Tutorial chair handbook

Duties

Tutorial chairs are nominated by the general chair of the main conference. Their duties are described in here.

Timeline

The timeline for the organisation of tutorials should follow the general conference planning schedule. Below, we complete this schedule with more detailed tasks, as defined for the ACL 2020 tutorials. The dates from the conference planning schedule are highlighted in bold.
In recent years, calls and selection of tutorial proposals have been coordinated among some major CL conferences (usually a subset of ACL, NAACL, EMNLP, AACL and COLING). Note that if your conference is the first in the year to come, you will need to be the major driving force in the initial steps described below.
Tutorial proposals are usually reviewed by the tutorial chairs of the coordinating conferences, but it may be a good idea to also rectruit a small group of external reviewers. They should have a good experience in reviewing and a large understanding of the recent progress in the CL domain.

• [T-12]
  • Learn from the general chair which conferences will have their tutorials coordinated with yours.
  • Establish contact with the tutorial chairs of these other conferences, and discuss
    • Recruitment of external reviewers
    • Proposal evaluation criteria
    • Soliciting tutorial proposals from particular potential lecturers on particular topics
    • Organizing a public poll about interest in the submitted tutorial
  • Discuss general strategies of the main conference with the general chair and the program chairs
    • promotion of some topics
    • mailing lists and conference alert portals to be used for all announcements
  • Set up a SoftConf space for proposal submission
    • Solicit the creation of a SoftConf space from support (currently Rich Gerber). Note that submissions will be joint for several conferences but the proceedings will be edited for each conference separately. Therefore, a new SoftConf space will have to be created later for the selected proposals of each conference.
    • If you plan to have external tutorial reviewers, invite them via SoftConf.
    • Set up a submission page.
  • Set up a joint email for tutorial chairs.
  • Confirm the number (usually 6-8) and length (usually 3 hours) of tutorial slots with the ACL Business Manager (currently Priscilla Rasmussen).
  • Draft the joint call for tutorials (based on past calls).

• [T-11]
  • Send out the call for tutorials.
  • For posting the call on the ACL website, contact the ACL Business Manager (currently Priscilla Rasmussen).
  • If you planned to encourage submission of proposals from particular potential lecturers, contact them now.
  • Set up a SoftConf page for proposal reviews.

• [T-10]
  • Deadline for tutorial proposal submission.
  • If you decided to run a public poll about interest in the submitted tutorial, set it up and send out a call for expression of interest.
  • Assign proposals to reviewers, send out invitations to review (via SoftConf).

• [T-9]
  • Select tutorials jointly with other conference chairs.
  • Notify the authors (via SoftConf).
  • Liaise with local chair for space needs and scheduling.
  • Send instructions to tutorial teachers about printed material, agenda/time management, payments, fees, etc.
  • Liaise the conference website chair for updates about tutorials and authors' guidelines.
  • Liaise with the ACL Office for the registration form.

• [T-4]
  • Collect short descriptions for proceedings from tutorial teachers.
  • Provide them to the webmaster and the general and program chairs .

• [T-3]
  • Confirm the tutorials with authors.
  • Authors submit the final tutorial descriptions for the proceedings.
  • Arrange for printing of tutorial materials.

• [T-2]
  • Arrange with the SoftConf support the creation of a separate SoftConf space for the selected tutorials of your conference only. Indicate which tutorial submissions should be copied there.
  • Set up the final submission form in the new SoftConf space. Include the submissions of slides, which will be published on the ACL Anthology. Include signing the CC-BY-4.0 license agreement.

• [T-1]
  • Collect and check final tutorial materials.
  • Create the tutorial proceedings, including slides.

• [T-0] Conference and tutorials

• [T+1]
  • Invite the lecturers to update the slides at the ACL Anthology via this form (under CC-BY-4.0).
  • Update this tutorial page and the list of past tutorials with the data from your conference. For access to the ACL Conference Handbook, contact the ACL Secretary (currently Shiqi Zhou).

Publication of tutorials

In tutorials organized until 2019, there was no homogeneous policy as to the publication of tutorial material. Data (abstracts, slides, code, etc.) from selected tutorials were usually scattered in 2 or 3 places:

• conference website
• ACL Anthology
• private repositories of the authors

The sustainability of these varies from venue to venue. The main websites of some conferences are not maintained, therefore ACL collects mirrors of some of them (but not all). The tutorial proceedings, published in the ACL Anthology, until recently included only abstracts but no tutorial slides.

As a result, for many past tutorials, no slides are available online, so the community cannot benefit from these assets. It is, therefore, important to promote Open Access of tutorial material (slides, codes, etc.), ideally via a centralized platform. Since May 2019, it is possible to publish presentation slides in the ACL Anthology. Past tutorial (and paper) authors can submit and update slides via this form.

It is recommended for tutorial chairs to:

• announce the publication of the tutorial slides under the CC-BY-4.0 license (used in the ACL Anthology)
• encourage the authors to also publish, under open licenses, their code and data used in the tutorials
• include the initial versions of tutorial slides, together with abstract, to the proceedings
• encourage the tutorial authors to upload the final versions of their slides after the conference via this form

Past tutorials

The list of recent tutorials contains tutorial authors' names, titles, and to their summaries in conference websites and/or in the ACL Anthology.

