text:
What is a good ice-breaker question on the first day of the classes?
I will be teaching for the first time to both undergraduate and graduate students in computer science, not in the US, and I am wondering

if I should take time to meet & greet with students
if so, what should I ask them? I know some questions are uncomfortable (anything that gives away socio-economical background for example), so I want to avoid uncomfortable questions. Should it be about the class? Should it be about their favorite movie?

The course will be online due to the pandemic.

Addressing #2, here's a list of ideas that's worked well for me:

what are you hoping to get out of this class?
what's your favorite food you can find in the area or like to make at home?
why did you choose your major/what are you thinking about majoring in?
describe an experience you remember about learning something new?
tell us something random about yourself (if you use this one, start it off for them, let someone volunteer to go next, then warn them the order you'll go in after that. Tell them they are free to copy other people's categories).

I like 1 and 4. 2 can be relevant especially for chef / hotel management courses...

yea I was trying to mix it up using relevant/irrelevant questions. Ice breakers in general don't have to be relevant, the point is just to get people comfortable enough that they can start working together quickly with total strangers and feel less awkward. I don't use them anymore, as being a more experienced teacher I can set up an environment friendly to open exchange more easily, but when I was first starting out they were helpful to the students.

to get people comfortable enough that they can start working together quickly with total strangers and feel less awkward. -> exactly, what I need! Especially for me, but also for them as well. How do you do it now?

Establishing the atmosphere you want in your class is different for every teacher, and it really depends on your style and personality. Students tend to respond very positively when you treat them like humans who have the potential to do well and who you want to see succeed. Just a small amount of friendliness and enthusiasm for them figuring something out goes a long way. That sounds like the bare minimum, but honestly in higher ed the bar is really low (see the above upvoted comment recommending that you... read them the syllabus? groundbreaking.)

Well, just to note, I think ice-breakers also help to remember people in the class (for myself and the students). So irrelevant or funny ones are even more memorable, e.g. what is your fav dish. But I don't have the confidence to be too irrelevant or better ridiculous on the first day just yet :) Maybe I will throw some brain teasers to start group discussions.  Hmm.

"Ice breakers" are not a good way to meet people in any context.  When you are meeting a new class of students, it's better to:

Let them know what they need to do to succeed
Tell them about the resources they have available
Tell them why the class is important
Assess their current ability
Actually teach

« Ice breakers are not a good way to meet people... » might be true for physicists but may not be true for all.

Why are they not a good way and why are your points better?

90% of my college instructors used some variation of this approach for their first class, though "actually teach" was often omitted for the first day.  Regarding assessments: Depending on your class, it's not uncommon to have a rough understanding of a typical incoming class's abilities.  This comes with experience, but can be bootstrapped by reading your predecessor's lesson plans.  Making such requirements clear via formal prerequisites (or informal prerequisites via course description) is common.

That being said, icebreakers do make sense in settings that are less lecture-oriented.  E.g.,  Graduate seminars, trade-school classes, and pseudo-internships.

I think the most important function of the first class is to engage with the material in an exciting and intriguing way. In cs that might mean teasing with a serious introduction to some topic of interest you will encounter in detail later in the semester. If you can ask good questions that can be addressed now (even if not "correctly"), do that.
In many classes my first assignment, due very quickly, is a short questionnaire asking students about their preparation (previous courses? How long ago?), their hopes and fears/worries about this class, anything else that might help me help them (personal issues like child care or illness can be mentioned but are not at all required).
That serves to break ice for me. If you are comfortable with group work in class you could ask small groups of students who happen to be sitting together to respond to your introductory remarks about what you hope will be exciting things to learn about.

Re "engage with the material in an exciting way": when possible (physics/chemistry in particular), experiments are good, though I suspect the effect is better in person than in video-teaching.


text:
What are the advantages and disadvantages of an "open gradebook" policy?
At the end of the semester,
after the grades have been determined and released to the students,
I will receive emails from multiple students appealing for higher grades.
A few years ago, my colleagues developed a large course (> 600 students)
which is offered across multiple sections.
They chose to adopt a "semi-closed gradebook" policy
where the grades for the quizzes are released to the students,
but the grades for most of the other assignments and the project
are not released to the students.
When I asked my colleague about why she adopted such a policy,
they stated that the reason for this policy is that the class is large
and she didn't want to waste time dealing with
grade grubbers,
i.e., students who complain that they should get a higher score
for this or that assignment.
After a year, I inherited this course from her,
and as the course leader for this course,
I am able to make changes.
In the last two years,
I have maintained the "semi-closed gradebook" policy
introduced by the previous course leader.
However, I am wondering if I should adopt an "open gradebook" policy
where the marks for every assignment are released.
One benefit of such a policy is that if we make a mistake,
e.g., a student submitted an assignment,
but we gave the student a zero by mistake,
the student can notify us of our mistake and it can be corrected.
In addition, giving students some feedback
about their performance in the course
can help them to feel less worried and uncertain about how they are doing.
Question:
What are the advantages and disadvantages of an open gradebook policy?
Response to comments
Question in comment:
Do you give students other individual feedback on these assignments, and just hide the numeric grade? Or do they get no feedback on them?
In the past,
we do give the students their numeric score for some of the assignments.
I would like to give the students some written feedback on their assignments,
however, the graders are not very motivated,
and I am unsure how the logistics should work for given written feedback.
For example, should the grader send an email
to every student individually to give feedback,
which is more than 600 students?

I’ve never heard of a closed gradebook policy. Open is the norm. Surely the students are unhappy.

Do you give students other individual feedback on these assignments, and just hide the numeric grade? Or do they get no feedback on them?

an open book policy is required by LAW and is right of the student, I want to know what uni doesnt aloow them

@Thomas see my edits to the question

@ff524 see my edits to the question

"however, the graders are not very motivated": aren't the graders TAs specifically paid to do also that work?

@MorganRodgers yes, transparency in marking, one of student right part of law. But I dont know if you refer to USA, I am not sure if students have any rights in USA?

Case study: The biggest upwards bump I ever got in student evaluations was when I started making all course and assignment grades available on the school's digital learning management system (accessible 24/7 online by student login). Previously I'd noticed that my lowest score was in the category of "Instructor keeps me informed as to how I'm doing", and using the LMS to make all grades visible immediately fixed that.
I would argue that more transparency is always better in cases like this. It serves to clarify policies to the students, allows both sides to double-check, and reduce student anxiety (all of which are good things to model). My opinion is that this is the direction that reduces student inquiries about grades.
I have had some colleagues who argued the same "Don't release grades so students can't argue about them", and I've never understood that. The whole situation feels more tense and high-stakes. The only downside I can think of is that open grading gives somewhat less flexibility to the instructor, in that it forces them to be honest and not goose scores in either direction for extraneous reasons.

@NajibIdrissi I assume one of his goals is to motivate the students.

Before starting with my answer, let me say that I would never use a semi-closed gradebook in this setting. With over 600 students and multiple graders, chances are just way too high that there is a mistake. Can you really claim that you are able to enter over 600 grades into a table/system, without once skipping a line, entering it in the wrong field, etc? Can you claim the same for every last one of your graders?

