Our presenters are professionals with expertise in various aspects of developing and maintaining credentialing programs:

• Administrative and organizational leaders of certification and assessment-based certificate programs;
• Psychometricians and other credentialing professionals focused on assessment methodology;
• Credentialing researchers and faculty;
• Individuals who have worked with credentialing consultants to develop or enhance credentialing programs; and
• Credentialing consultants*
  
  *If you are an employee of a company that provides products or consulting services to credentialing organizations, you must co-present with at least one representative from a credentialing body for your submission to be considered.

Speaker Limitations

• To promote diverse content, viewpoints, and presentation styles, speakers are not permitted to present more than two concurrent sessions at the conference.
• Each concurrent session must feature at least one speaker from a credentialing body.
• After the original proposal is accepted, speaker substitutions or additions must be requested in writing and approved by the ICE Program Committee. The committee reserves the right to help identify an appropriate speaker/co-presenter or reject a previously accepted session based on speaker changes.

Session Limitations

• Promotion of specific product solutions or services is not permitted in educational sessions. Inclusion of such material may result in your session being excluded in conference recording packages and may preclude the organizers from being allowed to submit proposals for future ICE conferences. Please be careful that your case study does not accidentally turn into a product solution showcase.

Cancellation Policy

Once a session has been accepted and printed in promotional materials, it imposes a serious burden to ICE to cancel. Please do not submit a proposal if you are uncertain that you will be able to fulfill your obligation to organize and conduct the session. Once a session is accepted by the Program Committee, cancellation by the session organizers may preclude the organizers from being allowed to submit proposals for future ICE conferences.

Conference Registration Required

Those submitting an abstract proposal understand that all speakers listed as part of the presentation team must register for the ICE Exchange conference as well as assume responsibility for any expenses related to travel to the Exchange if accepted; there are no exceptions to this policy.

The 2015 ICE Exchange conference is the conference for the credentialing community. The conference was re-branded in 2013 as the ICE Exchange as a means of highlighting the aspects that attendees report as most important about this annual gathering: exchanging ideas on industry trends and best practices through making connections with each other and taking part in high quality education.

The educational program is intended to be diverse, touching on the many aspects of a credentialing ecosystem: business of certification, security records and data management, testing development and administration, etc. The educational program is designed to be suitable for a wide range of experience levels and blend foundational concepts, including best practices and standards, with new concepts and innovative approaches to credentialing.

The ICE Exchange encourages a variety of presentation styles which appeal to different, preferred styles of learning. We incorporate a mix of session lengths and formats to appeal to all styles of learning.

An outstanding attendee experience is the primary goal of the conference. With your commitment, the 2015 ICE Exchange will deliver!

ICE's program committee strives to create an overall educational program that a) incorporates diverse topic areas and b) is suitable for beginning, intermediate, and C-level audiences at various stages in their credentialing program's life cycle.

In addition to current good or best practices, the Program Committee encourages submissions on trends that you believe will have a profound effect on the industry in the future.

The Program Committee welcomes submissions on any topic of interest to the credentialing industry. The below list represents their collective interpretation of sessions that may be of most interest to ICE Exchange attendees, presented in random order. 

Business of Certification Topics

Pricing services: how to stay competitive as innovation changes the way services are delivered

How is workplace training competing with certifications?

• Impact of MOOCS on your certification
• Micro-credentialing: a friend or foe to the certification field?

Maintaining firewalls

• relationships between parent organizations and certification bodies
• relationships between certification and education departments operating under one organization
• relationships with service providers

What secure exam delivery models exist? Is there a way to have security and agility with speed to market? 

Partnership development

• Developing and identifying opportunities based on common interests, best practice and/or complementary services
• Seeking partnerships in your supply chain (for example, one vendor develops, the other delivers) and helping them work seamlessly

Governance*

• organizational strategy and leadership
• moving your Board from tactical discussions to strategic discussions
• best practices for promoting cohesion
• strategies for optimal board member engagement
• enhancing the role of the public member
• new governance models
• making strategic planning and long-term visioning term visioning part of everyday decision-making
• when to sunset or expand or specialize a certification
• how to promote more active conversations about collaboration, shared services, joint strategy planning, and leveraging strengths
• advancing mature certification boards
• licensure vs. voluntary certification
• strategic vs. tactical governance
• staff vs. governance roles
• how should the Board govern itself: selecting new members, dealing with issues such as non-performance, conflicts of interest, etc.

*A note on Governance topics: this year, the Program Committee is creating a unique pre-conference governance workshop designed specifically for volunteer leadership. The pre-conference workshop will be highly interactive and include multiple 60 minute presentations on governance principles that are specific to the board member or commissioner's role. Please consider this as a possible option when submitting your abstract on a governance topic. Governance abstracts will be considered for placement in either the pre-conference workshop (on Tuesday, October 27) or the full conference program (Wednesday, October 28 - Friday, October 30). 

Legal issues

• what’s new in case law
• accommodations
• due process
• trademark and copyright steps
• separate legal incorporation (why and why not)
• intellectual property protection
• non-profit vs. profit models
• contractual agreements (what they should/should not contain)
• working with lawmakers – identifying key messaging and statistics that capture attention

Accreditation: why, why not

What can demographic trends and generational characteristics say about future certificants?

