Special SessionsSIGCSE Virtual 2026

Special sessions are your opportunity to customize and experiment with the SIGCSE Virtual format. Special sessions should NOT replicate existing session formats (e.g., panels, paper presentations, poster sessions, tutorials) that are part of the SIGCSE Virtual. Sessions last 75 minutes. Within these constraints, the form is yours to design.

For example, a special session might be a seminar, a committee report, a curricular or accreditation forum, or a discussion of strategies proven to improve retention of computing topics. Possible topic areas include management of large classes, projects and assignments, teaching computer science using culturally relevant pedagogy, experiments on collaborative learning, a report of an ACM committee addressing issues at two-year colleges, or special issues arising when teaching computing outside of North America.

Authors submitting work to SIGCSE Virtual are responsible for complying with all applicable conference authorship policies (https://sigcsevirtual2026.acm.org/info/authorship-policies) and those articulated by ACM. If you have questions about any of these policies, please contact program@virtual2026.sigcse.org for clarification prior to submission.

ACM has committed to collecting 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.

Authors may find it useful to read the Instructions for Reviewers and the Review Form to understand how their submissions will be reviewed. Also note that when submitting, you will need to provide between 3-7 related topics from the Topics list under Info.

Abstracts

All special session submissions must have a plain-text abstract of up to 250 words. Abstracts should not contain subheadings or citations. The abstract should be submitted to EasyChair (https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=sigcsev2026) along with the submission metadata and included in the PDF version of the submission at the appropriate location.

Submission Templates

All special session 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: Special session submissions are limited to a maximum of 2 pages of content (including all titles, author information, abstract, main text, tables and illustrations, acknowledgments, and supplemental material) plus an optional additional page for references.

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.

Requirements for Single-Anonymous Review Process:** Submissions to the special session track are reviewed with the single-anonymous review process. Submissions should include author names and affiliations. Thus, the authors’ identities are known to reviewers, but reviewers are anonymous to each other and to the authors.

The reviewing process includes a discussion phase after initial reviews have been submitted. During this time, the reviewers can examine all reviews and privately discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the work in an anonymous manner through EasyChair. This discussion information can be used by the track chairs in addition to the content of the review in making final acceptance decisions.

The SIGCSE Virtual review process does not have a rebuttal period for authors to respond to comments, and all acceptance decisions are final.

Other requirements: Include space for authors’ e-mail addresses on separate lines. Even if multiple authors have the same affiliation, grouping authors’ names or e-mail addresses, or providing an ‘e-mail alias’ is not acceptable, e.g., {anon1,anon2,anon3}@university.edu or firstname.lastname@college.org. NOTE: Poster submissions may omit the following sections from the standard ACM template: keywords, CCS Concepts. Because Poster submissions are 2-pages long this year, they should include BOTH the ACM Copyright Block and the ACM Reference Format.

Desk rejects: Submissions that do not adhere to page limits or formatting requirements will be desk-rejected without review.

Accessibility: SIGCSE Virtual authors are strongly encouraged to prepare submissions using these templates in such a manner that the content is widely accessible to potential reviewers, track chairs, and readers. Please see these resources for preparing an accessible submission.

Additional Format Instructions

Authors submitting to the special session track should use the standardized section names and additional formatting information below when preparing the main content of their proposals.

• Overall objective of the session: Describe the topic of the special session and explain how the session will be organized (e.g., as a committee report, hands-on exercise, …). Indicate why the proposed session is important and relevant to the SIGCSE community.
• Outline of the session: Organize this section by subtopics, activities, or a similar scheme. If more than one participant is involved, label each section of the outline with the name of the participant(s) who will be presenting that section. Note that in the case of a committee report, the presenters might be a subset of the authors. We suggest that you allow at least 40 - 50% of the time for questions and answers or other interaction with the attendees.
• Expectations: State the intended audience. Indicate how much the session will cover and what the audience should learn. If feedback from the audience is desired, indicate how it will be elicited.
• Suitability for a special session: Include a brief description that justifies the inclusion of this presentation as a special session. Explain why the proposed presentation is better suited for a special session than a paper or panel or other standard track format.
• References: Citing relevant work where appropriate is encouraged, but not required. If references are included, they should be placed in a separate section titled References and should follow the formatting guidelines.

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 (https://sigcsevirtual2026.acm.org/info/authorship-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.

ACM’s New Open-Access Publishing Model

Please review details of ACM’s new open-access publishing model at https://sigcsevirtual2026.acm.org/info/information-on-acm-open.

ORCiD IDs

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. (If EasyChair does not request the ORCiD ID for your coauthors, you do not need to find a way to enter one.)

Overview

Special sessions provide an opportunity for SIGCSE community members to customize and experiment with the Presentation Symposium formats. Special sessions should NOT replicate existing formats (e.g., paper presentations, panels, posters, and tutorials). They are scheduled in standard conference blocks. Within these constraints, authors may design a format that meets their session’s goals. For example, a special session might be a tutorial or seminar, a committee report, a curricular or accreditation forum, a rapid-fire sequence of five-minute talks, or an extended hands-on demonstration of a technique for improving retention.

Criteria used in reviewing the proposals will include the likely level of interest in the session and the suitability and feasibility of the proposed format to its topic. If the proposal is accepted, all presenters listed in the special session description will be required to register for the conference and to participate in the session.