Now for the answer:
You are in a classical dilemma here. On one side, you want to be a good teacher, fair to the students and giving them all constructive feedback, on the other side, you have other 600 students and not enough time/manpower to do it and to deal with all the grade grubbers.
At my department, the common way to deal with this problem is to have exact dates set for "grade grubbing". For example, say an assignment is returned graded to the students on Monday. Then you tell them that everyone who has a question about the grading should come and see you in your office on "insert date and time here". That could be right after hading it back, some days later, etc. This way, someone who got unjustly graded has a chance to speak up, but has to come see you in person for that. Thus, grade grubbers will think twice about it, because it is much harder than just writing an email.
Another important point is that grubbing at the end of the term is not possible anymore. Most grade grubbers I have encountered look at their final grade and then try to get some more points in every single project and assignment, hoping that they will add up to a better final grade. If you make clear times for every single assignment, asking for more points on that later is no longer possible.
Of course, you don't need to do all the work yourself. Your assistants could, for example, deal with the discussion with students, and only forward the cases they see as justified to you to decide.
On a side note, you should of course consider students that are not able to make it to this date, e.g. because they are sick. Here, you need to come up with a system that is still fair towards these students, while at the same time not allowing others to ask for points at any given later time they want. Possible ways to do so would include students authorizing others to speak for them, or students handing in a doctors note.
Regarding your edit:You should definitely give feedback and not only a numerical grade. Otherwise you invite lots of "why?" questions that could be avoided.
As you are grading with multiple graders, you should have some rules on where to give points, how much points to take off for what mistake, etc. Otherwise it would be nearly impossible for different graders to grade in the same way, i.e. the grading would not be fair. If you have such a guideline, then why not share it with the students after handing back the assignments? Tell them how you expected them to do it, tell them what gave points and which errors took of how many points, tell them about common errors that were made (without giving names, of course), etc. This will also reduce the number of people asking for more points. Depending on your preferences, you could either write these comments to every single student, or you could make a lecture out of it.

I use "if I made a mistake with a grade, you have one week from the date it's returned to ask me to check it" and you have to submit the request by email and specify in your email exactly what I graded wrong. Same effect (no grade grubbing at the end) and it's not a problem for students who can't come to office hours.

I cannot fathom a "closed" or "semi-closed" gradebook - make student grades open and accessible, and put boundaries around challenging grades that discourage the reflexive "I want more points" grubbing. Dirk's suggestions about setting deadlines for when students can come challenge grades, requiring students to come talk to you/someone in person, and sharing grading guidelines with students (preferably before the assignment is turned in) are all great.
I've also found that allowing rewrites/redos (with similar boundaries and structures - due dates, guidelines, etc.) and asking students to make the case for what grade they think they deserve (with specifics, no general "well I thought I did well" or "I made the changes you told me to, I therefore deserve an A") work really well. I promise that all 600 students will not take you up on these offers - the vast majority will not, in fact. But rewriting/redoing and having the student make the case for a particular grade reinforces what you're trying to teach in the first place, because you have to understand what you're doing in order to talk about how it's being evaluated. You're not letting them off easy with these kinds of policies either, since a real rewrite and a real argument for a given grade take real work that (bonus!) help with real learning.

Yes, indeed! Let the students "put their money where their mouth is"! :) And/but I'd add that this policy should (of course) be entirely clear in advance, for the same reasons. But/and, yes, this does lead to another layer of game-the-system, wherein students don't prepare for the main exam/whatever, but plan (usually inadequately) to recover everything on the "do-over". So specific numerical hedges on this are needed to discourage this...

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text:
As a course lecturer, should I excuse late assignment submissions if I wrote the assignment deadline slightly wrong?
I am the course lecturer of an undergraduate course.
For a recent assignment, I had written the assignment deadline as 23 November 2018 (Saturday). Unfortunately, 23 November is actually a Friday, and not a Saturday.
I received an email from a student asking for me to excuse his/her assignment which was submitted late. The student explained that he/she marked the deadline as Saturday, without checking the assignment date.
Question
Should I excuse the student's late submission because I made a slight mistake in specifying the assignment deadline?
Note: We use a learning management system to receive assignment submissions, and the assignment deadline was entered correctly in the learning management system.
What I decided to do
For the current incident:
After reading the answers, and thinking it through, I decided that it is better to use the later of the two deadlines (i.e., 24 November Saturday) as the official deadline for the assignment.
I did make a mistake in writing the wrong day of the week for the deadline,
and students could have been misled with my mistake.
It is not fair to punish such students for my mistake.
For future courses:

The more places I put the deadline in
(e.g., the syllabus, the assignment itself, the learning management system),
it becomes likely that I will make a mistake somewhere.
In the future, I will put the deadline in only the learning management system, and refer students to check the deadlines there.

In dubio pro reo…

What would be the benefits for you or for your students of rejecting this single assignment which was submitted on Saturday? (I can't see a compelling benefit.)

@ebosi: There's also a legal doctrine called contra proferentem that seems on point here.

In addition to the reasons given by answers, to stick to the shorter deadline you will need to argue that such a small error doesn't matter, and that could backfire in a few days when you grade their assignments and some perceivedly small mistakes will need to matter.

@MichaelSeifert You're right, that's more accurate indeed. Thanks for improving.

BTW how do you accidentally name a weekend day if you don’t want that? (That thinking can also be applied by your students)

I can’t figure out a reason why I wouldn’t accept the homework as on-time in this case. To err is human, to say “mea culpa” is divine.

Wow, all these answers. I would like to answer with a question: what is best for your students? The mistake was clearly yours (teacher) and not theirs (students)....

Yet another reason to put dates on assignments in the course management system and in the syllabus, etc state "refer to online course resources for due dates".  If the assignment was submitted on (Saturday) I would accept it.

I know this question has already been thoroughly answered, but I just wanted to mention that the fact that the date is correct in the homework submission system does not at all change anything.  I often don't even look at my homework until the day before it's due, and since the student was told it was due on Saturday (I don't look at the date, I look at the day of the week), it's completely realistic that the student didn't even look at the homework submission site until Saturday

For future homework assignments, consider having a teaching assistant go over the assignment before it's published, to see if there aren't any "cognitive blind spots" which a second pair of eyes is more likely to notice.

Does your university have any policies on the subject? I know that when I was going to university, one of the units I took had two different dates published for the due date of one of the assignments, and he had to go with one of them over the other due to the university's policies.

Quick note here: If you don't accept it late, you're saying that you can make a mistake but your students can't, which is a bad precedent to set because they'll no longer trust you.

I'm surprised this question would even be posted. Do you really think it could possibly be okay to deny a student turning in an assignment late because you made an ambiguous statement about the due date? Seriously? You are in the business of education (at least partially), not intellectual warfare. The students are not the enemy.

For perspective; your situation is vastly different as no one has likely been inconvenienced all that much BUT as a student one of my lecturers gave incorrect deadlines on a couple of occasions.  One in particular, with a time difference of a full week, still vexes me to this day.  Some students got the extra week and therefore had more time for work on other modules (hand-ins were supposed to be staggered), while others had to slog like mad to meet the incorrect deadline and work for other modules suffered as a result.  Mayou36 is correct, but don't expect other students to like it.

