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Aligning my Master's degree with prospective PhD's
I'm at the cusp of selecting a MSc programme in Europe before re-applying to American PhD's and I'm at a loss how to decide which MSc position I should take.
I'm strongly convinced I want to do a PhD with a person at Columbia U., UT Texas and some elite schools. All of these people have a shared interest (narrowly defined field of research) and I'm wondering how I can improve my chances down the road to study with them.
First off, a PI's at one of the schools I've been accepted to is working in the same field; goes to the same conferences, visits the PhD PI's and, is probably on quite good terms with them. I could not verify this any further without asking too obvious questions. So to me it seems like an advantage, however this MSc programme is not well established and hence doesn't have the 'prestige'  like the other programmes I applied to.
I'm tempted, perhaps because of my upbringing, to contact the PhD PI's I'm interested in and straight-up asking them if they'd recommend any of the MSc programmes. Would this seem overbearing? I can't really tell and the cultural differences make it more ambiguous.

Have you considered picking a masters program that fits your interests, rather than tuning it towards one certain institution. Going abroad, showing flexibility is never a bad thing, you might also like it in Europe and might even consider to stay...

There are a number of major issues here:

In the US, you normally do not need a master's degree to be admitted. Keep in mind that in the US, the PhD program normally begins with a coursework phase, which roughly corresponds to the European master's degree, before the research phase.
Additionally, in the US, admissions are normally done at the departmental level, rather than at the level of an individual PI. The PI might have some say in admissions—particularly if she serves on the admissions committee—but there is no guarantee that you'll get admission to the school of your choice.
Moreover, in many schools and programs, particularly those where the advisor-graduate student "matching process" takes place after enrollment, advisors are normally not allowed to make commitments to particular students prior to enrollment. Additionally, the advisors generally have to show the ability to pay for the graduate students they take into their group, but also have the freedom to select any of the graduate students in the class.

So, you may be spending two or more years pursuing a master's degree that may not be needed, so that you can take a chance on whether or not a particular advisor has both funding and open positions, and also wants you over the other students interested in joining the research group. There are a lot of places where things can go wrong here.
So, my recommendation would be to talk to the programs, find out if you need a master's degree before applying (or if they'll exempt you from the coursework you've already had). You should also note that tailoring your application too narrowly to the interests of a single advisor is not always advantageous in a US graduate application, because if the advisor who you're trying to appeal to isn't interested, the other faculty will probably pass as well, and you'll end up without an offer of admission.

I know I don't need an MSc, it's just that I didn't get accepted to the PhDs this round of applications. I will apply this winter, now that I beefed up my CV with 2 publications, a conference and a somewhat prestigious summer school. I want to use the MSc to improve my profile: I graduated from a liberal arts college and don't have a stellar GPA (3.75).

As I said, though, trying to appeal to one faculty member at a US school isn't always a viable strategy. You're probably better off excelling at a good program rather than trying to exploit a PI's connections to get into another advisor's group at a different university.

Well, not aligning it is not a useful heuristic. Is it at least ok to email the PI and ask him directly for advice b/c I want to work with him later?

Expressing interest in someone's work is never a bad thing—just try not to turn it into a sales pitch (which some professors don't like, and may actively discourage).


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How to find a "virtual" mathematics conference?
How can I find conferences in mathematics which accept guest articles/notes without the guest physically visiting the conference?
I have two problems which prevent me to physically visit conferences: 1. no money to pay for air tickets; 2. bad spoken English.
Can I nevertheless contribute to proceedings of a conference?
I found one such conference, but my article was judged not on-topic and rejected. It was the only conference I ever seen without the requirement to physically travel there to participate as an author.
Again: My question is how to find a conferences. Maybe you can suggest a specific Internet site(s) listing such conferences?

why do you want to do this? Unless you're in a field where conferences are the main publication venue (which I don't think you are?), then what is the benefit of submitting to a conference that you aren't attending, rather than submitting to a journal?

There is a slightly similar thing called double conferences (i.e. the conference is conducted at two different physical locations and are connected by a video stream). This is not exactly what you are searching for but essentially a virtual conference is a conference that is held at N different physical locations (where N is the number of participants) so it is not that different from a double conference. An example: https://www.mpim-bonn.mpg.de/HAMP.

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A conjecture proved in drafts
I am preparing my math research monograph for publication.
In the current draft there is certain conjecture.
This conjecture was proved in my drafts (available on the Web) of the second volume for this monograph.
Should I:

just remove the conjecture from the book because it is proved?
leave the statement in the book titled as a conjecture because it's proof is not yet officially published (and also may be not enough checked for errors)?
write in the book that I am going to publish the proof (either in a separate article or the second volume of the book)?

I think this has already been answered in response to another of your questions: "a subject is ready for treatment in the form of a book when it is relatively well explored and understood, so that you can write a coherent and definitive account. " You are facing this problem because you are ignoring the advice you've previously been given and trying to write a monograph on a subject that isn't fully understood yet.

@ff524 1. "response to another of your questions" is literally a response to a different question, this question is different, that response is not to this question. 2. Of all forms of publication I have chosen to put my book online under a copyleft license and just put it online. But as an additional "venue" I have also submitted my book to a monographs competition. Note that I distribute the volume 1 (which I am currently checking for errors) together with drafts related to the second volume.

Yes, I understand that this is a different question. I think that part of the answer answers this question as well, even though it was written for a different question.

@user37208 My current decision is not to submit it to peer-reviewed journals, because: it is already accessible through Internet, I have no scientific degree and so no scientific career (in the form of money) which peer reviewed publications would foster, splitting a book into articles diminishes rather than increases the scientific value of the text, making articles out of the book is some additional work. However I am open to the proposition "split your book into parts and publish the parts", if you explain why to do this.

@porton Well, for starters, what do you suppose the odds are that the community will view "Harry Potter and the proof of the Riemann Hypothesis" seriously when you have nothing to lend weight and credence to your methods, insights, or erudition?  Articles undergo peer review.  Books, not so much.  And for pre-starters, the previously mentioned answers to your prior question are precisely the explanation you are asking for.

@zibadawatimmy My response to this is that my LaTeX files are available for forking and independent editing by anybody. This should spot errors in my book more accurately than peer review. Splitting my books into parts, just to ensure that somebody put his checkmark onto it, looks like an unnecessary work for me. My book (I speak about volume 1) is very basic in prerequisites, so it is expected that any undergraduate mathematician. The community is expected to the work

@porton Why would anyone want to do that, though?  I sure don't want to.  I'm not going to randomly stumble onto your work, and I'm not going to randomly start doing your work for you for nothing.  If you submit it to a journal and I was selected as a referee then if the paper passes first muster I might put some effort into it.  But we have lives, you know?  And what's more likely: a random ignorant schmuck who thinks he's Einstein edits your work, or Terrence Tao edits your work?  There is a HUGE difference between "professional and expert" and "random internet guy".

