Doctoral ConsortiumSIGCSE TS 2026

The SIGCSE TS Doctoral Consortium (DC) allows doctoral candidates studying computing education to explore and develop their research interests in a workshop environment with their peers and a panel of established researchers in the field. There is no cost to attend a DC. Additionally, accepted candidates will be given free registration to the conference and up to $500 contribution to travel costs.

Contact the DC chairs, dc@sigcse2026.sigcse.org, for further information.

What is a SIGCSE Doctoral Consortium?

A SIGCSE DC has the following objectives:

• to provide a supportive setting for the discussion of doctoral research and research direction;
• to offer each candidate comments from researchers and other candidates outside their institution;
• to promote the development of a supportive community of scholars;
• to support a new generation of researchers with information and advice on research and academic career paths;
• to have candidates contribute to the conference goals through interaction with other researchers and conference events.

Candidates attending the DC will be required to make a presentation to the DC group and present a poster at the main conference, allowing them to start networking with the wider SIGCSE community. Further details on this will be given following acceptance. The poster is part of the DC process and is to be submitted outside the ordinary poster track of the SIGCSE TS.

Why You Should Attend a Doctoral Consortium

“As a new PhD student, one of the most helpful things for me was seeing the work of students who were ahead of me. I observed students in the middle and near the end asking questions about the research that was presented and about their studies. This helped tremendously because I could imagine a trajectory between my starting point and a PhD.”

Eligibility

Doctoral students are welcome if they

• will not have defended their dissertation before the event.
• have conducted research on computing education.

Deadlines and Submission

DC submissions to the SIGCSE TS 2026 must be made through EasyChair no later than Thursday, 2 October 2025. The track chairs reserve the right to desk reject submissions that are incomplete after the deadline has passed.

Important Dates

Application for Doctoral Consortium Participation

An application for a doctoral consortium should be a single PDF consisting of two sections:

Section 1

A two-page research description (the extended abstract) covering central aspects of your PhD work (ACM Template must be used). Only one author should be named in this description: the candidate applying for participation in the DC. If accepted, an abstract will be published in the proceedings of the SIGCSE TS and should therefore be written to a high standard.

For more detail on the formatting of this part, see Submission Templates section below.

Key points include the following, with the recommended section headings in bold:

• an abstract of approximately 250 words which gives readers a preview of your work;
• context and motivation that drives your dissertation research;
• A brief background/literature review of key works that frame your research;
• a hypothesis and/or problem statement;
• research goals;
• research methods;
• current and expected contributions;
• a list of references.

Section 2

The following appendices. These will be used by the selection committee to identify suitable participants for the DC. These do not need to conform to any particular template:

• Appendix A: a letter of nomination from your primary dissertation advisor indicating support for your participation in the DC, an explanation of how your work connects with the SIGCSE community, an explicit statement that you are enrolled in a Ph.D. program, and the expected timeline for the completion of your doctorate.
• Appendix B: your concise current curriculum vitae (1-2 pages).

Submitting a DC Proposal

Once you have assembled – and checked – your PDF file and the two appendices, follow the instructions on the Deadlines and Submissions page being sure to choose the Doctoral consortium submission category. The deadline for submissions is October 2, 2025.

Doctoral Consortium Review Process

The review and decision of acceptance will consider the quality of your proposal, and where you are within your doctoral education program: the point of attending a DC is to get feedback on your research, so you must have started this. However, other criteria will be taken into consideration, so that the group of accepted candidates are not all at the same stage of their PhD, and represent a breadth of backgrounds and topics. Your institution will also be considered: there may be more than one participant from the same institution; however, priority will be given to students from different institutions.

ACM SIGCSE membership is required for DC participation (not necessarily for application).

You may attend more than one ACM SIGCSE DC; however you can only receive support for one DC per year, and priority will be given to newcomers.

You may attend ACM SIGCSE doctoral consortia in different years; however, priority will be given to newcomers.

Submission Templates

All DC submissions must be in English and formatted using the 2-column ACM SIG Conference Proceedings format and US letter size pages (8.5x11 inch or 215.9 x 279.4mm).

Page Limits: DC submissions are limited to a maximum of 2 pages of body content (including all titles, author information, abstract, main text, tables and illustrations, acknowledgements, and supplemental material). One additional page may be included which contains only references. If included, appendix materials MUST NOT be present on the optional references page.