First thing: The student handed in on the shown deadline. That says everything. Not accepting is not an option in any reasonable way. But to be more specific:
In dubio pro reo (in a case where nothing happened anyway)
Mistakes happen. Like you writing the wrong day for a certain date. Happened once, the "damage" is that students may have a reason to hand in one day later. That's it. And that's basically nothing.
Students are humans too. Most probably he/she really did not pay too much attention, did not look it up properly. Like no one of us would have or normally does in his daily business. And that's fine. Because it was not about life and death.
Let it be like that and accept the hand-in saying that you really wrote the wrong day (and may even apologize for the small mistake, as it may caused some confusion and a little anxiety to the student when he realized it). Even thinking about that incident is too much energy wasted for nothing happened. And be happy that you did not write the date of a test wrong or similar. Keep the mouse a mouse, don't make it an elephant.
Also, not accepting it will result in punishing a (most probably) innocent student. That's just unfair and will leave a very bad impression with the student. No reason to risk that.
.

Clearing comments because that issue seems to be resolved now to everybody’s satisfaction.

If the assignment deadline was not shown correctly to the students, then it is your error and they cannot be penalized for being late.
Claiming it is correct in one area while incorrect in another does not absolve you, you caused the confusion so you have to accept late submissions, as long as they arrived on Saturday...
Any submissions on Sunday will, of course, be late.
Re-reading this, it sounds a bit blunt... Probably because I have done exactly the same and had to sort it out after... Peace reigns if you stick to being fair, so giving them the extra time does not usually make much of a difference, except for the recognition from the students.

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.

If you occasionally published two different dates as a deadline, you should accept the work until the latest date without penalty. This is what essentially happened: you announced the deadline as 23rd Nov 2018 but also as Saturday, which is not the same day. Go with the latest of two then — this is the best way to be fair in this situation.

Yup. Not least because if they appeal it, a) it'll waste your time having to explain that you're an incompetent and b) the university will likely side with the student and you'll look bad.

Kinda off-topic, but one of my instructors once mistakenly wrote the deadline as 11/27/2108, and we still got penalties for submitting after 11/27/2018 :(

@nalzok: A hundred years is far too much extra time for school work.

@user21820 Arguable :)

@user21820 some students would still be late after having 100 years :) ...

@nalzok Worth that being pointed out in the answer though - that "latest" date in this case doesn't (hopefully) affect OPs marking schedule. Whereas 100 years in the future (or even a week) definitely would - which is worth considering when deciding how much leniency to give.

@user21820 there are only 90 years between 2018 and 2108...

@CactusCake: I suppose you think that Fermat considers Wiles his student. =)

I think the most important question a teacher should ask about their own actions is "What my action will teach?"
If you accept the late submission you will teach that one must assume their own mistakes and get full responsibility.
If you don't, you will teach that the people with more power don't need to clean up and take responsibility after mistakes, and the underdogs should not trust them.
We can say the last will prepare the student to be a good employee in the corporate world, and the first to be a responsible person.

Very good point regarding setting a personal example! Teachers educate students as persons, they don't just teach particular subject matter. +1

While I agree with the idea of the teaching, being strict with with the date does not teach that "people with power don't need to clean up...", but that it is the student's responsability to make sure to have all the elements in hand. I'm still in favour of a lenient response, but the second part of your answer is biased.

Maybe my answer is biased, but I think I don't need to "make sure" I "have all the elements in hand" if I trust my superior. If the student is penalized because they don't catch the professor mistake, we are not teaching students to be attentive, but that "s*** goes down", and we must not trust our superiors. The result would be improved attention? Sure. but the message was not "Attention is important".

@bilbo_pingouin really, it is the student’s responsibility to always be on their guard in case against incompetence or errors on the side of their instructors? That seems unreasonable. If we required such hyper-vigilance from students, they would not have any time left for studying.

Well I disagree, Students aren't Kindergarten kids. They can take care of themselves and do not need to be taken by hand every time. By your logic, the student could deliver any saturday, that would have been ok. I disagree. There were an error in the requirement, the student should be able to spot it. Why assume Saturday was fine and not the date? Again, I don't think that student should be penalised here. But I still disagree with your second part.

The latter would prepare people for the corporate world, but would reinforce bad ethics in that corporate world by punishing students into accepting those bad virtues. Could you plz edit to either agree or disagree with this, even one or two words to make it clear.

Purely from a standpoint of error distance, I would probably put more trust in the spelled-out day than in a numeric date, if there's any conflict between the two, because it's much more likely to accidentally hit 3 instead of 4 than to type Satur when you meant to type Fri. Of course that only applies to the mechanical aspect of typing, for most brains it's probably just as easy to mix the two up.
In any case, unless you noticed your error and communicated an unambiguous correction within a reasonable timeframe, it seems only fair that you should accept submissions up to the latest possible reasonable interpretation of the originally communicated deadline.
I say “reasonable" interpretation, because I guess the latest possible interpretation would be Saturday, November 23rd of the next year in which November 23rd is a Saturday. (This wouldn’t make sense in an academic context, but it’s a possible result of a typo in some longer-range planning.)

You can only hold people to what you said clearly, not to what you intended

I did make a mistake in writing the wrong day of the week for the deadline

Says you. As a student, I was given an assignment due on Saturday the 24th. What's that you're saying? That the numeric date has 23 rather than 24? Oh, surely that's the mistake - it's just a typo.
See what I mean?
Actually, even in a more extreme case, where you merely hinted that the later day is appropriate, and did not spell it out, you should still have accepted late submissions.

I guess I don't see what you mean, if all you've done here is swap one ambiguous date for another. And my point was the date was given twice, once nonsensically, which cannot be followed as the day didn't exist in the current year, and one clearly, where it was online. Just like you want.

@ASimpleAlgorithm: Which date in your opinion was the sensical one, and which the non-sensical one?

@einpoklumthe nonsensical one is "saturday, Nov. 23". The "sensical"  one is the date on the online system which presumably was "nov. 23". Those are not three dates they are two. As a student you are held responsible for everything you are told, not your favorite piece of information.

@ASimpleAlgorithm: That's just, like, your opinion, man.. I saw a perfectly sensical date and a typo, and that's a reasonable - even if not the only interpretation. The fact that it says something else on the online system doesn't change anything, because once I saw that Saturday, I was reading the submission date information anywhere else - I already knew when I needed to submit.

Why are you responding to a comment to a different answer in your answer?  It dilutes the point you're trying to make.

@Beska: I'm not sure what you mean. I responded to comments on my answer.

@einpoklum You did not see a typo, you made a self-serving assumption. Good students will be careful to interpret the situation in the safest way and use the earliest date. You think you're being clever but you just look like another slacker, depressing us about our career choice in teaching. If a military junta took over your vacation spot and told you to leave the country by saturday the 23rd or be shot, I'd expect you'd be out by the 23rd, not saturday.

@einpoklum Beska is referring to your quoted text.  That is a comment on Solar Mike's answer by someone who is not the OP.  I'm also confused as to why you posted a response to a comment on another answer as an answer.

@ASimpleAlgorithm: You can't presume to know what I perceive and why. Also, while  my assumption may be self-serving, but it could be subconscious, so that effectively the only thing I know is the result of that assumption. "Good students will be careful" - some will, some will get mixed up. About the military junta example, this is what will more likely to happen.

@einpoklum Yet you presumed to know why the instructor wrote the 23rd.

@ASimpleAlgorithm: I was reflecting what a student may assume (rather than presume) was the case.

@kuhl: Oh, sorry, yes, I had somehow attributed that comment to OP (and now it's gone anyway). See edit.