Updates on the efforts to integrate military credentials into workforce 

International

• when to consider going international
• anticipating the challenges an international expansion may bring and identifying solutions
• deciding which countries to penetrate (e.g., performing market analysis, perceptions of certification programs per country/region, legal/governmental considerations)

Marketing & Communication Topics

Value proposition: what is it – how to develop, use, sell, and measure its benefits

• promoting the value of your credentials
• levering recertification as part of your value proposition
• how to increase recertification rates?
• how to encourage continuing education when the legacy certification never expires?
• leveraging accreditation in your value proposition
• how a certification’s value proposition may change internationally

Soliciting feedback from the public and other stakeholders (besides including them on your board)

Innovative strategy in social media

Innovative ways to capture and use current data for strategic planning/marketing

Using data visualization strategies to communicate your data to your stakeholders

Defining and responding to competitive programs

Understanding what employers and the public need to know about your certification (such as how to market to/reach hiring managers on the importance of certified employees)

How to use digital badging to expand your brand recognition 

Security, Records & Data Management Topics

Innovative data gathering tools

What demographic trends and generational characteristics should you be gathering to predict the future of your certificants?

Securing your program when “going international”

Data forensics – access, interpretation and communication)utilization

Basic tools for process improvement – flow charts, symbols and uses

Technological impacts on recertification processes/tracking

Test Development & Administration Topics

Models for building continuing competence programs

Performance-based testing (why do it, reliability issues in scoring, training and calibration of raters)

Job analysis, using job analysis data to identify exam design

Alternate methods for setting a cut score

Alternate methods for determining and validating knowledge, skills, or competencies

Creating right-sized relationships with your outsourced testing companies

Creating efficient RFPs for outsourced services

Psychometric principles

New (or on the horizon) approaches and/or methodologies in test development and delivery

Comparative studies on novel and/or different JTA techniques - number of SMEs, timeline, project milestones, results, methodologies, relevancy

New techniques and out-of-the-box approaches for speed to market. How can we compress the test development time line (from JTA to exams in field) without losing reliability, validity and integrity?

Remote or online proctoring (new considerations for test administration and security)

Performance-based assessments (PBA)

• validity and reliability
• simulation vs. live
• scoring and calibrating judges
• how to build the PBA
• how to choose judges and what standards can be used as reference

Non-cognitive skills assessments – identify innovative methodologies/instruments of measure

Assessment-based Certificate Programs Topics

Certificate vs. certification

Strategic use of certificate programs

Instructional design principles

Adult learning principles

Psychometrics for certificate programs

The relationship between needs assessment, curriculum development and assessment development in certificate programs 

All proposals MUST be submitted through the online proposal system by 11:59 pm ET on March 13, 2015 and MUST include all required fields. Late proposals will not be accepted by the ICE Program Committee.

The online proposal application must be submitted in one, timed sitting. So you are prepared, please gather your information and resources before beginning the application. You may consider typing all required information in a separate document before copying and pasting the following information into the online system:

Session Title Session Description* Session Learning Objectives (minimum of 3) Teaching Formats, Methods, Strategies

Identified Session Submitter** Presenter & Co-presenters (if applicable) Presenter & Co-presenters' bios

* If accepted, the session description will be printed in conference promotional pieces, including the on-site conference guide, website, and mobile app. Without exception, all session descriptions are limited to 75 words. The session description should be written with particular attention to attracting attendees and submitted in the correct format on the proposal submission form. ICE reserves the right to edit session descriptions as needed to fit the allotted 75 word limit in the marketing materials.

**All sessions must have an identified session submitter who serves as the main point of contact for ICE Staff and who will distribute relevant information to the other session presenters. This person must be readily available by email and phone in the months leading up to the meeting. Please confirm in advance that any co-presenters listed in your session proposal are committed to speaking at the session if selected

Selection Process

The ICE Program committee appreciates the time and energy that all submitters put into the development of their session proposals. Committee members conduct a blind review of each abstract submission and rate each proposal based on a standard set of criteria. Proposals receiving the highest scores are then considered for the program and re-evaluated.

There are always more positively rated proposals than there are slots available. The committee's final selections are based on a determination of the best mix of sessions that will create a rich, diverse overall program.

Selection Timeline

ICE staff will notify the session submitter of acceptance by early May 2015. It is the responsibility of the session submitter to communicate the decision to all additional, necessary parties.

Speakers will be given a discount code that brings the conference registration to a cost of $710, which is discounted to equal that of the Member, Early-Bird full conference registration price.

Acceptance of your proposal does not obligate ICE beyond assuring you meeting space and recognition in conference promotional materials. We stress that presenting at the ICE Exchange is done so on a volunteer basis and no ICE funds are available for honoraria or travel expenses for session speakers.

If you would like to bring handouts for your session, we cannot reimburse for printing; however, we will gladly post them online prior to the conference for attendees to print and bring themselves. We can post handouts in a conference attendee-only section of our website and on the mobile app. Advanced deadlines apply.