Organization of past tutorials

For the last years, the call and selection of tutorials has been coordinated among several major CL conferences. The table below summarizes some data collected from existing reports and from direct contacts with past tutorial chairs.

Year	Coordinated conferences	Tutorial chairs	Submission platform	# Submissions	Reviewers	# Reviews per proposal	# Selected tutorials	Selection criteria	Useful links
2020	ACL EMNLP AACL	ACL: Agata Savary (France), Yue Zhang (China) EMNLP: TBA AACL: TBA	SoftConf	TBA	6 tutorial chairs + external experts	TBA	ACL: TBA EMNLP: TBA ACCL: TBA	Clarity and preparedness Novelty or timely character of the topic Lecturers' experience Likely audience interest Open access of the teaching material Diversity aspects (multilingualism, gender, age and country of the lecturers) Compatibility with the required venues	TBA
2019	NAACL ACL EMNLP	ACL: Preslav Nakov (Qatar), Alexis Palmer (USA) NAACL: Anoop Sarkar (Canda), Michael Strube (Germany) EMNLP-IJCNLP: Marine Carpuat (USA), Tim Baldwin (Australia)	SoftConf	46-60	6 tutorial chairs	2-3	ACL: 9 NAACL: 6 EMNLP: ?	Presenters (1-5) Description (1-5) Interest Level (1-5) Preparedness (1-5)	Call ACL tutorials NAACL tutorials
2018	ACL NAACL EMNLP COLING	ACL: Yoav Artzi (USA), Jacob Eisenstein (USA) COLING: Pascale Fung (Hong Kong), Donia Scott (UK), Marilyn Walker (USA) EMNLP: Mausam (India), Lu Wang (USA) NAACL: Mohit Bansal (USA), Rebecca Passonneau (USA)	SoftConf	49	Tutorial chairs	2	ACL: 8 NAACL: 6 EMNLP: 6 COLING: 6	Quality of plan Diversity of topics Qualifications of presenter likely audience interest	Call Report ACL tutorials EMNLP tutorials COLING tutorials
2017	ACL EACL EMNLP	ACL: Maja Popović (Germany), Jordan Boyd-Graber (USA) EACL: Alex Klementiev (Germany), Lucia Specia (UK) EMNLP: Nathan Schneider (USA), Alexandra Birch (UK)	SoftConf	26	Tutorial chairs	3	ACL: 6 EACL: 6 EMNLP: 7	Clarity (description and outline) Topic	Report ACL tutorials EACL tutorials
2016	ACL NAACL EMNLP	ACL: Alexandra Birch (UK), Willem Zuidema (Netherlands) NAACL: Alexander Rush and Bishan Yang EMNLP: Rebecca Hwa and Mohit Bansal	SoftConf	32	Tutorial chairs	2	ACL: 8 NAACL: 6 EMNLP: 6	Relevance to ACL community (15) Quality of instructor (15) Outline and depth/breadth of the proposal (15) Potential attendance Newly emerging area not previously covered in an ACL-related tutorial (yes or no) Introduction into related fields (yes or no) Overall score (15) 1st preference for venue as indicated in proposal comments	Call Report NAACL tutorials EMNLP tutorials

Past calls for tutorials

• NAACL/ACL/EMNLP 2019 joint call for tutorials
• ACL/COLING/EMNLP/NAACL 2018 joint call for tutorials
• EACL 2017 call for tutorials
• NAACL/ACL/EMNLP 2016 joint call for tutorials
• NAACL/ACL/EMNLP 2015 joint call for tutorials

Reports from past tutorial chairs

• ACL 2016 report (by Yoav Artzi and Jacob Eisenstein)
• ACL 2016 report (by Maja Popović and Jordan Boyd-Graber)
• ACL 2016 report (by Alexandra Birch and Willem Zuidema)

Lessons learned by past tutorial chairs

• [Agata Savary, 2020] For many past tutorials, no slides are available online. It is, therefore, important to promote Open Access of tutorial material (slides, codes, etc.), ideally via a centralized platform. Since May 2019, it is possible to publish presentation slides on the ACL Anthology. Past tutorial (and paper) authors can submit and update slides via this form. As a tutorial chair, make sure that
  • initial versions of tutorial slides are submitted to the proceedings together with the tutorial abstracts
  • tutorial authors are encouraged to upload the final versions of their slides after the conference via this form
• [Marine Capuat, 2019] Continue soliciting both cutting edge and introductory tutorials
• [Marine Capuat, 2019] Ask proposers to express their preferred location/conference in one place (i.e. either in proposal pdf, or in softconf form, not both) to avoid inconsistencies
• [ACL 2018 chairs] Issues with proceedings edition, when one joint SoftConf space is used for many conferences (see the report)
• [ACL 2016 chairs] Avoid confusion about the submission procedures for the final tutorial descriptions, those were submitted by email in many different formats

Author: Agata Savary, July 2019

Updates are welcome