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Instruction for Session Chairs 

Instruction for Session Chairs 

Thank you for accepting to be a Session Chair at AIED’22! Your work is extremely important to us to make the conference run smoothly. To help you, you may have a Co-chair (https://aied2022.webspace.durham.ac.uk/programme-overview/), as well as one face-to-face volunteer and online volunteer allocated to your session. 

General information. 

AIED 2022 will be in a hybrid format this year. Presenters may give their talks in-person in the Teaching and Learning Centre (the physical conference venue) or remotely via Zoom. The equipment in the Teaching and Learning Centre will allow Zoom presenters and audiences to access a 360o view of the physical room during your sessions (via Owl devices). 

Face-to-face Chair: If you chair face to face, you will be the main responsible for the chairing. If you have an Online Chair, they will assist you, e.g. in asking questions to participants, and helping gather online participants’ questions and answering online issues, together with the online volunteer.  

Online Chair: We have endeavoured to assign an onsite chair for all sessions. However, if for some reason the onsite chair becomes unavailable, the online chair may have to chair the session remotely.  

If you chair remotely, check if you are the only Chair: if so, you may be the only Chair at https://aied2022.webspace.durham.ac.uk/programme- 
overview/ and will need to coordinate with the two volunteers (face-to-face and 
online), who will be there to support you.  

From a technical point of view, you will need a Zoom link associated with the physical room assigned for your sessions. The conference schedule will be in WHOVA. You will be able to access the Zoom links for your sessions within the WHOVA system. The AIED Virtual Team will also send you the information in a separate email before your sessions.  

The durations of presentations vary based on presentation types.  

  • Long papers: 20 minutes for presentations, and 5 minutes for Q&A and change over; 
  • Short papers: 10 minutes for presentations, and 5 minutes for Q&A and change over; 
  • Practitioner track: 10 minutes for presentations, and 5 minutes for Q&A and change over; 
  • Journal track: 10 minutes for presentations, and 5 minutes for Q&A and change over; 
  • Best paper from partner societies: 20 minutes for presentation, and 5 minutes for Q&A and change over.  

If you chair poster sessions, please note that poster sessions are either fully online via VTogether or fully in-person in the open plan space at the second floor of the conference venue (i.e., the Teaching and Learning Centre, Durham University). Please check the schedules for the poster sessions via https://aied2022.webspace.durham.ac.uk/programme-overview/.  

What should you prepare before the conference? 

The first thing that you should do is to check the date and time of your sessions in the schedule (https://aied2022.webspace.durham.ac.uk/programme-overview/). AIED 2022 uses Time Zone UTC+1. If you need assistance converting time zones, please use https://www.timeanddate.com/  or a similar website.  

We highly suggest that you review the papers allocated to your sessions and prepare two questions for each paper that you may ask the presenter during the conference. To find the papers and the presentation PowerPoint slides of your sessions, you may go to the corresponding Google Drive folder. The AIED Volunteer Team will also send you a separate email regarding how to access your session folders in Google Drive, and be there to help you on the day.  

As a session chair, we also ask that you please reach out to the presenters of your sessions to collect short biographies from them. You will need this information to introduce the presenters before their talks. If you are not able to obtain short biographies before the conference, presenters are asked to be present in the physical meeting rooms or on Zoom 15 minutes before your sessions and you may take this time to collect their short biographies.  

If you chair sessions remotely, we would also appreciate it if you could prepare a computer with Internet access for your sessions. You will need this computer to access the session livestream via Zoom. 

What should you do during your sessions? 

Prior to your sessions, you may want to check with the presenters whether their presentations involve unsteady camera work or flashing strobe lights. If so, please instruct the presenters to keep the video camera steady if they are remotely presenting over Zoom. Also, please remind anyone in your sessions who is not presenting to turn the video off and to mute as the livestreams start. The online volunteer will help muting people who are not supposed to talk during the session. 

If you chair sessions with multiple presenters speaking at once (panel format), please remind all online presenters to turn on camera and keep unmuted, including the moderator.  

During your sessions, if you use your own computer remotely, please mute the embedded video to avoid audio feedback. Please also ask remote presenters to share their screens. Volunteers will help to share the screens of the computers in the physical rooms and monitor/summarise online chats and questions. 

For each paper in your sessions, before the presentation, you will introduce the presenter to the audience. If a paper has won the best paper award, please make sure to announce it before the paper is presented. After each presentation, you will strongly encourage the audience to ask questions. You can (or ask the online volunteer to) view questions from Zoom audiences and read them to the presenter, and alternate with questions from audiences in the physical room.  In case there are not enough questions from the audience, you will ask the questions that you have prepared. You may have a co-chair who may help with further questions as well.  

Please note that all conference sessions will be recorded. Volunteers will help with the recording.  

Make sure that all presentations have some questions from the audience, create a lively environment where questions are encouraged. If questions are too many, make sure to balance between face-to-face and online question fairly. The volunteers (one face-to-face and one online) will help with selecting questions, if asked by you.  

Importantly, in order to keep strict timing, for each presentation, you will give the presenters warnings at 5 minutes or 3 minutes, for full papers or short papers, respectively, as well as at 1 minute before the end of their allocated presentation time, to all speakers. Please ensure timing for presentations and questions is strictly kept.  

No shows: if a presentation is a no-show, you may use that time to extend the discussion with your prior speakers and audience, or you may have a short break. Do not move on with the next presentation! 

Please keep talk starting timings strict, so that participants can access the talks at the expected time (either face to face, or remotely).