There are too many things to be done to invest time+energy in less-obviously-productive courses. Without previously established "credibility" (whatever we make of this precisely...) there is scant motivation for relatively-expert people to spend time on a large document. In particular, experts have no obligation to look at every thing on the internet and correct or critique it. Many things simply languish. Thus, if you want useful feedback, you'll want to establish some credibility, which probably means playing the traditional game to some extent... not that I'm a fan of tradition.

My current decision is not to submit it to peer-reviewed journals, because: it is already accessible through Internet — The only way to find out whther your results are interesting and believable to anyone but yourself is to ask them. And the standard mechanism for asking is to submit the work for peer review. By refusing to actively seek feedback from the research community, you are labeling yourself a crank.

@JeffE Well, I have already published one article. The main article (based on the first one) on which the monograph is based was accepted for publication, but publication didn't happen due a LaTeX error. I have resubmitted my article later with a couple of additional theorems. They said that it needs peer review again because I added new theorems. Today I've inquired them about the status of my article. I think publication of these two articles may be enough, just to show that the main idea of the book is credible. The rest of the book is just further development of ideas from that article

One of the most important principles of academic writing is that you shouldn't write anything misleading.  If you present the result as a conjecture with no indication that you have already proved it, then you are giving readers a misleading impression (namely that you don't know how to prove it), so you shouldn't do that.

Should I just remove the conjecture from the book because it is proved?

That's an acceptable option.

Should I leave the statement in the book titled as a conjecture because it's proof is not yet officially published (and also may be not enough checked for errors)?

Don't just leave it there without comment.  If you are worried that the proof might be wrong, you can address this by stating things a little more tentatively.  As for whether it is officially published, most of your work seems not to be officially published, so why is that an issue for this conjecture?

Should I write in the book that I am going to publish the proof (either in a separate article or the second volume of the book)?

Sure, why not?  It's probably preferable to deleting the conjecture: if it was worth mentioning as a conjecture, then presumably it's still worth mentioning as a theorem.

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Is it generally allowed to send a published paper to another conference but in a different format?
My paper is accepted for poster presentation for a conference. Is it allowed sent it again to other conferences without withdrawing it from first conference? I am looking for oral presentation.

Most conferences do not allow this, look for the conferences' dual submission policy.

@xLeitix: This is only true for CS.

Most computer science conferences do not allow this, look for the conferences' dual submission policy.

Marc Claesen's answer is correct for computer science.
In most non-CS fields, there is much greater tolerance for "cross-listing" of talks, because the conferences are not the primary "publication venue" for papers. Therefore it is considered entirely appropriate to give a poster presentation at one conference, and an oral talk at another venue, particularly if the audiences are "non-overlapping." It would be expected, though, that unless the conferences are very close to one another in time, that you would update the presentation somewhat between conferences.

What's actually forbidden is publishing the same paper more than once. Even in computer science, it is perfectly acceptable to talk about the same paper at more than one conference/workshops, as long as at most one of those events publishes proceedings.

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What is "research-based intervention program"?
I received the following comment from a journal reviewer:

There is a need to conduct a research-based intervention program which
  compare between other solutions and your solution. Such research can
  provide evidence and support to the importance of this solution over
  others.

What does he mean by "research-based intervention program"?

Because of the phrase "compare between other solutions and your solution," my guess is that the reviewer suggested some intervention that has a strong research component so that on top of improving well being, you also get scientific information out of it.
Generally, it would imply many things, among which: including a proper control group or other treatments for contrast, have appropriate power/sample size, prepare a clear protocol, randomization/group randomization, implement consent, plan all analysis before, etc. There are also some more meta-level components, for instance, incorporating cost-benefit analysis, RE-AIM protocol, effectiveness/efficacy research, etc.
The way I see the difference is that "evidence-based intervention" can be carried out with or without any intention to produce generalizable conclusion. We can perform a rigorous literature review, plan a program, and work with a community center to kick it off. No scientific design, no data collection, and no manuscript but yet evidence-based because all components were borrowed from carefully chosen published statistics or analyses.
From the tone, I don't think the reviewer seriously doubt your work. Void of context, I'd suggest you to incorporate that comment in your "next step" or "recommendation." After all, if it's a pilot study paper, it's unrealistic to expect a full-blown comparison. However, if what you submit is based on a full scale program that has research-design-related flaws (e.g. no proper sampling, low sample size, no control group), then perhaps you can address it by providing effectiveness/efficacy outcomes from other intervention studies that involved similar sample participants to back up your program. You may also address those lacks in the response. This is hard to tell without knowing what you did.

Based on the wide range of possible interpretations, would it be appropriate to contact the editor for clarification?

It sounds as though s/he is unconvinced of the validity of your conclusions, and is attempting to tell you so without actually saying it! If this is so, then addressing this comment means providing more information on why your solution to the problem should be prefered over other potential solutions.
Note that I am not familiar with the term in this context--research-based intervention usually refers to targeted interventions/actions in education or medicine.

I agree that I would take research-based as synonymous with evidence based - which as you said was a term started in medicine but has been wholly adopted in many other social science fields.


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Should a sessional instructor applicant submit a teaching statement?
I'm currently a grad student and I was wondering if it is common (or good practice) for applicants to sessional instructor positions to submit teaching statements. The positions I'm looking to apply for do not specifically ask for one (instead asking for a letter of application, listing courses of interest), and it might seem like a good opportunity to also develop a teaching statement, but only if it necessary as I haven't yet taught a course and I'm not entirely sure what I would write about (I do have considerable TA experience).

So to understand better: you would like to apply for a temporary position. If that is what it is, whether or not you must submit a teaching statement may differ with university.  If the universities have a specific list of documents requested, submit only those. However, in your cover-letter, include a hyperlink to your teaching statement and let them know that. What I did was have my teaching statement, student evaluations from prev. teaching, other ancillary documents in a dropbox folder whose link I shared in the cover letter.

Yes, the position is a temporary one. And that sounds good; I was thinking of a similar approach.


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Should I put "PhD Candidate" in a book biography?
I am a PhD Candidate and fortunate enough to be an author on a technical book. Should I put "PhD Candidate" in the biography? The book will persist forever, but that title will not (presumably, I will graduate).

As a title or as part of a description?

If you have literally advanced to candidacy (and are ABD) you may have received a more formal-sounding title for that. It may also be required by the school to even call yourself a "doctoral candidate". But yes, your accolades and titles should be based on what you achieved already, not your work in progress.

If you should describe yourself in one or two words (i. e. if the other authors write "professor" or similar), I would not write "PhD candidate" because this does in the view of many readers not sound very competent. Don't describe yourself as someone who hasn't finished something, but rather as someone competent. Write instead i. e. "Jan Gorzny, Gender Researcher".
If you should write a longer text about yourself, you can mention this. However, write then also about things you have already achieved (e. g. your masters).

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Does a recommendation have to be from a professor from your university?
Suppose I want to get letter of recommendation for a PhD program. Could this letter be from someone not from my institution? Could is be from someone I have collaborated with online? Or generally do schools want recommendations from professors from a student's home institution?

