Exploring the Experiences of Student Volunteer and Student Volunteer Chair Communities at Academic Conferences

Abstract

We report on an interview study with two groups, student volunteers (SV) and student volunteer chairs (SVC), to explore their experiences in contributing to an academic conference. We identified themes regarding their behaviors and perceptions when communicating with each other through an open coding approach. The analysis of the findings reveals that communication issues exist between SV and SVC. While SV faced challenges approaching SVC, SVC had experienced difficulties in finding the right SV to ask for assistance in the tasks. We also found that the information provided by SVC was not sufficient for SV to perform the assigned tasks. Similarly, SVC had a similar issue where they received limited information from former SVC. We present design implications that enable both SV and SVC to share their availability, preferences, and prior knowledge of potential tasks with each other. This is the first study that reports design opportunities to support SV and SVC.