MS Word Authors: Please use the interim Word template provided by ACM.

LaTeX Authors:

• Overleaf provides a suitable two-column sig conference proceedings template.
• Other LaTeX users may alternatively use the ACM Primary template, adding the “sigconf” format option in the documentclass to obtain the 2-column format.
• NOTE: The default LaTeX template text shows appendix materials following the references. SIGCSE TS 2026 does not permit appendices on the optional page allotted for references. Authors must include all relevant content within the 2 body pages of the submission.

ACM Policies

By submitting your article to an ACM Publication, you are hereby acknowledging that you and your co-authors are subject to all ACM Publications Policies, including ACM’s new Publications Policy on Research Involving Human Participants and Subjects (https://www.acm.org/publications/policies/research-involving-human-participants-and-subjects). Alleged violations of this policy or any ACM Publications Policy will be investigated by ACM and may result in a full retraction of your paper, in addition to other potential penalties, as per ACM Publications Policy. See also the authorship policies.

ACM has made a commitment to collect ORCiD IDs from all published authors (https://authors.acm.org/author-resources/orcid-faqs). All authors on each submission must have an ORCiD ID (https://orcid.org/register) in order to complete the submission process. Please make sure to get your ORCID ID in advance of submitting your work.

Additional details are in the instructions for authors.

Getting ready

• Make sure that the author has obtained an ORCiD identifier. These identifiers are required for paper submission.
• Be certain that you are able to attend the conference. The graduate student author of accepted submissions in this track must register for the conference and present their work in-person at the conference. There is no option to present remotely.
• Download an appropriate template. (see Instructions for Authors)
• Review Additional Format Instructions in Instructions for Authors Tab - be sure you have included all required items.
• Review the additional resources.
• Look at the EasyChair submission page to make sure you’ll be prepared to fill everything out. Note that you are permitted to update your submission until the deadline, so it is fine to put draft information there as you get ready.

The Submission on EasyChair

Note: EasyChair does not let you save incomplete submission forms. Please fill out all of the fields in one sitting and save them. After that, you can continue to update the information in the fields and your submission until the deadline.

• Use an appropriate template.
• Ensure that your submission is accessible. See accessibility tips for authors for further details.
• Ensure that your submission does not exceed the page limit.
• Ensure your submission includes the two-page research description and the two appendix items as one big .pdf
• Ensure that your submission contains all author names and affiliations, as per the instructions for authors.
• Submit the final version by 11:59 p.m. AOE, Thursday, 2 October 2025.

Before the Conference

Since the goals of the doctoral consortium include building scholarship and community, participants will be expected to read the extended abstracts of all accepted participants: being accepted into the consortium involves a commitment to giving and receiving thoughtful commentary.

At the Conference

All participants are expected to attend all components of the doctoral consortium. The DC Meeting will take place as an all-day in-person Pre-Symposium event on Wednesday, February 18, 2026. Following the DC, all accepted candidates are required to present their work as a poster at the main conference.

After the Conference

Accepted doctoral consortium abstracts will be published with the conference proceedings in the ACM digital library, where they will remain accessible to thousands of researchers and practitioners worldwide.

Questions

If you have questions about anything discussed above, please contact the doctoral consortium chairs, dc@sigcse2026.sigcse.org.

Suggestions for poster design are given in Creating Effective Academic Posters (UC Davis) and Research Posters 101 (ACM Crossroads article). While both of these references provide suggestions for student researchers, the ideas are also applicable to posters for this conference.

For samples of accepted posters, see prior SIGCSE TS proceedings. For example, posters for SIGCSE TS 2023 may be found at https://dl.acm.org/doi/proceedings/10.1145/3545947#heading9 and a sample poster from that list can be found at https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3545947.3576292.

Sample Poster Submission

Here’s a Sample Poster Submission with Notes that is in the correct format and has additional notes about what is required.

Language Editing Assistance

ACM has partnered with International Science Editing (ISE) to provide language editing services to ACM authors. ISE offers a comprehensive range of services for authors including standard and premium English language editing, as well as illustration and translation services. Editing services are at author expense and do not guarantee publication of a manuscript.