A letter of recommendation absolutely does not have to be from someone at your university. It should be from someone you have collaborated with. In general, a letter of recommendation will be most valuable if:

It can speak to your potential as a researcher: letters from supervisors of research projects are much more valuable than letters from people who have only had you in class
It is written by someone well known in the field that you are attempting to enter. When this person says you have potential to be a researcher, it is much more credible if they have experience working with excellent researchers in the field.
It is written by someone who knows you well. They should be able to point to specific things you have done with them, specific conversations you have had, specific ideas you have had.

You should pick your letter writers by seeing how well they optimize these three properties. It won't matter if they are at your home institution or not. The only reason not to get a letter from "someone you have collaborated with online" is if they don't satisfy these criteria. In particular, I might be concerned that they don't know you well enough if you have never met them.
That being said, it might raise a red flag if none of your letter writers are from your home institution. But if you have one of these, that should be enough.

Schools want a letter that demonstrates that you are a smart, hardworking individual, whose presence will be a net gain for the program specifically and the university generally. In most cases, the people most able to write such a letter are from the institution where you received your undergraduate (or masters, as the case may be) degree. These people have interacted with you in a classroom (and possibly research) setting, and they know you well enough to write a good letter.
To that extent, if there is another individual—with stature enough to be recognized by an academic institution (i.e., a professor or recognized researcher)—who can write such a letter, that's fine.

Generally if it’s for a PHD program they want letters of recommendations from a professor .
It depends on the program though, so it’s better to ask the admissions office at the school your applying to .

...but not necessarily from a professor at your undergraduate institution.


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How much of advantage do US citizens have in American academia?
How much of a disadvantage are you if you are not a US citizen, but want to enter American academia? It seems Americans have lots of advantages starting early, including NSF graduate fellowships, continuing with more access to DARPA money, US-citizen specific awards like PECASE, etc.

I am an international student who went to college (undergraduate) in the United States. I have heard (but not officially in any way) that admissions committees tend to classify students such as myself with domestic candidates (and not with folks applying from overseas). Of course, I am ineligible for NSF grants, etc. but I have been led to believe that having been an undergraduate in the US has been to my advantage in the grad school search. (It would be nice to hear from senior members of academia if the above is true for admissions committees)

A nice question but should be narrowed a bit. For example, for undergraduate students almost all research internships are only for US-citizens and permanent residents (I know only 2 programs (sic!) which aren't). For other cases the situation may be very different. Could you add "for undergraduates", "for PhDs", "for postdocs" or sth else?

True, some federal funding of grad students in the US is restricted to US citizens or permanent residents, but, in mathematics, most funding of grad students is as TAs (=Teaching Assistant) supporting lower-division mathematics courses.
The question of admission itself is mostly separate from federal citizenship requirements. Let me explain some things an admission committee wonders about, statistically, at least, about international applications, that would not be  relevant to an applicant already in the US and with no visa issues:

It turns out that quite a few applicants simply want to get to the U.S., in effect as informal political asylum, while having limited genuine interest in mathematics, and this creates visa and other complications subsequently. I have no objection to fairly open immigration policies, but I do object to adding that noise to applications to our graduate program.
Given that the bulk of funding is as TAs, problems with understanding colloquial spoken English cannot be taken lightly. This isn't about "cultural bias", but about the practical features of teaching in this environment.
Minimum funding to generate visa papers: The INS (U.S. "Immigration and Naturalization Services", which controls visas of non-US-citizens) mandates that we promise a certain annual stipend for international grad students... ok... except that that number is several thousand dollars above what the university sets as the ceiling for standard stipends. Not hard to imagine the craziness and injustices this leads to.
Edit: Theoretically, the university is not necessarily responsible for guaranteeing the (needlessly high) minimum, but different universities develop policies designed to keep them at some safe distance from "trouble with INS", and sometimes/often such policies create complications not originally intended, and not due directly to INS. (Also, interpretations and policies drift over years, and I'm refering to a situation from a few years ago...)
International students demand resources for their spouses.  We have repeatedly "discovered" that an admitted international student is married, "needs" a visa for a spouse, the spouse needs admission to something, etc.  It is easy to understand the desperation that leads to such situations, but it also corrupts things, and absorbs resources.
Edit: Yes, if things are done right, as noted in comments, it "should not be" the university's responsibility to "take care of" other family members. Nevertheless, for reasons I do not fully understand, it somehow has come to this on many occasions. (The quasi-legal details are mercifully slipping from my mind! :)
Many other college-university cultures have a hugely different emphasis on problem-solving versus memorization, and relation of teacher and student. Thus, although in one sense the U.S. system generates the weakest outcomes in specialty, because of all the other required coursework for "breadth", the balance of demands, and the goals, of upper-division coursework is mostly compatible with what happens at the beginning of grad school. Further, the less structured parts of the rest of grad school have counterparts in some undergrad projects. In contrast, we have found that several other traditions give students not prototype whatsoever for coping with ambiguity, and this can lead to strange crises well into a PhD.
Edit: Again, not to be claiming that all non-USA programs are the same! For this last point, let's say "traditions which emphasize memorization and reciting, of definitions, theorems, proofs, and examples", as opposed to problem-solving as at least a component of activities. It seems that getting into the habit of thinking that there is a "sacred canon" of results, even perhaps including wording, is not a good habit of mind. Similarly, an exaggerated impulse of "following orders" or "compliance", while a habit highly rewarded in some situations, is not so much the desired methodology after the very beginning of grad school. Thus, success in a prior situation may be misleading to a student, when further adaptation and growth is needed.

Don't misunderstand me: I understand how such things come about. Nevertheless, with limited resources, not only money but energy to help people get in sync with their responsibilities as grad students, there is a serious question about how to allocate. Thus, we can capsulize this by saying that grad school applicants from within the US system are more "known quantities", are already fairly in-sync with the system, are cheaper dollar-wise, and are rarely or never under the threat of returning in disgrace to a genuinely dangerous situation in their home country if we stop renewing their TA!
A small further edit: At a university receiving state funds (although this amount is ever-decreasing), the state legislature, and the electorate, take the viewpoint that the university has an obligation to give priority to students from the region, if not literally the state, and to serve the state's and region's goals. This has become less idealistic during economic downturns, unsurprisingly.
Edit: in response to some comments... I certainly do not claim that "all" non-USA undergrad programs are the same, "bad", etc., nor that all in-USA programs are "good". At the same time, I didn't want to single out specific traditions for criticism. And, certainly, applicants in the U.S. can easily "achieve" weaknesses for no particular reason. As I understood the question, it was inquiring about the realities of the situation, advantages that in-USA applicants tend to have over not-in-USA, at least in the minds of admissions committees.
I do not think literal xenophobia or cultural bias plays any role in admissions, in case people wonder. If anything, the generally stronger undergrad prep of people from non-USA programs has created a "bias" against US students on that criterion alone. The practical and prosaic considerations mentioned above diminish post-PhD, so that "nationality" plays no detectable role in post-doc hiring or tenure-track hiring. (For that matter, examination of the faculty at most "research" universities shows a pretty international population!)

