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Conference Organizers are looking for Faculty Volunteers!

Paper Session Discussants or Facilitators

Track Chairs are seeking volunteers to serve as discussants and facilitators. These roles are essential to successful paper sessions and research in motion presentation sessions. For those faculty without a presentation or roundtable appointment, acting as a discussant or facilitator places you formally on the agenda. Students typically are not invited to serve as discussants or facilitators. Track chairs will issue invitations and confirm discussant and facilitator roles via email. All invited discussants and facilitators should check the published conference schedule to confirm the session they are being invited to doesn't conflict with one where they are a presenter of their own research. ACSP will not reschedule a session but will replace you as the discussant or facilitator instead. Use the form at the very bottom of this page to volunteer. 

Guidelines for Discussants Before the Conference:

• Discussants are only asked to read submitted final papers.
• Reach out to presenting authors in your session before the conference via e-mail. Remind them of the deadline to circulate papers to you and the other presenters. It's okay to let them know if they don't give you enough time, you will not read the paper. If they send you their paper on-time, you are responsible for reading it prior to the panel so that you can provide comments to authors. Students and junior faculty truly benefit from your effort.
• Think about questions ahead of time and ways of engaging presenters and the audience for an exciting conversation at the session.

Guidelines for Discussants and Facilitators During the Conference:

• Arrive at the session room five minutes prior to the scheduled starting time and introduce yourself to the presenters.
• Attempts are made to assign a student room attendant to session rooms, 3-4 per student. This person, wearing an identifiable conference t-shirt, will help you contact necessary parties to take care of the audio visual equipment, room temperature, and to assist you and the presenters at any time.
• Look on the front table or podium for the yellow and red cards to assist you with letting presenters know their time frame. Please return these cards to the front of the room when the session is completed.
• Often times, sessions will be a mix of final paper presentations and research-in-motion presentations. Remind presenters of the maximum time they can use for paper presentations (15 minutes) or research-in-motion (RiM) presentation (10 minutes) and hold them to it!
  
• Ask the presenters to quickly introduce themselves to the audience before their presentation.
  
• When introducing the session - please be very brief - tell the audience how many papers or presentations will be in the session, how long each presentation will be and that there will be time for questions at the end of all presentations. You will not have presenter bios, nor should you provide any personal commentary in the beginning! Time is a premium for the presenters. Introduce the yellow and red card system to all.
  
• Show the yellow card to the presenter when 5 minutes of presentation time is left. Show the red card when time is over. BE FIRM in your request to end the presentation in fairness to all other presenters.
• Ensure the session finishes on time. Sessions that overrun with discussion at the end will affect next sessions.
• In case you are presenting a paper yourself during the session, we strongly recommend you present at the end of the session, even if this means altering from the published order of presentations. The efficient management of the session will benefit from it. When presenting your paper ask one of the other presenters to manage your presentation time using the cards.
• Listen carefully to each presentation and note questions you can pose to presenters or the audience to inspire discussion and engage everyone present. ACSP did it's best to create enough space for discussion, and presenters are counting on it.
  

Other considerations:

• The conference committee does its best to avoid conflicts for discussants with their own paper presentations, however; if the end result is a paper-discussant conflict, we will ask you to step aside from your discussant commitment. We will not rearrange the schedule.
  

Discussant or Facilitator Volunteer Submission Form (below)

If you are interested in volunteering, please fill out the following form. Students typically are not invited to serve as discussants or facilitators.