[ecoop-info] Call for Submissions - 2020 Informatics Europe Best Practices in Education Award

[Franziska Hauffe]

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*Best Practices in Education Award*
<http://www.informatics-europe.org/awards/education-award.html>

**2020 Edition* **
***'Lifelong Education and Talent Gap in Informatics'* *

*Presented by Informatics Europe*
*Sponsored by Microsoft*

**Call for Submissions Now Open*
<https://www.informatics-europe.org/awards/education-award/call-for-submissions-20.html> 

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Informatics Europe proudly announces its 2020 Best Practices in 
Education Award devoted to educational initiatives that promote lifelong 
education in Informatics as a mean to reduce the talent gap.

The Informatics Europe Best Practices in Education Award recognizes 
outstanding European educational initiatives that improve the quality of 
Informatics teaching and the attractiveness of the discipline, and can 
be applied and extended beyond their institutions of origin.

The Award rewards a successful teaching effort in Europe that:

* has made a measurable difference in informatics education;
* is widely applicable and useful for the teaching community;
* has made a measurable impact in its original institution and beyond.

Examples of impact include course results, traditional and online 
courses, learners’ projects, textbooks, professional development, and 
influence on the curriculum of other institutions/countries.

The 2020 Education Award Theme is Lifelong Education and Talent Gap in 
Informatics. Working lives nowadays are so long and fast-changing that 
it is not possible to limit education to the traditional 13-18 years 
period in the youth of each individual. People should be allowed to 
acquire new skills throughout their career without this interfering with 
their personal and family life. Thus, new educational paths must be 
conceived that allow people to modernize their know-how and also to 
increase their abilities and competences in emerging sectors that are 
not necessarily contiguous to their main expertise. The talent gap we 
are experiencing in Informatics poses this discipline as one of those 
that should certainly be incorporated in such lifelong educational 
paths. The winner of the 2020 Education Award will be an outstanding 
European Informatics educational initiative that promotes lifelong 
education in Informatics as a mean to reduce the talent gap. Experiences 
in this area, as well as new educational approaches with some evidence 
of their effectiveness, are welcomed.

The Award is sponsored by Microsoft and carries a prize of EUR 5,000.

*Submissions:*

The Award can be given to an individual or to a group. To be eligible, 
participants must be located in one of the member or candidate member 
countries of the Council of Europe 
(<https://www.coe.int/en/web/portal/home>), or Israel. Members of the 
Informatics Europe Education Working Group 
(<http://www.informatics-europe.org/working-groups/informatics-education.html>) 
and of the Award Committee are not eligible.
The Award Committee will review and evaluate each proposal. It reserves 
the right to split the prize between at most two different proposals 
(individuals or teams). Moreover, noteworthy runners up may also be 
included as exemplars of best practice in future Informatics Europe 
publications.

*Proposals should be submitted only at:*

https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=iebpea2020

*The proposal should include:*

* Names and addresses of the applicant or applicants;
* Indication of whether the submission is on behalf of an individual or 
a group;
* Description of the achievements (max 5 pages);
* Evidence of availability of the outcomes of the initiative to the 
teaching community (max 2 pages);
* Evidence of impact (max 5 pages);
* A reference list (which may include URLs of supporting material);
* One or two letters of support. The letters of support may come for 
example from school or university management, associations, or 
colleagues in the same or another institution.

*Deadlines:*

* Proposal: 1 June 2020
* Notification of winner(s): 1 August 2020

The Award will be presented at the 16th European Computer Science Summit 
(<http://www.informatics-europe.org/ecss/home.html>), in Sofia 
(Bulgaria), 26-28 October 2020, where a representative of the winning 
institution(s) will be invited to give a talk on their achievements.

*Award Committee:*

* Elisabetta Di Nitto, Politecnico di Milano, Italy (Chair)
* Ismael García-Varea, Universidad Castilla-La Mancha, Spain
* Jean-Marc Jézéquel, IRISA / University of Rennes, France
* Michael Kölling, King's College London, UK
* Monica Landoni, Università della Svizzera italiana, Switzerland
* Gabriela Marcu, University of Michigan, US

*Further inquiries:*
education-award at informatics-europe.org