I'm a little surprised by a couple of points in this answer - first about minimum funding requirements, I understand that incoming students are required to show the availability of a fixed amount of money to support themselves when applying for an F1 visa, but I did not think that graduate programs were required in any way to have a matching stipend. In fact, I was offered a TAship at UW Madison (Mathematics) whose stipend was less than the amount required by INS and I was given to understand that I would have to be responsible for the additional amount myself (although it seems that the ...

... INS amount is an overestimation.) Second, I was under the impression that dependent spouses and children of F1 visa holders could apply for F2 visas without any contact with the university, although I have to admit that I have no personal experience in this. These said, +1 for a fantastically detailed and thoughtful answer. It makes lots of sense for universities to prioritize accepting domestic students and in particular 'known quantities' in terms of experience and background. As an international student some policies seem confusing - for example, ...

... I am ineligible for any NSF grants, but I was once supported by the AFOSR (Air Force!)

As an international student you are ineligible for NSF fellowships, but you can certainly be supported by NSF grants.

@paulgarrett, point (1) through (4) are very clear. It seems to me you wanted to say something about (5) but you're not sure how to say it. Would you either elaborate on it or make it shorter and simpler if you ever edit the answer again? It would be great for those oversea applicants to understand them before they set their foot in U.S. Thanks for your answer on behalf of them! Very great answer.

@paul garrett Nice answer, but what does TAs stand for? And does INS stand for the Usa Immigration and Naturalization Service?

@paul garrett The (5) ain't very clear to me. You mean that the Usa system university students are used to put the topics they've studied in practice with some undergrad projects, while for foreign students often this does not happen. Is it correct?

Edited for clarity (I hope).

@JeffE But not by NSA grants! The policies on this stuff are confusing for all of us.

@DavideChicco.it TA = Teaching Assistant

At the grad level in CS, fully 80% of admitted students in most universities (funded or otherwise) are from foreign countries. So any department that prefers domestic students is going to have a tough time attracting students :). There are numerous funding opportunities limited only to domestic students - in addition to the ones you list, the IGERT funding program is specifically for domestic students, but it's to encourage more domestic students to go to grad school.
At the postdoc level, visa requirements can make selecting a foreign student a little tricky but not impossible.
At the faculty level, I am not aware of any issues involving hiring non-US citizens.  In our last round, we hired Chinese, Croatian, Turkish, and South African researchers !
It is true that DARPA money can be limited to US citizens, but in CS before tenure, this is not necessarily a bad thing :). It gives you an excuse NOT to go after DARPA funding which can be very difficult to get and even worse if you get it.

The only issue I'm aware of for faculty hiring is that it's harder to US departments to interview candidates who currently live outside North America.  Most American CS faculty were not born in the US.

I'd say none , actually since the high-school system in the United States is an absolute disaster you might have an advantage . This really depends on you though , when did you start learning English , how comfortable are you in a conversation with native speakers , etc .


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How much does it matter the mentioned intended major at grad school in GRE registration?
So far as I heard, it is required to mention intended major in graduate school during GRE registration. I am curious to know, what would someone do if he wants to apply to different grad schools for different (but somehow related) programs? For instance, he wants to apply to the grad schools A, B, C, D for the grad programs P, Q, R, S respectively. My questions are:

When registering for GRE, which one would he select as his intended major at grad school? P, Q or, R?
Would selecting the program P as his intended major at grad school, lower his opportunity to get into programs Q or, R?
If he mentions "Other fields" as his intended major at grad school (that is, he mentions that his intended grad major is undecided) then would it lower his chance of getting into grad programs P, Q and, R?
If S is an interdisciplinary grad program and it is possible to apply to the program S with background in P, would mentioning P as his intended major at grad school lower his chance to get into the program S?

It's definitely not binding.

I don't think "intended major" is even reported with GRE scores.  Grad programs will never know what you told ETS.

I wouldn't worry about it because that portion is used for statistical purposes like compiling average test scores by major, like in the example here: http://www.ets.org/s...uide_table4.pdf
The information that schools look at that regard majors are if you take a subject test, like in computer science or physics. And of course all of your undergrad data.
Additionally, marking undecided is possible if you really dont want to choose one.

That link seems to have been compromised somehow.

According to ETS: The GRE Computer Science Test was discontinued following the April 2013 administration. Scores will continue to be reportable for five years Did it come back?

@scaaahu you are  correct, they did discontinue the computer science test

When I took the GRE (last year), I put down some flavor of inorganic chemistry, took the test, then turned around and applied to a whole bunch of computer science programs.
Personally, I think that a program that would disqualify you based off of the answer to a question like that (on a standardized test!) is a program I would have second thoughts about joining.
(However, I will say that I did better than I expected on the GRE, and the chemistry graduate school at Portland State has been hounding me ever since, so take that into account.)


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How to deal with a student found seeking an answer to a coursework question online?
I have just found that a student has posted one of their assignment questions on a forum and is seeking help in getting a solution.
I have a good idea who the student is, but no definitive proof. How would you handle this situation?

Always use different forums than your teachers!

Being a student, if my professor accused me of cheating (based on something un-definitive) when i actually had not, i would never really want to sit in that class again, because clearly my prof does not consider me capable to be doing this course on my own and this will weigh on his judgement every time i submit anything throughout the course. Also, cheating is not the only reason a person might ask something online.

This is more a temptation than a real answer to your question: post a correct answer on the forum using non-standard names/symbols/terminology. Wait to see it submitted back to you :-)

In the old days before internal assesment and degrees for dumb people everybody had to pass the final to pass the course .If somebody cheated on the homework they probably would not understand things and would fail the final horribly because it was very different to the homework.If they did the homework themselves getting some of it wrong they would understand things better and be able to pass an unpredictable final.

I would get solid proof before making a destructive accusation. Many people seek help from tutors. What's wrong with that? Forums are MUCH cheaper.

An exam, where you sit in a room isolated from outside help, exists specifically to overcome this problem. If what you are wanting to do doesn't line up with reality it's time to change what you want to do, because you will not be able to change reality.

Identify the offline equivalent of the observed behavior, and then act as you would normally. Remember, that the burden of proof for academic dishonesty likely resides with you. This includes verifying that the poster is indeed the student you accuse.
I find this situation to be pretty common: https://chemistry.stackexchange.com/questions/2753/how-to-derive-partial-gas-equation. Most stackexchanges have a homework policy. I would consider homework questions posted to stackexchanges to be no worse than asking students who have taken the course before you or asking another professor. How you deal with it is up to you.
What would your response be if you saw a student collaborating on the problem in a study group? How do you respond if you find out that your student asked another instructor or a grad student in your department for help? If you learn the student worked on that problem with his/her tutor? If the student looked up the answer in the textbook or the solutions manual? All of these are common and to varying degrees accepted (if not liked).
I would guess your irritation over this is somewhere more than the student asking one of your colleagues (who being nice will actually do the problem) and somewhat less than the student stealing another student's answer. Identify the offline equivalent, and then behave as you would normally.
EDIT - I missed the last part of the question.

