of September this year, in just over six months, so just under six months actually, time flies, we have the annual conference itself. So I'm really looking forward to receiving your proposals, and this brings us to the end of the short video walkthrough through the guidance for submitting a proposal to the ALT annual conference. You can go to the website to submit your proposal, and the URL is go.alt.ac.uk forward slash alt 2016 hyphen call, and hopefully you should be able to find all the information you need and get your proposal in. We really welcome proposals from all sectors and practitioners, researchers and policymakers alike, so we hope that with the themes of this year's conference and the title Connect Collaborate Create, you will find one way to make your work fit within that, and if all else fails, the wild card to give you every freedom to showcase your work in learning technology at our annual event. So with that and a little bit of technical glitches here and there, I want to say thank you on behalf of Martin and myself for your time, and hopefully this video has been helpful. You can also contact us on Twitter with the hashtag at ALTC or via the alt website, and you can email us as well if you have any further questions. With that, I want to say thank you and goodbye, and we look forward to seeing you in September.