Thank you for volunteering to serve as a proposal reviewer for the NCSS Annual Conference. The following guidelines are designed to help you through what we hope will be an interesting and painless process. Past experience suggests that most people are able to complete their reviews in one or two short sessions.

Please contact us at program-review@ncss.org if you have any problems or concerns.

Review Deadline: March 31

The review process continues through March 31, 2024 We urge you not to wait to the last minute, as you are likely to make better decisions if you don’t feel rushed.

Proposal reviewers and the NCSS Program Planning Committee should use the following criteria in reviewing proposals:

• Do the title and abstract match the presentation description?
• Does the Primary Focus correlate with the description?
• Are the objectives and presentation description clearly stated?
• Are the content and/or skills highlighted in the presentation relevant to the intended audience?
• Can the objectives be met and activities completed in the time and format selected?
• Do the presentation strategies include opportunities for audience interaction?
• Does the proposal present an instructional method or strategy that you would like to learn more about?
• Does the proposal address an underserved area of social studies?
• Does the proposal present a new topic or instructional practice?
• Is the proposal relevant and of interest to social studies educators?
• Is this a presentation that you would want to attend?

If you cannot sign in or do not remember your username or password, select “forgot username?” or “forgot password?”

Once you are in the Conference Management System, you should find your proposals listed there for you. We make every effort to match you to the disciplines you signed up to review. However, because there is not always a match between the number of proposals and reviewers for a particular subject area, we sometimes need to assign reviews that are outside of your listed preferences so we can ensure that we have a sufficient number of reviews per proposal, and reviewers are reading a reasonable number of proposals. Please review them as best you can.

Suggestions

Print out your assigned proposals

While this is not essential, the review process will probably flow more easily if you print out your entire set of proposals before you begin. This will eliminate the annoying need to go back and forth on screen between the proposal and its review form.

Read your assigned proposals holistically

Quickly read through your set of proposals to get a sense of the types (workshops, sessions, poster presentations, and clinics) and the range of topics you will be dealing with.

If you have inadvertently been assigned your own proposal or come across a proposal that you would prefer not to review for any reason, please contact program-review@ncss.org. We will assign the proposal to someone else.

Reread your proposals with the selection criteria in mind

Read your proposals a second time, highlighting areas of concern and adding comments that might be helpful in making a final judgment.

Using the online review form

The online form has three sections:

Selection Criteria

The first takes you through the selection criteria one at a time. Please check the best answer to each question.

Overall Recommendation

The final section asks for your overall recommendation. Check the one that best matches your assessment of the proposal.

Note: the overall score for the proposal is the total of the selection criteria and recommendation scores. Each of these is scored on a scale of 1-3. The total score for a proposal can range from 12 to 36.

Reasons

After the criteria you will see a list of reasons that might be relevant to your evaluation. Please check any that reflect your judgment. We also encourage you to write additional comments that you think might help the program committee in making its final selection.

Comments

Please add any comments that might be helpful to the program committee.

Submit your review

When you are finished, check off the box stating, "I have completed the review," and select the “submit” button. The system will notify you that your review has been accepted. 

If for any reason, you will not be able to complete your reviews in a timely manner, please contact program-review@ncss.org so that your proposals can be assigned to another reviewer.

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