I have a good idea who the student is, but no definitive proof. How would you handle this situation?

If you do not have proof, then suck it up and let it go - this time. Next time put something in your syllabus. Either write a pretty severe sounding policy that exists to deter the behavior (because your policy will be basically unenforceable), or write harder questions and encourage them to use online forums with the caveat that they document all of their interaction. The second option shifts the burden of good behavior to your students.

Implicit here is the fuzziness of the line between seeking resources and advice on one hand and trying to get others to do the work for them on the other.

Depending on what country you're in, information acquired by "outside" observation of students' behavior may be inadmissible evidence, too, ... even if you weren't deliberately snooping. I'd second Ben Norris' remarks... and reiterate that (a) this is just a ramped-up, way-more-effective version of "getting help" in old-fashioned ways (b) you can deter, but not prevent, and maybe be unable to "punish", getting info from the internet by "prohibiting it". The latter may just make you look silly, though. Do require acknowledgement of all sources, with or without enforcement mechanism.

@dmckee - Which of course is an old problem in academia. It is not new to the information age.

@paulgarrett - I'm a fan of allow it, but only after you have talked with them about academic integrity and why claiming the work of others as your own is bad. If students see academic integrity as a positive, then they will take ownership and be responsible.

@BenNorris - Yes, since access to information is not only a fact, but is desirable, there is something disingenuous about pretending to operate in a vacuum, or to require this. But, yes, being "up-front" (a.k.a. "honest") about sources is a must... and students are not necessarily aware.

I'd hope that another instructor would be motivated to aid the student's education. They will try to just nudge them over the part they're stuck on, or at most will leave them some work to do. Of the people answering on a forum, some will be motivated to convince themselves that they can answer the question or just to show off. They will post a complete answer. So I certainly agree that asking other teachers for help should be less of an offence.

This is an answer to this question.  The question was closed as a duplicate while I was typing my answer.
This is a really key issue for university courses assigning homework.  In my opinion it cannot be satisfactorily addressed after the fact.  One has to design the homework and the grading scheme with the knowledge that students can easily, freely and virtually immediately get expert-level homework help online.  Here are some ways that I have adjusted to this reality.
1) I no longer assign take-home exams in undergraduate courses.  I had a bad experience with this ten years ago as a postdoc at McGill University, and the internet was not then what it is now.  It only takes one or two students to cheat and get the highest grades on an exam for the entire class to feel resentful.
2) I think very carefully about the percentage to which homework contributes to the course grade.  If you want students to do the homework, then making it less than 10% typically (depending upon your grading system, of course) discourages it.  I think that most undergraduate-level STEM courses should have at least one midterm and an in-class final and that the midterms and the final should contribute at least 60% of the course grade.
3) I grade -- or, if I'm lucky, instruct the grader to grade -- homework in a generous way which emphasizes effort and participation.  If the majority of the course grade is coming from in-class exams, the purpose of the homework is to get practice, and if someone is writing good-faith solutions to most of the problems then they are getting the practice you want.  When students feel like their inability to solve difficult homework problems is hurting their course grade, it is very tempting for them to seek outside help (I find this very understandable).
4) I allow students to get some level of outside assistance on their homework -- i.e., don't regard each problem set as a separate take-home exam -- but insist that they document the aid that they got in an assiduous way.  If I get students in the habit of saying something about the help that they got, then it feels much more like lying for them to all of a sudden totally omit reference to the fact that they typed their questions in to a stackexchange site.  Also, be clear about what kind of help is allowed.  Perhaps for instance you are okay with them looking through the internet but not asking your specific homework problems on the internet: if so, say so.
5) If I don't want students to be able to look up the solutions to homework problems easily (beyond say the freshman/sophomore level) then I make sure to write my own problems and not simply assign problems from a course text.  Writing distinctive problems also makes it easier to track whether my problems are being asked on the internet.
6) I realize that how much independence to spend in doing one's homework is, within an agreed upon tolerance, a decision that individual students have to make for themselves.  In the OP's case homework is worth only 10% of the grade, it does not sound very onerous, and the OP spends class time discussing the homework.  In this case the old adage that a student who is not doing the homework independently is "only cheating himself" seems to be largely true.  The trick is to design the homework and the course so that you feel that the students who are punting too much of their homework to the internet are indeed merely missing out on educational opportunities...and not getting better final grades than those who do most or all of the homework on their own.

RE #2: 60% of the grade in 2 exams? That's unbelievable. You're asking for students to fail at that point. As a STEM student, just like every other area, having constant practice through homework is a much better way to gauge student understanding (and reinforcement) of concepts. 60% of the grade in 2 tests means that students will inevitably slack throughout the semester only to pull an all-nighter cramming for the exam. Though, you could have 40% of the grade as homework, but it seems that in most cases there are other major aspects to a course that take up sone of that 40%, e.g. labs.

@Chris: (i) I wrote midterms.  For most (but not all) undergraduate classes, I give three midterms.  (ii) In fact I was thinking of courses without a significant lab component. (iii) One can have constant homework without it being worth more than 40% of the grade.  (iv) There are many, many universities in many countries in the world where the grade is determined mostly or solely by an exam at the end.  You might want to think a bit before claiming that all of France, most of England, much of Canada and so forth is "asking for students to fail".

@ChrisCirefice There are ways to make students do homework other than basing their grade on it. Here (Aarhus University), most courses have homework be graded on a pass/fail scale and in order to be eligible to even take the exam, the students must pass a certain number of them (typically in the order of 8-10 out of 13 or 14, often with a further requirement that at least 4 or 5 of them be from the second half of the course).

I've started assigning homework a couple of years ago, and my policy is the following:

Homework consists of one or two exercises similar to those that students will find at the exam.
Homework is graded as though it were a real exam exercise, but homework grades are just informative, that is, they do not enter in the calculation of the final grade. The aim of the homework is just to allow the students to have additional practice and to understand how I grade.
Homework is optional. In this way, non-motivated students can avoid searching the internet for help.

In the few occasions in which I required to write lab reports, their marks contributed for at most 10% of the final grade; in case of cheating (to my judgement), the contribution is zeroed.