Timeline

*### Single-Anonymous Review Process

Submissions to the Special Sessions track are reviewed with the single-anonymous review process. Submissions should include author names and affiliations. Thus, the author identities are known to reviewers, but reviewers are anonymous to each other and to the authors. Because author identities are known, reviewers must be especially careful to avoid bias in their reviews.

The reviewing process includes a discussion phase after initial reviews have been posted. During this time, the reviewers can examine all reviews and privately discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the work in an anonymous manner through EasyChair. Reviewers can refer to each other by their reviewer number on that submission’s review. This discussion information can be used by the track chairs in addition to the content of the review in making final acceptance decisions.

The SIGCSE Virtual review process does not have a rebuttal period for authors to respond to comments, and all acceptance decisions are final.

Getting Started Reviewing

As a Reviewer, we ask that you carefully read each submission assigned to you and write a constructive review that concisely summarizes what you believe the submission to be about. When reviewing a submission, consider:

• its strengths and weaknesses,
• its potential contribution to an outstanding SIGCSE Virtual program and experience for attendees, and
• how it brings new ideas or extends current ideas through replication to the field and to practitioners and researchers of computing education.

Special Session Review Guidelines

SIGCSE Technical Symposium panel proposals are reviewed using EasyChair. Each proposal is assigned to at least three reviewers.

Please provide constructive feedback and clearly justify your choice of rating to help the authors. A review that gives a low score with no written comments is not helpful to the authors since it simply tells the authors that they have been unsuccessful, with no indication of how or why.

In addition to asking you about the appropriateness of the Special Session format, the review form for Special Sessions will ask you to comment specifically on three aspects of the proposal, described below. Please refer to the prompts below as you write your review.

Relevance and Interest

• Is the presentation topic clearly stated?
• Are the benefits to the SIGCSE Virtual audience clearly indicated?
• Is the topic of interest to the SIGCSE community?

Structure & Plan for Audience Participation

• Is there an overview of the special structure?
• Does the proposal identify the intended audience?
• What interaction with the audience is included in the proposed structure? Is there an appropriate balance between presentation and participation?
• Do the presenters have a viable plan for the online format?

Presenters

• Does the proposal clearly identify the presenters of the special session (i.e., name and affiliation) and describe their expertise related to the topic?
• Does the proposal clearly describe the role of each participant in relation to the goal and topic of the special session?
• Are the presenters well qualified to cover the topic

Your Summary

While your review text should clearly support your scores and recommendation, please do not include your preference for acceptance or rejection of a submission in the feedback to the authors. Instead, use the provided radio buttons to make a recommendation (the authors will not see this) based on your summary review and provide any details that refer to your recommendation directly in the confidential comments to the APC or track chairs. Remember that as a reviewer, you may only see a small portion of the submissions, so one that you recommend for acceptance may be rejected when considering the other reviewer recommendations and the full set of submissions.

Discussion

The discussion and recommendation period provides the opportunity for the Track Chairs to discuss reviews and feedback so they can provide the best recommendation for acceptance or rejection to the Program Chairs and that the submission is given full consideration in the review process. We ask that Reviewers engage in discussion when prompted by other reviewers and the Track Chairs by using the Comments feature of EasyChair. During this period you will be able to revise your review based on the discussion, but you are not required to do so.

The Track Chairs will make a final recommendation to the Program Chairs based upon your feedback.

The approximate text from the review form follows. Note that not all reviewer responses are available to authors.

Summary: Please provide a brief summary of the submission, its audience, and its main point(s), with respect to the review criteria of this track.

Familiarity: Rate your personal familiarity with the topic area of this submission in relation to your research or practical experience. Your response will not be available to the authors.

• None - I have never reviewed or written a paper or otherwise have experience in this area
• Low - I have read papers or otherwise have slight experience in this area
• Medium - I have reviewed papers or otherwise have some experience in this area
• High - I have written and reviewed papers or otherwise have moderate experience in this area
• Expert - I have written and reviewed many papers, or otherwise have extensive experience in this area

Appropriateness for Special Sessions Track: Is this submission appropriate for the Special Sessions Track? In particular, does the author make an appropriate argument that none of the other tracks are relevant? If you believe this would be more appropriate in another track, please let us know which one and why.

Relevance and Interest: Is the proposed session interesting and relevant to the SIGCSE community and the conference participants? Please comment on both the strengths and weaknesses with respect to structure and participation, considering the list of review prompts in the track-specific Instructions for Reviewers on the SIGCSE Virtual website.

Structure and Audience Participation Does the proposed session have a clear and engaging structure and plan for audience participation, including a strong plan for a hybrid session? Please comment on both the strengths and weaknesses with respect to structure and participation, considering the list of review prompts in the track-specific Instructions for Reviewers on the SIGCSE Virtual website.

Presenters: Do the presenters have appropriate expertise, represent a variety of viewpoints (if relevant), and include diverse perspectives? Please comment on both the strengths and weaknesses with respect to structure and participation, considering the list of review prompts in the track-specific Instructions for Reviewers on the SIGCSE Virtual website. Because this is a single-anonymous review process, please pay particular attention to potential areas of bias in your comments.

Overall evaluation: Please provide a detailed justification that includes constructive feedback that summarizes the strengths & weaknesses of the submission and clarifies your scores. Both the score and the review text are required, but remember that the authors will not see the overall recommendation score (only your review text). You should NOT directly include your preference for acceptance or rejection in your review.