In my experience, there seem to be (at least) two different kinds of professors/teachers: those who believe that it is their purpose to convey knowledge and those who believe it is their purpose to fail students. At this point, I'm making to judgement here; it is easy to find ethical and rational reasoning for both approaches (i.e. the 'high washout rate' used in some colleges) but I will leave judging the ethics of those as an exercise for the reader.
So—you probably want to ask yourself what your purpose in teaching is.
Is it to teach students, proliferate knowledge, and make sure people learn what you want to course to convey? If so, be lenient.
If, on the other hand, you think your principal job is to filter students by failing them hard and early, this is a perfect opportunity to do so.

could you please clarifythat you are not being sarcastic to make your point, or edit it to make your point without sarcasm. You seem a little new and sarcasm is usually not accepted on SO. Not downvoting, just trying to br helpful.

@JesseSteele Like so? Or am I still coming across as sarcastic?

On the contrary, I'd say there are two kinds of students, those who are there to learn, and those who are allergic to effort. Professors, depending on where they are, and how much it bothers them to be lied to, lied about, etc., will have very different experiences teaching and will develop different kinds of standards for their classrooms.

"allergic to effort" that made me smile...

@Bex, what you added made tons of sense to me and I know exactly what you mean. So, I edited it to make it a little more clear and used terms that convey your point. One example I know of is the Cooley law school in Michigan that actually uses that, but I didn't want to get specific in the post. You really do have an objective idea here, it defends a lot of professors, saves students grief later on, and I hope this helps people see that in your post. Thanks for doing this and sticking to it!

@JesseSteele Thank you for your understanding and for your edit.

@ASimpleAlgorithm I don't see how your statement in any way contradicts mine. It's no secret there are a hordes of sloppy and lazy students. But there are also a lot of sloppy professors. What really surprises me is that sloppy professors hold their students to higher standards than they do their selves.

@Bex It contradicts yours because it provides an alternative explanation besides your "sloppy" theory. The professors are being strict because they believe it is the best way to control students. The ultimate goal of that control is making them learn (despite their best efforts not to). As for higher standards, the symmetry you desire is misguided. The student is there to be taught, and be rated on how well they performed. The prof is there to do a job for a salary according to a contract. These are not comparable.

@ASimpleAlgorithm They bloody well are comparable.  A student can be good (professional, passion for learning, happy to slog, willing to help others, etc.) or bad (unprofessional, doesn't care, lazy, selfish, etc.).  A lecturer/professor can be good (professional, passion for learning, happy to slog, willing to help others, etc.) or bad (unprofessional, doesn't care, lazy, selfish, etc.).  Giving "an alternative explanation", in this case, doesn't directly contradict the point in question.  It just outlines your bias regarding who's fault it is when a student doesn't do well absent context.

@BrentHackers No they are not comparable. And your little counter isn't even a comparison, you have just assigned similar adjectives to people in two completely different roles. My dog can be lazy and unprofessional too. That doesn't say squat about anything. And speaking of bias, you are the one all triggered and ranting.

@ASimpleAlgorithm Didn't mean that to come across as a rant.  It read to me that you believe your argument that students can be lazy somehow contradicts the point above.  And I would argue that both lazy teachers and lazy learners can quite easily co-exist.  And, for the record, I could compare some of both my peers and lecturers from my Uni days to lazy dogs.

I think there is no other choice for you than to excuse your student. As he/ she already mentioned that he/ she follow calendar day deadline instead of  calendar date  which is also clearly mentioned in your submission deadline . So being a very valid reason and a typo mistake on your part, your student should be given excuse .

The student doesn't need to be excused, because he/she was not late.  The deadline was "Saturday", the work was turned in before the deadline.  There is nothing to excuse.

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text:
What can be listed as "invited talks" on your CV?
I've come to learn (the hard way) that grant referees value significantly the number of invited talks given by an applicant. I'm talking about funding instruments such as the ERC Starting Grant, where the profile of the PI is one of the main criteria to evaluate.
For junior academics who are not "superstars" it's difficult to get invited to give invited talks at conferences. I know have the impression that, at least in my field, most junior academics who deliver invited talks at conferences are doing so either on behalf of or referred by their supervisor/advisor. As a matter of fact, my only invited talk at a conference happened this way, and having recently organized a workshop I've seen this play out in practice.
However, I do get "invited" quite often to give seminars at institutions where I am visiting a collaborator. These seminars can be on the topic of the collaboration or something else: I usually (so far always) have freedom to choose.
I was wondering two things. 1) Would I be misleading people by listing these "invited seminars" as "invited talks" on my CV? 2) Are these "invited seminars" generally valued by the community, especially by those senior academics who are likely to review my next funding application?

@NajibIdrissi It is true based on my first-person experience, talking to colleagues and from event organization. It may be field dependent. I'm in condensed-matter physics.

@NajibIdrissi I've edited just in case.

Your first question is addressed in the answers to this question mentioned in the comments: Difference between contributed and invited talk
Namely, it is standard to list seminar talks under the heading of "Invited talks", so you should do this.  Some people separate conference talks vs colloquium talks vs seminar talks under appropriate subheadings.  I don't know whether it's standard in your field for junior people to do this, but you could try asking colleagues.  I am in pure math, and I don't, though at some point I started margin symbols to highlight conference talks.
For your second question, it depends upon the reviewer, but in my mind there is some value in seeing a bunch of seminar talks.  It means if we fund you, you'll be active in telling people about the research we've funded, so that's a positive.  It's of course not a primary deciding factor, but grants are competitive so even small positives can make a difference, so it is certainly worth listing your seminar talks on your CV  (assuming you're talking about applications where you send a standard CV, rather than a mini-CV with page/content limits).

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Importance of grades when applying to Master's degree program?
I am planning on applying to a Master's degree program (in Canada, if it matters) and I've noticed that there seems to be quite a few grade cut-offs for applications. I've read elsewhere that these are not set in stone, however, how important are they compared to other criteria such as references and research?
In my opinion, which I have no proof for, it seems almost absurd to put an emphasis on grades without knowing a class average or having a detailed knowledge of the course when examining a grade. However, this is my personal biased opinion, so I would like to see the rationale behind the opposite view. One argument I have heard is that school build up a database of GPAs from a certain school and classes (from the comments to this question), so I can see how this might be considered mildly accurate.
This is similar to this question, consequently if the response is similar, I will not be surprised. I'm applying to a researched focused engineering program, but a developed answer with respect to multiple faculties and multiple types of programs would be ideal.

Actually, admissions to master's degree programs are quite different than PhD admissions. Doctoral programs are research programs, and therefore promise as a researcher is perhaps the most important criterion of all to satisfy.
However, at the master's level, this may or may not be the case—many master's programs feature no research (purely coursework), or only a small amount of research (for instance, a one-semester research project, or a lab course, or something similar). In such cases, research is not emphasized nearly as much, and undergraduate track record takes on greater significance. Similarly, "terminal master's" programs—ones that represent "end degrees" in their own right—will likely have less of a research background focus than degrees that are intended to prepare a student for doctoral studies.
The other issue is the style of admissions: for "US-style" admissions, research will likely be more important than it is in "European-style" admissions, where research plays essentially no role at all in admissions to master's programs (although research is a prerequisite for PhD studies!).

Grades are important, but not the only thing taken into consideration. It varies from school to school and field to field. Three things to take into consideration (IMO).

Field:
In engineering, grades might have more weight or importance. In other
fields, they may not be as important, but still taken into
consideration.