Analysis of the Issue raised in this question
I thought about this a bit over lunch and came to a realization that we may be looking at this problem from the wrong direction.
Premise: A student is getting assistance for homework from an online forum.
Now, the internet may have made this process easier, but it certainly existed before online forums. The only difference now is that the online forum shows a proven record that a student is doing it.
Before the internet was invented, I'm pretty sure people in school asked friends for help even when it was explicitly stated that homework was to be personal work. Maybe some students paid people to do their homework. Whatever the case, that issue would be private to the professor's view, because the agreement would never move beyond those two people.
In this case, we have the internet indicating that such an event actually took place. If this took place on a phone, or in a conversation between two students, we wouldn't have noticed it, but the transgression would still have happened.
So the internet is facilitating the aspect of "academic dishonesty" and providing it in public view.
We can't ban reasonably students from using the internet, nor can we lock them up outside of class to do homework, so there is no real way to regulate what they choose to do outside of class.
As a result, the only practical way to determine whether homework is a student's work is to observe their progress in class.
Possible Solutions
Surprise Quiz
As I suggested before, a surprise quiz with the same questions will likely help you determine who is learning and who is not. Collect the homework, and devote 5 minutes of the class to solving one of the problems. maybe an easier one. People who know what they're studying will be able to answer this, and you lose a minimal amount of studying time. You only have to do this once or twice. After that, the possibility of another surprise quiz will likely convince the person to actually learn the material.
Small Groups
Have students work in small groups on their homework. Students working with each other may frown upon use of Stack Exchange. By encouraging class collaboration, you can reduce the amount of reliance on the Internet, because then at least you know one of the people in the group is teaching the others.
Unique Homework for Unique People
This is more of a "finding the person" approach rather than discouraging. As I've mentioned before, I'm not a fan of this strategy as it is really a witch hunt technique, but it is a possibility that you may wish to consider if nothing else works.
You can assign different people in the class different homework questions. Sort by name or whatever. Maybe a set of 15 questions where each person in your class has a unique subset of questions. This will help you identify the person in question if they post their unique subset to the StackExchange. I would recommend you use this information to gently remind the person that what they're doing is not in the spirit of the course, and to not do so in the future.

I've done the "unique" homework thing as a take-home exam, in which every student gets a slightly different dataset and has to do some stuff to it. Every. single. time, at least one student submits answers for another student's dataset instead of their own :(

In my opinion there is nothing wrong with posting a question online unless it specifically says / suggests that others should do the work for the student.
If you are that concerned about this then you should reconsider the format of your exam to reduce this risk.
Your only option would be to show that the student colluded or plagiarised the work which I believe are concepts well understood in academia.
For example if the students relatives or associates in life are an expert(s) on the topic in question question, how would you know if the work is the student's or not.
Therefore you will need to wait until the work is submitted to decide what to do next.

Depending on the subject of your course, actually going online to find answers should be something you encourage, especially in engineering. If at the end of the day the student understands what you wanted to teach him, then your goal has been achieved, and you test that through examination. And in many fields, it is impossible to know everything anyway, this is why we have books and other data storage methods. Your course will probably be insignificant in the long run anyway, but their ability to quickly find working answers on the internet is a valuable skill they will actually need when joining a workforce.

There's a big difference between "look for helpful information" (which seems to be what you're addressing) and "ask a forum to solve the problem for you" (which is what the question seems to describe).

Actually, no, in the "real" world, there is little difference between "looking for helpful information" and "ask a forum to solve the problem for you", because in real world, you WILL want to use a tried and tested existing solution - one that is publicly available on a forum or similar places, rather than creating your own solution. You will never come in and say "I am looking for step by step algorithm for mp3 encoding", you will be swiftly pointed to FFMPEG which has one already implemented.

You are still missing the point: "How do I encode an mp3?" is different than "Integrate this mp3 encoder library into our product for me."  Speaking as somebody in industry, I would never want to hire a student who was outsourcing their work rather than doing it themselves.


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Citing a funding application in a student thesis
I gave an application for a funded project to a student as reference material for his Masters thesis. He wants to put a reference to this text into his bibliography. What is the necessary "bibliographic" information to include in this case, and what would be the recommended way to format such a reference?

The rule with citation of “unusual” references is always something like that:

Make sure you really want to cite it. (In your case, it sounds okay, but most cases of students trying to cite “unusual” stuff end up with me telling them not to cite it)
Include just enough information that the cited item is uniquely identifiable.
If the item is not publicly available, include additional information that hints at its content (such as the title).

For example:

John Aristotle (341 BC). Exploring the impact of introducing a fifth element in Empedocles’s classification of principles [Grant X1FH25 proposal to the Macedonian Science Fundation, Agency for Philosophical Research].

i know that we are not on the LaTeX / TeX  site, but when thinking about BibTeX your headache will gone away and it should be rather clear.
@format: That will be made when choosing a bibliograhystyle within your tex file.
@required information: Various bibliography items are demanding different fields.
BibTeX overview

Which Bibtex entry type would you recommend for a funding application?

I disagree, afaict there is no specific bibtex item type for this so you would have to use something like @misc where virtually everything is optional and you have to work out how to map the information you want to include to the fields bibtex provides in a way that will provide satisfactory output.


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What systems are most effective for monitoring student attendance?
I work in the Computing and Mathematics School at my university (UK). This year the School has adopted a fairly aggressive policy regarding student attendance. If a student has a poor – or zero – attendance rate, the student is contacted and a dialogue opened. This has many benefits including identifying those students who have possible  undiscovered or undeclared learning difficulties.
If a student’s attendance rate remains poor following a first intervention, a process of issuing formal warnings commences, culminating with the withdrawal of the student if the student does not start to engage with their course.
Attendance is presently monitored at all laboratory and tutorial sessions. Attendance is not presently monitored for lectures.
Our current system comprises a series of shared Google spreadsheets which contains the details of all students for all classes. Staff members enter attendance manually into the spreadsheet for their class.
The difficulty with this system is that there is presently no automatic link between the existing official university student record database and the attendance register spreadsheets. This means if students change groups, enrol late, withdraw, change course or units, all this information must be dealt with in a robust manner. Currently, such changes are implemented manually. This means errors are likely to be introduced into the attendance register.
I notice that there are a number of commercial attendance monitoring solutions available which are based on hardware, e.g. Telepen. I would be interested in anyone’s experience with such systems, however I don’t forsee these to be ultimately workable in my case owing to the large cost.
I am interested in software solutions. If your institution monitors student attendance, do you use any specialist software? If so, what do you use?
Another option – a preferable one – is to work within the existing university data systems.
All the necessary information regarding student details and activities is available. The problem arises when we try to ensure our ad hoc attendance register contains up to date student information. Ideally we’d use our Virtual Learning Environment to enter attendance data. Our VLE is Moodle. Are there any Moodle users out there who use Moodle to record attendance?

You will likely receive a better response to this question on a Moodle support forum.

@eykanal: Thanks for the comment. However, my question is broader - I'm interested in any software solution. A related, narrower question, is whether any Moodle users have a system in place for recording attendance.

I'm sorry, I should have been more specific. To me it seems clear that you would want to use the system you have in place, which likely is able to do what you're asking. To that extent, I would first search their support forums for solutions, and only if they cannot help I would turn to the community for recommendations for other products.

Isn't the most effective way to ensure attendance is to make the lectures compelling and useful?  If a student can do the required coursework, why do you care whether they actually show up?  Conversely, if a student decides not to do the work, why do you care if they actually show up?

@JeffE: Thank you for the comment. I didn't mention this in my question, but we are not monitoring attendance in lectures. We are - presently - only monitoring attendance in laboratories and tutorials, where the students apply their learning in completing exercises under our supervision. There is another issue and that relates to international students. Their visa is issued on the understanding that they will engage at a certain level with their course. This attendance information must be collected and made available to the relevant UK border authorities.

