Doctoral Consortium

LASI Europe 2024 Doctoral Consortium 

Chairs:

  • Yannis Dimitriadis, Universidad de Valladolid, Spain
  • Rebeca Cerezo Meléndez, Universidad de Oviedo, Spain
  • Rebecca Ferguson, Institute of Educational Technology, Open University, UK 

The Doctoral Consortium at LASI Europe 2024 is a half-day event to support Ph.D. candidates working on topics related to learning analytics with experts in the area that will act as mentors to provide feedback.

The candidates need to be currently enrolled in a formal doctoral programme and their work will be at any stage that they can still make adjustments based on the feedback received at the consortium. Thus, they should neither have completed their doctorate nor officially defended their thesis before the event. 

Doctoral Consortium participants will be given opportunities to present, discuss, and receive constructive feedback on their research through the review process and during the celebration of the DC.

Objectives

The specific objectives of the Doctoral Consortium are to:

  • Provide a setting for mutual feedback on participants’ current research and advice on future research directions from a mentor panel
  • Create a forum for engaging in dialogue aimed at building capacity in the field with respect to current issues in learning analytics ranging from methods of gathering data, interpreting analytics with respect to learning issues, considering ethical issues, relaying the meaning of analytics to impact teaching and learning, etc.
  • Develop a supportive, multidisciplinary community of learning analytics scholars
  • Foster a spirit of collaborative research across countries, institutions and disciplinary background
  • Enhance conference experience of the participating students by connecting the participants to other LASI Europe 2024 attendees 
  • Develop the next generation of learning analytics researchers and active members of SoLAR

The intention of this Doctoral Consortium is to support and inspire students who are currently enrolled in a formal doctoral programme, during their ongoing research efforts. Ideally, participants will have developed and (in some countries) defended a proposal, but their work will be at a sufficiently early stage that they can still make adjustments based on the feedback received at the consortium. They should have neither completed their doctorate nor officially defended their thesis prior to the Doctoral Consortium.

Accepted DC Proposals will be published in the Conference Proceedings and/or at CEUR Proceedings

Important dates 

  • 9 25 March 2024 – PhD candidate application deadline 
  •  5 April 2024    – Doctoral Consortium review
  • 29 May 2024   – Doctoral Consortium at LASI Europe 2024

Proposal Format & Submission Process

To apply to the Doctoral Consortium, student applicants should fill up their data in a form. They will have to submit the following documents as one single PDF file as part of this form: 

1. A summary of your research up to 6 pages long (including all tables, figures and references, except 1 additional page for appendices), using this template.

The document should include all the following elements:

  • A ~150-word abstract
  • Brief background and identification of research problems addressed in the thesis
  • Research goals and question(s)
  • An outline of the current knowledge of the problem domain and state of existing solutions
  • A discussion of how the doctoral project’s suggested solution is different, new, or better than existing approaches to the problem
  • A sketch of the research methodology and identification of core methods/techniques, including reference to ethical considerations
  • Current status of the work and results achieved so far (e.g., literature review, submitted or accepted papers, prototypes designed or built, experiments carried out, etc.)

2. Additional information addressed to the DC committee, including:

  • A statement of the particular issues/problems that you want to discuss, and/or types of feedback that might be particularly useful 

3. A letter of recommendation from your supervisor/advisor with an assessment of the current status of your work, a brief summary of how attending the DC may benefit your work, and an expected date for dissertation completion.

Review Process

Doctoral Consortium co-chairs will review applications, with the help of additional Program Committee members where necessary. Participants will be selected on the basis of:

  • Academic quality of their proposal
  • Relevance and potential contribution to the learning analytics field
  • Potential for the student and the dissertation work to benefit from participation in the doctoral consortium
  • Support of the dissertation advisor for participation and its potential benefit.

Schedule

The Doctoral Consortium will take place during the first conference day on Wednesday, May, 29th. The format interleaves research presentations and small-group discussions, giving students opportunities for in-depth conversations about their work. A plenary discussion on career development concludes the day. 

Financial Support

LASI Europe and the Doctoral Consortium do not have registration fees. Additionally, for this DC event, we will provide financial support to six PhD students to cover the costs related to accommodation and a potential contribution towards other travel-related expenses.  

A limited amount of scholarships is available for PhD students to cover meals and accommodation. The scholarships will be distributed based on the quality of the submitted proposals and phase of the PhD work. To apply for the scholarship, please, answer “YES” to the corresponding question in the PhD student proposal form (see above). To participate in the competition for scholarships, please submit a full PhD proposal before the deadline. The scholarships are sponsored by the Spanish Ministry of Research and Innovation (Action RED2022-134284-T).