Competitiveness:
It may depend more on how competitive the school or department is. If the school/department is hurting for students, then they may take anyone. If they have a surplus of applications, they may be very selective.
I think it's fair to say that if you have a D average you will not be as competitive as someone with an A average in a highly competitive program.

Supporting material:
Typically, you will need to write a SOP (statement of purpose), have 3 letters of support from undergraduate supervisors/mentors/instructors, and include a resume or CV. In my opinion, having a strong letter of support from 3 professors and a solid resume and/or CV is more important than grades, at least in my field. Now if you have crap grades, that won't look good and you will likely have a hard time finding professors to vouch for you.

If you're grades are in doubt, I suggest you write a really strong SOP (have someone (career resource center or a professor) look it over, and create a really nice looking resume. Find advisers who will write strong letters of recommendation.

Actually, it would be an engineering program I would be applying to, with more of a research focus. Could you give a reference as to what gave you the impression that in an engineering program grades were more important?

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text:
Thesis writing; bottom up vs. top down
Situation: I’m completing a master’s degree in computer science. Currently, I’m at the final stage and finishing writing my thesis.
Usually, similar theses in my institute have the following structure:

Introduction.
Literature survey.
Proposed solution, method, framework, ...
Implementation and case studies.
Conclusion.

Problem: Actually, the research problem that I’m undertaking is a little complicated and crosses multiple landscapes; it’s about designing data warehouses using ontology. So the way I have followed is bottom-up, providing a chapter of foundations before the solution chapter (point 3 above). These foundations contain multiple basic definitions, constraints and rules that I build upon in the next chapter (including some novel theoretical issues), in order to give the reader the sufficient tools to launch reading my work.
However, my supervisor told me that this is not the best way, and that reader may be confused with all this much of theoretical knowledge in a bottom up fashion, that may lead to getting lost. Instead, he suggested to define any concept only whenever I need to use it, even if it this concept is proposed by me.
Question: Though I know that there may be no specific answer. However, in such a situation, which is better? bottom up or top down? Any suggestions?

It all depends on what your goal is. There are numerous textbooks that do this. An example is Folland's Abstract Harmonic Analysis. He has a whole chapter devoted to some really technical results and ideas that don't show up for a while later. I think he does it this way to collect the annoying technical details so the rest of the text is very fluid. Front loading the annoying bits lets everything else feel more cohesive. Is this your goal? If not, top down might be better as your advisor suggests.

I've always been told that any good paper mirrors itself: That is to say, you should start it with the conclusion you are going to draw, fill it with conclusive proof, and end it with the conclusion you introduced at the start.

Or like any good talk - tell them what you are going to tell them; tell them; tell them what you told them.

I have not enough reputation to comment. So, we will have to go with an answer. I disagree with Cameron Williams and I agree with your supervisor. Your thesis is not a textbook and front loading in a thesis will not have the intended effect. Frankly, if you start with basically a set of definitions, it is quite likely that your assessors will only cursory read that section. They might then be confused when they read the actual solution chapter because they don't have the necessary understanding of the concepts you thought they would have.
I think you should follow your advisor. Think of your thesis as telling a story where you introduce new concepts at the point where you need them. You can always have a glossary at the end of your thesis to gather all relevant terminology in one place.
The exception to this advice would be if you are writing in an area where there is a lot of confusion around terminology and names of concepts. If your goal is to argue that prior literature was sloppy in naming its concepts and you want to clarify the literature, a discussion of definitions at the start could be warranted.

It's very common to see

Introduction.
Literature survey.
Contribution 1

Proposed solution, method, framework...
Implementation and case studies.

Contribution 2

Proposed solution, method, framework...
Implementation and case studies.

Contribution 3

Proposed solution, method, framework...
Implementation and case studies.

Conclusion

My own dissertation was originally structured like you have in the question, with all results coming after all framework.  This got very negative feedback at my oral defense, and I reorganized it as shown prior to signoff and deposit.
The negative feedback wasn't specifically directed at the structure, but at the fact that I had failed to coherently link everything together, and the chosen structure was a major cause.
In contrast my Powerpoint deck was organized around the three contributions, and was received very positively, which helped me reach the decision to use the same approach for the dissertation.

Ultimately, I think that you should follow your supervisor's advice, unless he/she offers you enough freedom in that regard. However, I would like to emphasize the following aspects:

Your thesis' structure is very typical for a single topic scholarly works (the rarer alternative, used more frequently in Ph.D. dissertations, is a collection of essays on a common theme) and has a solid research methodology foundation, so I wouldn't worry about that at all, unless your supervisor require you to make structural modifications (in that case, I would politely present my arguments, but comply, if meeting the requirements is demanded upon).
Terminology-wise, I think that the above-mentioned standard approach to structuring academic work should not be called bottom-up - if you insist on using such terminology, I would rather refer to it as top-down, since you analyze the topic from more general concepts to more detailed (discussion of rationale for choosing between those two approaches is beyond this scope of this answer, but, briefly speaking, I think that it mostly depends on the availability of some theoretical foundation on the topic: if it exists, then I'd use top-down approach, otherwise - bottom-up).

These are just two different styles, and no one can say one is better for all things, though one may tend to work better with certain manuscripts with certain audiences.  In this case, since your advisor has specifically suggested top-down as being better, try it his way.  Trust your advisor.
It's not clear from the question why you think the top-down approach is not as good.  If you're worried that there are too many new definitions etc. that people will have trouble remembering and be difficult to locate, this can be solved with an index or index of notation and/or creating subsections at the appropriate places to treat new concepts in a mini-isolated environment where they're introduced.  For readers who already know these concepts, they can just skip those subsections.

I'd just like to provide a bit of personal perspective.  Last week I defended my Masters thesis in Mechanical Engineering.  I wrote it in the style you call "bottom up."
My thesis was an experimental comparison of different published literature methods for testing thermoelectrics, so I started with a chapter on thermoelectrics, followed it with a chapter on the testing methods, and then moved to the more traditional goals, methods, results, conclusions for the remaining chapters.
By putting the requisite technical background at the front, I was able to make my discussion of the methods in the experimental section more succinct and discussion of the basic mechanisms mostly out of my conclusions, but I did repeat key concepts throughout the thesis.  I think that it is possible to write in a "bottom-up" manner, but remember that you may still have to briefly summarize concepts as they come up in the work.


text:
Should there be a space between a value and the units used?
When preparing a technical report or paper, is it better (more readable, more common) to use a space between each value and the units for it, or no space?
With space: 10 mA
Without space: 10mA

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it is not about academics or academic publishing, but about how to format scientific text for publishing.

Related question on [tex.se]: Should I put a space between a number and its unit?

@Roland: What does this have to do with anything? All options considered in the question and even all options considered in the answers are supported even by Word (without being fancy formatting).

I don't really see how this is different from any of the other posts we have about how to format scientific text for publishing (we have many of them), so I am casting a 4th vote to reopen. (It might look like a 2nd vote, but in fact there are also two recently aged-away votes.)

If there is a standard in academic typesetting¹ and typesetting in general, it is to use a narrow space, i.e.:

With space: 10 mA; without space: 10mA; with narrow space: 10 mA

The most suitable Unicode character for this is U+202F (narrow no-break space). This is also the default setting of the LaTeX packages units and siunitx.
The SI Standard says (p. 47):

a space is always used to separate the unit from the number.