@Nicholas - Your institution is nicer than mine. A student with low or zero attendance in a class at my institution automatically fails that course. If they automatically fail a certain number of courses in the same semester, they are dismissed from the institution.

@JeffE: Then wouldn't measuring attendance be a good way to determine whether you have succeeded in making the lectures "compelling and useful"?

@NateEldredge Maybe, but so what?  My goal as an instructor isn't to increase attendance, but to help the students learn the material.

@JeffE: there are studies (though I would have to dig to find them) that show strong a correlation between low attendance and dropping out of school. If we, as educators, care about students' learning, we should first get them to attend, then we should focus on increasing their knowledge (IMHO).

Just a comment, using attendance explicitly, is a very bad thing. It promotes people with no skills or motivation, but siting quietly, but often people who are too skilled for this course fail (as it is a waste of their time to come). And it breaks a natural "free market" approach when people attend it when they consider it important. Making thing required is only good for lecturers and officials to boosts statistics (and their self-delusion), harming everything else. E.g. in my previous university, there was a strong negative correlation of course quality and compulsoriness.

@earthling First, low motivation => low attendance (that way, not the other). Second, there are some exceptionally skilled or educated students, who already know that or can learn at much higher pace on their own. It's not a big fraction, but it is the top fraction. (And "For the first, make no harm".)

@JeffE UK universities get government support for each student enrolled. As a condition of this funding universities need to demonstrate that each student attends at least 50% of compulsory activities (generally labs and tutorials).

@DanielE.Shub  universities need to demonstrate that each student attends at least 50% of compulsory activities — This requirement can be trivially met by having no activities with compulsory attendance.

@JeffE Compelling lectures doesn't work for some... Some think they can learn everything from the slides, recordings, textbooks (and they are completely right), so even if you're entertaining and engaging it's still not worth 1 hour on the train and $10 for train fare for a tiny marginal gain in learning. At least I used to be one of the people that would ever attend due to this (and I still graduated at the top of my class despite rarely attending lectures). My opinion is that learning is worse when you're in person since you can't pause lectures, or you can't put easy lectures on 1.5x speed.

Compelling lectures doesn't work for some... — Right.  I try to make my lectures useful for the people who do show up.  But if you don't get enough out of my lectures to justify the effort/cost of attending, don't go!

@JeffE But the effort you put into lectures improves equally the quality of (i) the lectures in real life, (ii) the quality of the recordings that are uploaded on the internet. So even if you expend huge amounts of effort to maximise the quality of the lecture it still doesn't justify attendance (assuming a good recording is uploaded, which was the case for my University education).

@Jase: You are agreeing with me.

Following eykanal's comment to the question, I have researched the possibilities via Moodle. For the record I have found that Moodle has an attendance module. I haven't learnt yet whether this module has the complete functionality that we require, but it's a start.
Moodle attendance module

Try Alosko attendance system. It works via Smartphone (Android, iOS). Lecturer create a word for a seminar and then told it to the attendants. Attendants put the word into the App in order to register on the seminar.

Late, but the problem with this is that students who are "in bed" with delinquent students will pass on the passcode to them subsequently. And not everyone has an Android/iOS smartphone, some may not even own a smartphone.

My institution does not monitor student attendance. That is my job. However, we have adopted Blackboard as our Course-Management System of choice across campus, and the student roster in Blackboard is updated every day by the Registrar's Office. We additionally have access to up-to-date course rosters through our implementation of the PeopleSoft productivity software. Presumably, the Registrar's office at your institution keeps up-to-date rosters and should be willing to share them with instructors. Otherwise, what's the point of having them?
There are two methods I use to enforce / verify attendance in a large lecture course, and both require comparison of my data with the roster in Blackboard or PeopleSoft. I could write a short program to sort through both files for matches, but I would rather do it manually to help me remember students' names.

Quizzes - I give short (and simple) quizzes randomly, but at least once a week. Fully half of the points on the quizzes are for showing up and putting your name on the quiz. For this reason, quizzes cannot be made up for any reason, but I will drop three or four of the lowest quiz grades. Since the quizzes aren't hard and the quiz average counts for at least 10% of their final grade, students want to be there for the quiz. I like this method because it allows me to do random point assessments of different topics and to start associating student names with performance. The grading is not unbearable, since i write quizzes that are simple enough to be graded at a rate of 10 seconds per student.
Clickers - If you use clickers, make each student buy their own clicker (About $40 US these days). At the beginning of class, they have to register their clicker with your software, which records the clicker's ID number. If you have a list matching clicker IDs to student names, then you take attendance every day automatically. It is easy to cheat this system, since a student can also bring their friend's clicker and sign-in for their friend also.

If you want to ensure attendance, I would use JeffE's approach:

Isn't the most effective way to ensure attendance is to make the lectures compelling and useful?

Thanks for the comment. As per my answer to my own question, I am investigating the Attendance module for our VLE, which is Moodle. My original question really wasn't geared toward improving attendance as such - it was a question regarding how one solves the technical problem of recording attendance. Yes, to get students to attend, one should have interesting lectures/lecturers. This isn't the problem I am trying to solve. I am just interested in how to record attendance efficiently. Thanks for your suggestion regarding clickers.

I whole-heartedly disagree with the idea of demanding students to buy something out of their own pocket, just so that their attendance can be monitored more easily. As a student I would refuse to buy this even though I was never in a tight financial spot. $40 is not nothing, you know.

@And - Eight years later and I agree. The best answers to this question are to use the attendance tracking features in your LMS. We use Canvas now, and the attendance tool we use is excellent.

I work at a university which is very low tech (no software, or anything else, for teachers - teachers want it, they bring it). Student lists are passed around on paper. So, I wrote my own (simplistic) app which I use at the start of class calling out names (did I mention it's a bit low-tech?). I can easily print out a report that looks like what the admins need to do their paper-oriented job (and I can get a soft copy from them to import so I don't have to type everything). No clickers, no website, just my laptop.
We, by the way, have a policy that any student missing more than 20% of the lectures automatically fails the course but they do get a chance to enter a 'redo' class...which has the same attendance rules.
One benefit is that I can see (while taking attendance, every session) who is 'at risk' and I can deal with that as I see fit.
Integration is handled manually - far from ideal - but if the school ever wants to change things, it's easy to change what I wrote.

Out of curiosity, if your university does not have the policy, fail after 20% lecture missing, would you still do the roll call?

Yes, I would simply because of the studies that show a strong link between high absence rate and drop out rate. I would prefer to be able to act to save a student's academic career, if I can.

If the goal is to identify individuals with poor attendance, paper and pencil is the way to go. Just have students sign in on the way in. After a few sessions hold the stack up to the light and find the empty boxes. Those are your potential low attenders. Email them and ask if any have switched sections. Those who haven't are your actual low attenders. It seems much easier than dealing with an on line system especially if the class size is small.

I have a simple solution. Depending on class size, set up one/two laptops on the teacher desk, have every student sign-into a simple web interface with their school login and password, this will automatically feed either a spreadsheet or blackboard. With this system it is unlikely that a student will sign-in an absent student. If a student forgets to sign in its his/her fault. You can completely lock the computer so the only thing it can be done is run this login screen. This will also force freshman to use their college id login name. You can also add a beep when a login is done, preventing someone from doing more than once. Late students have to sign in after class, this will put them on the spot and their login time recorded.

