ITE

Welcome to the 16th Annual Conference on Information Technology Education (SIGITE 2015) and the 4th Annual Conference on Research in Information Technology (RIIT 2015)! The theme this year is "Creating the Future", with a focus on the innovative approaches in information technology that continue to define and strengthen our field. What better place to convene than at DePaul University, where this occurs every day! In addition, Chicago offers waterfront parks, amazing architecture, a vibrant cultural scene and incredible cuisine, all within steps of the DePaul campus.

SIGITE/RIIT 2015 features a very insightful and inspiring program. As in past years, the synergies between research and education in information technology are prevalent, and several themes emerged from the accepted submissions. The technical areas of networking, mobile devices, security, and development continue to be popular with researchers; as does innovation in content, pedagogy and assessment.

This strong program would not have been possible without a pool of quality papers, panels, posters and lightning talks. The call for participation attracted 98 submissions, 72 of which were submitted to SIGITE and 26 to RIIT. Eighty of the submissions were papers, with 58 papers submitted to SIGITE and 22 papers submitted to RIIT. SIGITE has 24 papers in its program for an acceptance rate of 41% and RIIT has 10 papers for an acceptance rate of 45%. All of the authors presenting should be congratulated on their excellent work!

A conference relies on the assistance and expertise from a multitude of peer reviewers, and this year was no exception. Forty-five reviewers and two meta-reviewers worked diligently to ensure that every paper had at least three independent reviews and that, where divergences occurred, consensus was reached. Over 300 reviews were ultimately conducted which hopefully resulted in constructive feedback that has benefitted the authors regardless of the decision.

SIGITE/RIIT 2015 runs from Thursday to Saturday and is preceded by a Chicago Highlights Tour on Wednesday night and a Chairs Meeting and Oracle workshop on Thursday morning. The formal program begins on Thursday at noon with a keynote by Mike Shannon, a 2012 graduate of Illinois State University and co-founder of the Chicago-based Packback. This startup provides college students a variety of affordable eTextbook offerings and a platform for student-faculty engagement, and its founders appeared on ABC's "Shark Tank" in March 2014 where they reached an agreement with Mark Cuban. The program continues with a combination of papers and lightning talks on research in progress and concludes with a reception, which we know will be useful for networking with colleagues old and new. Friday features additional paper sessions and lightning talks for SIGITE and RIIT, a poster session in the afternoon, concluding with a reception for Community College educators. The conference closes on Saturday with more presentations and a final session where we will share plans for SIGITE/RIIT 2016 in picturesque New England!

I hope you find the conference compelling and motivating with opportunities to reconnect with colleagues you know, identify new collaborators, and leave with a commitment to research and innovation that will result in new submissions to SIGITE or RIIT next year. The excellence you see at SIGITE/RIIT 2015 depends on your participation and engagement and, on behalf of all that collaborated to make this happen, we thank you!