However, it does not specify the width of the space. But at least, using no space at all is against this standard.
As for readability, I am not aware of any studies on this, so I can only give you my informed opinion. Consider the following examples (I use a picture to ensure that we are seeing the same thing and to be able to employ justified text):

In the first sentence, no space is used. This makes it take longer to identify the unit as it merges with the numbers, in particular with long numbers.
In the second sentence, a full space is used. Units are now read as individual words because that’s how our brain is trained to read full spaces. As our brain is also trained to process words one by one, it will first read and process 192.34 and then continue with K. In the third sentence, where narrow spaces are used, our brain is more likely to process the 192.34 K in one chunk and we also do not have the same problems as in the first sentence.
Finally, consider the list in the second and third sentence (1 Ω, 2 Ω and 3 Ω). With a full space it becomes more difficult for our brains to group what is written into individual items, as, e.g., the first Ω has almost the same distance from the preceding 1 than from the 2 that follows it. With a narrow space, this is easier.
Thus, using a narrow space is a compromise to have number and unit to be seperated less than words but more than the individual digits of the number.

¹ Some journals do not seem to care to make their publications consistent in this respect.

The siunitx LaTeX package seems to be the defacto standard.

@BenVoigt: seems to be the defacto standard – How do you measure this? In most cases, it should be impossible to see which package was used. Anyway, I mentioned the package in my answer.

Here one stackexchange I barely see the difference between the narrow and the full space. The difference is probably so pronounced because justified text messes with the width of spaces to adjust the width of the text to fill the line. Another issue with a normal space is that if you're unlucky a linebreak will be positioned between the number and the unit.

@CodesInChaos: Here one stackexchange I barely see the difference between the narrow and the full space. – This may depend on your browser’s settings, font-rendering details and similar. I can clearly see the difference. — Another issue with a normal space is that if you're unlucky a linebreak will be positioned between the number and the unit. – There is also a full-width protected space. So, even if all you have is Unicode, you can avoid such linebreaks in all cases (full space, narrow space, no space).

@CodesInChaos OUT with justified web text (in any web page). It Freaks out accessibility.

That moment you click the link provided in the answer and realizes the guy that exported the manual to PDF kept the metadata from MS Word...

What I use in Latex is: $123 \, \Ohm.

I've always used U+2009. It appears to be slightly shorter: ] [ vs ] [. Any reason for recommending U+202F instead?

@WChargin: If it works, there is hardly any difference or none at all, depending on the font/typesetting program. However, U+202F seems to be supported by most fonts, at least in my impression. (Also, I can type it with my keyboard layout.)

@Wrzlprmft Actually, lots of arxiv papers have the tex source available for download as well, so you could probably do an actual survey if you wanted.

@WChargin: when using thin space the value and the unit might get seperated by a line break. With non-breaking thin space this will not happen.

@BenVoigt the author of siunitx put a lot of work into implementing the SI style guide (and I suspect a sampling of publishers' guides).  It's the de facto standard only in fields where LaTeX is the de facto standard (I hgihly recommend both).  Note that siuntix can be configured to use whatever space you like -- e.g. I've used it with the standard tie (~) for compatibility with pre-existing number/unit pairs in the same document.

The International System of Units (SI) and the NIST recommend a space.

A non-breaking space.  I suggest that if you can't provide a non-breaking space (i) write in something better, and failing that e.g. in some cases online (ii) omitting the space is a less bad error than allowing the unit to wrap.

Different organizations may have different standards, but since you used electrical engineering units as an example, I'll highlight the 2014 IEEE-SA Standards Style Manual:

12.4 Letter symbols
In IEEE standards, letter symbols should be used rather than abbreviations. Letter symbols include symbols
  for physical quantities (quantity symbols) and symbols for the units in which those quantities are measured
  (unit symbols). The quantity and its unit can usually be separated by a non-breaking space to avoid
  unfortunate pagination. (emphasis added)

This document is a treasure trove of best practices for technical writing (in my opinion, at least).

You know the problem is an answer to this might be subjective to current practice and of course editors' preferences. Easy answer is your editor will point out how they want it.
Here's what I did, I opened google scholar and typed in voltage regulation and then scanned the paper entries and you know what there were no space 12V papers, small space 12 V papers and even 12-V papers from a cursory scan of 200 IEEE entries.
So best to ask your journal or conference publication chair.

Unless specified to do this a certain way in the Instructions for Authors, this is not your problem.  It is the page editor's responsibility to make sure the paper matches the publiser's or journal's style sheet.  Chances are they have some very intelligent software that makes most of this an automated process.  Just follow the editorial process and make sure that anything sent to you pre-publication looks acceptable.


text:
What exactly does a citation alert from Google scholar mean?
I have a Google Scholar profile and this morning, I got the following email (anonymised):

Scholar Alert: New articles in my profile
[CITATION] Here is the paper title
  [My Name] – The Proceedings are here …, 2015

So first I thought that someone has cited the paper mentioned in the email, but when I had a look, there were still zero citations. Then I thought, that maybe this article was added to my list of articles, but then I realised that it was already there before. So what exactly does this email tell me?

There are several types of Scholar Alert, which basically boil down to:

We found one of your articles
We found some articles that you should read
We found somebody citing your articles

When you get one that says "New citations to my articles", that's the one you're looking for.  In that email, the articles listed in it are the ones that cite you, not which articles of yours ones being cited (you have to figure that bit out for yourself).

The OP had received a "New articles in my profile" email, which indicates that a new article was added to his profile by scholar.  It could be an unrecognized duplicate of something that was already there.

Perhaps you can add more details in your question... are you sure it was there before?  Are you sure that a different article didn't increase its citation count?


text:
If the poster gets a prize, who gets it, the person presenting it or the first author?
Suppose I have done a collaborative work, where I do 80% of the work. Hence, I am the first author. Now my collaborator goes to a conference to present a poster of that work. In the poster too, my name is (for the obvious reason) first. But my collaborator is the presenting author. Now if the poster gets a prize, who gets it, the person presenting it or the first author? Technically, who should get it?

I flagged it for depending on individual factors. There also seems to be important details missing. For example, I've been to conferences where only posters with a student among the authors are eligible. In that case it would seem to make sense for it to be the student(s) that receive the prize. I'm not sure that there's going to be a "technically correct" answer to this though.

To expand upon Ian_Fin's questions, what is the award for? "Best research" or "best presenter" or "best student poster"?

In the good answers already posted, I miss any reference of who paid registration fees and conference-related expenses. If they were covered by an institution or grant, that's not an issue - provided that the institution is not asking for a share - but if presenter or some other author had had to pay from own pocked, reimbursing them with the price should come first.

A prize is typically given for both content and presentation of a work, so a typical fair way to handle prize money, whether for poster or paper, is to offer to split it evenly amongst all of the co-authors.  Co-authors who feel they have not offered a full share of work might choose to decline their share, but the basic assumption should be an even split.  To do otherwise just opens the opportunity for much interpersonal conflict over a generally quite small amount of money.
Remember also that the most significant value of a poster or paper prize is not typically any money that happens to be associated with the prize, but rather the increase in your personal credibility and future prospects that comes from the recognition.

If somebody it taking a poster to present at an meeting with cash awards for the best posters, it is usually a good idea to discuss in advance how the money will be divided up.  Usually, faculty co-authors are not part of the split, and the presenter may sometimes get a larger share than the others.

