Courses can fulfill many educational roles, such as:
- Introducing a core graphics area, suitable for someone with little background in that area. A Course of this kind can cover various topics and can range in level from introductory to advanced. The jury evaluates these proposals based on the belief that the Course will guide attendees through the material in a coherent and comprehensible way.
- Introducing a topic related to graphics but not considered “core” graphics. The jury evaluates these proposals based on the expected benefit of the knowledge to a typical SIGGRAPH attendee.
- Consolidating a new and emerging research trend. The jury evaluates these proposals based on their potential to facilitate knowledge transfer for practical applications and guide new researchers in the area. The jury also is hoping to see Courses that distill contemporary research into a coherent narrative, as opposed to Courses that merely recapitulate a sequence of recent research talks.
Well-attended, strong Courses may be re-submitted in subsequent years. Recently taught Courses must provide justification for why the Course should be repeated. If you are proposing revisiting an older Course, you should explain why the material should be revisited and what new advances will be covered. Introductory Courses have the potential to be repeated more frequently than advanced ones, as the potential audience is larger.
The success of a Course proposal is not directly tied to its declared level of difficulty. The conference benefits from a broad spectrum of Courses at all levels, including well-designed introductory Courses. Please choose the most appropriate difficulty level for a Course based on the complexity of the ideas presented and the depth of its prerequisites.
If you have multiple speakers, please take a moment to consider whether you prefer to submit your proposal as a SIGGRAPH Panel or SIGGRAPH Course. It’s your choice, but if you are presenting different perspectives about a topic without a cohesive structure and clear learning objectives, consider a SIGGRAPH Panel submission.
Some reasons Courses are rejected:
- Sample course notes and/or slides fail to communicate key ideas clearly and informatively.
- The submission does not make it sufficiently clear what the theme of the Course is, or provide details about what specific topics will be presented or how the allotted time will be used.
- Materials are too narrowly focused or advance an agenda. A Course should provide a comprehensive overview and not just focus, for instance, on the presenter’s own techniques or methods used in a particular company.
- Previous Courses have sufficiently covered the area, or the jury feels the topic is too narrow to attract sufficient attendance at SIGGRAPH.
- Too many high-quality Courses were submitted, and the jury could only select a subset.
Concept
How exceptional are the ideas, problems, solutions, aesthetics, etc., presented in this submission? How coherently does the submission convey its overall concept? Is the concept similar to existing ones, or does it stand out? This criterion is particularly applicable to submissions that put together existing technologies into a single Course proposal (for example, demos, animations, or art pieces). Submissions of this type, where the individual technologies are not necessarily new but their
combination is, are evaluated on both the final product and how well-proposed technologies integrate to meet the desired goals. Many submissions in this area are rejected because they do what existing systems do, and they do not demonstrate that the proposed approach will produce a superior Course.
Novelty
How new and fresh is this work? Is it a new, groundbreaking approach to an old problem, or is it an existing approach with a slightly new twist? A Course that offers a novel, different approach to a topic will be well regarded by the jury.
Interest
Will conference attendees want to attend this Course? Will it inspire them? Does it appeal to a broad audience? This is partly a measure of how broad the potential audience is and the overall clarity and novelty of the proposal. If the proposal is a repeat of a past Course, evidence of past interest can be useful in evaluation.
Quality, Craft, and Completeness
This is a measure of the Course proposal’s quality of expression, clarity of thinking, and the completeness and lucidity of the explanation of the nature of the Course and its intentions. The submission information and sample course notes and slides must provide a clear sense that the final course materials will be well-written, well-designed, and well-presented.
Non-Disclosure Agreements
SIGGRAPH reviewers cannot sign non-disclosure agreements for submissions. For information on patents and confidentiality see the Submissions FAQ.