@Buzz Personally, I would find it a bit presumptuous to make a plan for splitting a prize that one is unlikely to be awarded.  I do agree that faculty co-authors usually don't end up as part of the split, but feel the gracious way for that to happen is to have the students offer and the faculty member decline: some faculty members will feel that they do deserve the money!

It doesn't have to a long discussion, but in my experience, it can save a big headache afterwards if the poster wins an award unexpectedly, and people end up disagreeing about who should get the money.  I think the faculty can facilitate this by opening the discussion, with something like:  "You students should decide how to split the prize money if the poster wins an award.  I don't want a share.  This is for you guys, and I would suggest you divide the money up evenly, but it's up to you to decide, although I will be happy to be part of the discussions."

And I think any professor who wants a share of the cash (unless there are no student of post-doc authors on the poster) is being pretty obnoxious.

@Buzz This site resounds with stories of obnoxious faculty members.  For a student of such, I would argue that the peace of mind is probably worth a couple hundred bucks.

You're right about that, unfortunately.

@jakebeal I agree with your conclusion that the prize should be shared among all coauthors, but not with your reasoning, specifically the claim "A prize is typically given for both content and presentation of a work". It is much more correct to say "a prize is given for the thing it says it is given for", i.e. a "best poster award" is given for the best poster, whereas "a best poster and presentation award" (if there were such a thing would be given for (you guessed it) the best poster and presentation. See the answer I posted for more thoughts.

@DanRomik Having helped judge a number of such prizes, I can tell you that many organizations are not so precise in their language. The criteria for awarding "best poster" frequently include how well the authors could answer questions about their poster.

@jakebeal I can certainly believe that. Nonetheless, it is the responsibility of the prize-giver(s) to make clear who they are giving the prize to, and for what, to avoid putting prize recipients in awkward dilemmas of the kind described in OP's question. So again, I see no reason to question their description of the prize or to try to read the tea leaves about what their "true" intent was, when they themselves had a chance to describe that intent and chose to present it as a prize for best poster.

@DanRomik Again, you're giving this way more thought than many program committees do: "Nice poster, folks! Here's a prize for you all! See how our conference attracts cool work!"

If the prize is for the poster, then logically and morally all coauthors of the poster -- anyone who is entitled to list the poster on their CV -- are recipients of the prize and entitled to a share of the prize money. It doesn't matter if you are first author, second author or twenty-seventh author, and it doesn't matter if you presented the poster or not. As I was arguing in this answer to a closely related question, "Best poster award" has a pretty clear meaning in English (or the language of the conference), and I don't see a case for questioning the intent of the conference organizers in using this language, so there really isn't much room for debate on this point as far as I can tell. If they had titled the award "Best presentation award" or "Best poster and presentation award" then we would be having a different discussion, and then the argument "A prize is typically given for both content and presentation of a work" in jakebeal's answer would be relevant. But they didn't, so it isn't.
Now, logic aside, this is also a question of human relations, so whether it is worth making a fuss about some small amount of money that comes with the prize depends on many additional factors having to do with the personalities of the people involved and the power dynamics of the situation. I don't feel I can advise you about this. But from the moral point of view I think the situation is completely unambiguous.
Hope this helps, and congratulations for the prize!

A poster alone does not get the price it is usually judged together with the poster presentation, thus the presenter has a big influence too. I would assume the presenter will get the price, but depending on your collegaue he might share the monetary value with you (if any). On my poster award the title of the poster and authors were listed too. So if you are intrested to put on you CV you might still be able to do that as long as the authors are listed on the certificate.

"judged together with the poster presentation" - that may depend on the field, but in most poster session I have seen, the "poster presentation" meant standing next to the poster for an hour or two and inform anyone who is interested in the topic about the work described on the poster in a one-on-one conversation. This would be really hard to "judge" in such a way that all poster presentations can be compared.

You are right that seems to be specific to the field. In the sessions and competions I was in, judges prescreenend the posters they were intrested in and then apporached the presenting authors during the session to get a "run down" on the contents of the poster, which is basically a short presentation without slides. Highly unfair obviously, because not everyone will get a chance to talk to the judges.

@O.R.Mapper I've been to meeting (and actually judged posters) where the judges are assigned X number of posters and go around and talk to the presenters. The meeting I attend (life science meetings) have poster sessions when presenters are expected to be at their posters. The poster judging criterion include how well the presenter responds to questions and interacts with people. However, part of the problem is the vagueness of this original question.

@O.R.Mapper  I have judged posters a few times, and even within my field, there does not seem to be any consistency in how the judging is organized.  It's true that it's difficult to make the judging uniform and independent of the accompanying oral presentations.

@Buzz: "It's true that it's difficult to make the judging uniform and independent of the accompanying oral presentations." - I didn't write that. My claim was that it's easy to make the judging uniform as long as it is independent of any accompanying oral presentations.

@O.R.Mapper  I guess I've never seen judging done independently of the people be present to talk about their posters.  I'm not even sure when that could occur.

@Buzz: It could occur during the poster session, by looking at the poster while the presenter continues fulfilling their task (i.e. talk to other conference attendees interested in the poster). It could occur outside of the poster session (at most conference I've been to, posters were left around at least for the day of the poster session, if not for the full conference, to give the occasional visitor who wanders around at another time something to do). It could also occur outside of the conference, if digital versions of the posters had to be submitted.

@O.R.Mapper  Except for putting images of the posters online (which generally happens after the meeting is over), I've never seen any of those things happen.  People bring their posters to the poster session, and they take them away when they are done.  Fields differ tremendously, once again.

Seems to be very specific to fields. When I present a poster I am presenting my work to which others might have contributed or provided funding (e.g. the PI). Also funny how the highest ranked answer basically says the same thing as mine ...

It will depend on the nature and amount of the prize. But one approach that works well is for the prize to pay for a round of drinks for the group at the next opportunity.  Other options include buying cakes for the group or even a box of chocolates if the prize is small.  The recognition is more important in many ways.

First of all, there isn't a firm technical code of how to handle this situation. This is a collaborative piece of work, and I think this is much more a question of social etiquette.
Nonetheless, this depends on a number of factors. Most importantly: What is the prize actually being awarded for? Is it just for the work? For the work and its presentation? Is it for the communication of scientific work, via the structure of the poster and possibly the oral presentation?
Unless it's the last case and only one person made and presented the poster, I would say the most socially tactful way to handle the money would be either:

Use it to go out for drinks or to a nice dinner, with everyone listed on the poster
Split it evenly.

If it were me, I would have a discussion with your co-authors about which option the majority would prefer. If you can't bear to unnecessarily spend time with your colleagues, you could offer the split it evenly and then leave it up to other people to decline if they feel it's appropriate.
Yes, you might be out a few hundred dollars, if your co-authors don't fully deserve a share of the prize. However, you would preserve important resources in your career, namely the relationship with your co-authors. In the future, they may well be your paper/grant reviewers, recommendation letter writers, colleagues, etc. Having navigated a delicate social situation gracefully can impact your career for years to come, much longer than the prize money would have lasted.
Additionally, regardless of what happens with the money, remember that the prestige of the award is still yours and should still be represented on your CV (as it should be on every poster authors' CV).

I had to delete my own comment. This is the best answer , given the missing information. Everything you do must, of course, impact your current situation. Most important would seem to be how it affects your roadmap of where you want to be. Somewhere between being the richest person in the world, and bringing about lasting world peace, lol.

The relevant question is, why didn't you present the work, if you did 80% of the work, and are thus the first author? Technical/financial barriers for conference participation? In general, the prizes (I am considering moral "rights" here) are awarded to all authors, unless they are very specific. I would argue "best presentation" does not apply to those authors not giving the presentation, but such cases are rare. Similar issue may be with "best student paper award" where I think it is pretty clear that it is awarded to the student, not the supervisor, although it is achievement for a supervisor in its own way as well.
For the actual prize money I would say that in general, it should be split among authors, with exception of student prizes, where I think it would be really inappropriate for supervisor to get any amount of money, since these prizes are not something big anyway.
So if you do not agree with splitting the money evenly, then you should think about who do you put on your paper as a co-author.


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Is it appropriate to discussed a proposed method in the literature review or in methodology chapter?
I need some clarifications on where to put the proposed usability-evaluation method in my thesis. I have tried to improved upon the existing methods and came up with a new one, which will be validated alongside with the existing methods. Is it appropriate to discuss it in literature-review chapter or in research methodology chapter of my PhD thesis?

First of all: There are no global rules or even guidelines as to how theses should be structured and how chapters should be titled. Whatever works in terms of intelligibility is allowed. The only thing that can happen is that your supervisor (or in rare cases, your department) has become fixated on a certain structure and insists on it. But we can hardly answer on this here.
Thus, in your situation, you have several options. The following come to mind:

Include your method in the literature-review chapter, but name that chapter “Methods for X” or similar, not “Literature review”. If the literature review contains things not fitting under that title, think of a better title or make a separate chapter for those things.
Include your method in a new chapter called “A new method for X”.
If your methodology chapter is strictly about how you compare methods, do not include your method there (and give it a better name like “Benchmarks for methods for X”). If it does however cover several different aspects, your method may fit there.

As I already said, whatever works is allowed. Thus the most important things to consider are things like what prior knowledge the reader needs to understand your description of your method, as this should obviously described beforehand. And those are things only somebody very familiar with your thesis can decide.


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Is it disrespectful to write very similar emails to multiple people?
I need to write to several academics with a very similar request. Would it be disrespectful if I just copy-paste most of the body of the email, and change just the person-specific details?
On one hand, nobody likes mass-produced emails. It could be irritating for them and embarassing for me if one of them forwards the email to another, and the similarities become clear. On the other hand, what I need to say in each case is very similar, so once I write one "optimal" version of the message, it's hard to see how and why to produce another version.
For context: I have been working at a problem which is somewhat outside of expertise of me and of my supervisor (I'm a PhD student). I think I have a solution, but I am not sure how original it is and how interesting it is. It could well be that it's been known for decades, but I can't find it because of differences in terminology. Hence, I would like to write to some people who have more expertise in the field. The email explains roughly what the problem is, how I came to consider it in the first place, how the solution works, and what what specific pieces of the work of people I write to make me think they might be interested in problems like that (this is the person-specific part). If relevant, the field is pure mathematics

The main issue I could see is if they are not aware that you have asked several people and they independently take the time to provide the same information for you, in which case some of that time will have been wasted.

@Tobias Kildetoft This is a valid concern. To deal with this, Jakub should make sure that the asked persons represent different perspectives (for example, they shouldn't be co-authors of multiple related papers), and he may start with a limited sample of persons (say, three authors of the most closely related papers) and extend the sample step-by-step, depending on the reaction.

And then if they all come back with a similar answer, which contributes to the problem, they could all seek co-authorship on the paper... I think it's better to either send to a couple at first (as commented above) and/or notify them that you have already contacted these other people apart from you.

It is not disrespectuful per se to send bulk e-mails. Academics get them all the time: conference announcements, field-specific mailing lists, automated e-mails from submission systems. If it is appropriate for what you have to do, there's nothing wrong with it.
However, I consider disrespectful the way you want to use them. If you just want to know if something is already well-known in the field, start by contacting one researcher. Writing to 100 of them means unnecessarily wasting their time.
Also, it seems like you want to put the introduction of your paper in an e-mail. Don't do that. Keep it short. Your paper should already contain an introduction with motivation and previous research (to the best of your knowledge).
Similarly, for the same reason of not wasting people's time, you want to make sure that your paper is readable to people working in that research area. Make sure that you know the basics of the field and use accepted notation. If your paper looks like it's written by a crank, most recipients will file it directly into the recycle bin.

There are two situations. One of them is a brief, "announcement" email. Something like, my PhD defense will be on such and such a date, at such and such a place. That is fine for mass, "similar" emails.
That is not your case. Here, you are writing a fairly detailed email (about your problem) that requires a detailed response. As another poster wrote, in such a situation, you should be sending out such emails one or two at a time, not 100 at a time. Then it follows that your solicitation emails should also be more personalized/individualized.

The person-specific part is crucial to how your e-mail will be perceived. I think there are two important thoughts here. First, put the person-specific part to the beginning of the e-mail, so the person will feel addressed personally. Second, make sure that your description of the person's work is specific enough to signal a non-superficial understanding of their work.
Since some people are scared by long e-mails, it might make sense to defer the discussion of details to a second e-mail, in case they reply to the first one with interest (or at least send them in an attached PDF file).


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Advising students taking part in a competition: how to provide direction, but not to contribute?
I was asked to supervise a team of undergrad students
who are taking part in a case competition.
I decided to look through the competition website
to find out more about what is expected of a faculty advisor.
The website writes:

The primary role of the faculty advisor is to provide direction, advice and guidance to the student team.
  The faculty advisor should not contribute to the content of the presentation, nor should they provide or facilitate the assistance from other parties that contribute to the content of presentation.

How do I walk the fine line between
"providing direction, advice and guidance",
and yet "not contributing to the content of the presentation"?
(This is my first time helping a student team with a competition,
so I would appreciate the advice of other faculty who have done this before.)

The German project Jugend hackt (= youth hacks) has a very similar approach. Mentors shall only support and provide advice and guidance but not contribute to the coding projects of the participants.
In practice this means, that you assist them by finding their topic/project by chairing the process and giving advice when you think the project might be too complex, out of scope or could not be finished within the given time period. If they nevertheless decide to go for a project which you think might fail, that's fine.
During the project, only help the students when they ask for assistance, you think that their time schedule will fail or you discovered a major problem the participants didn't figure out for themselves after an appropriate time period.
Regarding Jugend hackt, the most important rule for the mentors is: "Never ever touch the keyboard of a participant." It's up to them to do everything, correct their mistakes and to learn by experience. Maybe you can transfer this rule to being a supervisor in a students competition: "Never ever touch their keyboard/equipment/labware/texts."

I have only worked as a TA to help students on an individual exercise basis, but I think the idea is kind of similar to this. In the case of a competition like this I can only speak from my role as being supervised.
However, I would say that the most important thing is to ask questions, such as "Why do you think that step X that you propose here would be a good step?" or "What results do you expect by doing this thing Y you're doing?". This should make them think about what they are doing in this competition and why they are doing it.
Regarding the presentation, you can of course always give them advice about how to present, how to style their slides, and how to convey the information they are presenting in an efficient way.
All in all, with most things you help them with, just ask yourself if you're telling them how to do it. If not, you're probably fine I guess.