Sounds like something pretty simple. Have you considered just using something like Excel to keep track of this information?
I wrote my own attendance system but it is for tracking everyone, not just the late/absent students.

Thanks for the suggestion. It does sound rather like what we are presently using - a set of Google spread sheets. Each tutor/lecturer inputs whether a student is present or not. The difficulty we faced is finding a sensible way of interfacing the attendance register - the spread sheets - with the university database of constantly updated student information.

@Nicholas Mine is actually a program, not just a spreadsheet but if you want to integrate it, try getting a programmer to help you - should be something that can be automated.


text:
Does your institution have a policy regarding policing online student feedback?
There has been a lot of recent comment regarding the UK release of the "Rate Your Lecturer" website. This website allows users to comment on and rate their lecturers. Comments are submitted anonymously.
I do not want to enter the debate on whether this sort of anonymous online reviewing of lecturers is good, bad or indifferent.
My question is whether your institution has a policy regarding how to deal with demonstrably untrue, insulting or unfairly negative comments about lecturers posted online, and what that policy is.

It seems complicated to have a policy on that, even more when reviews are anonymous. Maybe you can flag a message as inappropriate. Anyway, I guess you should not focus on the obviously aggressive feedback and concentrate on the one that can help you improve your teaching skills.

What might an institutional policy consist of?  Since the comments are anonymous and the web site is not run by the university, there's no way to enforce anything even if you established a policy like "students mustn't submit unfair comments" or "offensive comments must be removed at the request of the lecturer".  You can write a complaint letter to the site or even sue them for libel without needing an institutional policy to back you up, and I'm not sure what the other options are.

@AnonymousMathematician: I was curious to see if there were any institutions that have a policy on dealing with damaging comments posted anonymously online, which has the effect of damaging the reputation of the University's brand. This is aside from the lecturers themselves taking action against the website, as you suggest.

No policy that I am aware of at any of the four universities and two high schools I've been associated with.  When the sites first appeared in the U.S. about ten years ago, questions came up about whether anything could be done about it, and the institution I was associated with then decided that there wasn't anything legal that could be done.  I believe that libelous material can be appealed directly through some of the websites, but I've never heard of anyone having success with that.
Personally, I love anonymous feedback, and I've had my share of good and bad reviews.  I've tried to use the bad reviews as a means for informing where I can improve, and I've tried to limit my head from getting too big at the good reviews.  Teaching takes a certain amount of thick skin, and sites like these can be a good way to test if you've grown enough of that calloused layer to ward off any long-term effects.

+1 for I love anonymous feedback, and I've had my share of good and bad reviews. It's a great learning opportunity.


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How to formalise the "extra-mile" work done by an academic?
In my experience, academics are almost always expected to contribute some of their time to activities beyond their principal teaching or research roles. These extra tasks include, for example, attending open days, visit days, serving on one or more committees, acting as head of a student year group, admissions officer - the list is long.
Whether this should be the case is not in question here.
In one of my previous institutions, there was in place a "brownie-point" system which was supposed to keep a track of how much extra administrative/organisational/outreach or otherwise "extra-mile" work an academic had taken on.  When a new task required action, the academics could use their accumulated points to argue why they shouldn't (or indeed should, in some cases) be allocated the task. Setting the value of a task relative to all the others, as you might imagine, raised some difficulties.
My question is: has anyone experience of any other kind of formalised system of evaluating and allocating these "extra-mile" tasks?

I would formalise it using at least three or four miles of extra mile.

@DaveClarke: Well, yes, quite! Hence the question. I see too many colleagues who take on, incrementally, small to medium extra tasks, each seemingly of small time expenditure. Then they burn out. A way of quantifying the problem seems like a step toward avoiding this, in a structured way.

I am not aware of any department that doesn't assign principal teaching, research and SERVICE roles. Much of this "extra mile" work is actually part of ones standard job duties.

@DanielE.Shub: And this is my experience also. Most academic contracts have that "catch-all" term along the lines of: "...and any other duties deemed appropriate by the line manager." My question is on whether anyone has any experience in a system which formalises and quantifies the impact on an academic's time resulting from the allocation of these extra tasks.

@Nicholas okay, so it seems like you are asking for a work load model. I think that that is off topic since the academic workplace is not that different from any other workplace (in this respect). You might want to try workplace.SE.

Setting the value of a task relative to all the others, as you might imagine, raised some difficulties. Why not going for an auction system? "I can enter the admission committee, but only in exchange for 200 brownie points" "I'll do it for 150" "Taken!"

@FedericoPoloni: I like it!

@DanielE.Shub: Okay, if the community's decision is to close, I'll migrate the question to workplace.SE. However, in light of your comment, perhaps people might share their experiences of how well work load models work in an academic context.

At my university, we have this system for PhD students.
I am a PhD student. In my contract, I have "up to 20% department duties". When I get assigned tasks not related to my research — teaching, administrative tasks, presenting our institute to visitors, etc. — I write down the hours. At the end of the semester, I report to my boss how many hours I have worked on such duties. Then, a corresponding fraction of my salary is funded from a different pot of money. At the end of my PhD, this means I will have an equivalent amount of time extra to finish my research before my contract finishes.
I think the system is quite fair, although some tasks — most notably teaching — don't get the actual time assigned, but according to a certain formula. So in practice, I do lose research time by doing teaching, because teaching takes more time than the formula accounts for, certainly if it's a first time. However, it's still much better than a system with no accounting at all, such as I have understood to be common elsewhere in the world.

It works for students, but it hardly works for permanent staff. Many colleagues in industry do that (per-project time accounting) and it leads to madness.

This is similar to the answer from @gerrit but after the comment from @F'x I thought I would write it up separately.
I would think the best way would simply be to track how many hours are spent on each of these tasks by each person. If task A takes person A 2 hours and task B takes person B 4 hours, then it seems clear how much effort people put in. Though, one does need to watch out for padding any time people log hours for any purpose but that's management's job.
I used to do this in industry and while I would have preferred to avoid it, I didn't find it maddening. It simply added about 10 minutes to each day to log everything I did and who should be charged for it. It would be VERY maddening if task A was allocated 2 hours and task B was allocated 2 hours just because of some formula (like the teaching example from @gerrit)
Another issue is that person A might be able to perform task B in 2 hours, in which case, person A should do it. Quantifying other than by number of actual hours invested is only going to lead to resentment and ill-feelings within the department (whether you're talking about academia or industry). As far as knowing who is better at something, that's also management's job. I say this after being in management for more than a decade before moving to academia.


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Publishing PhD Student's Provisional Report
Our PhD students have to complete an interim provisional report during their first year. This report usually comprises a good literature review, a statement of the problem the student will address in their remaining time, and any results to date.
Would it be acceptable to publish -- with the student's permission -- the provisional report? It is unlikely to be find a high-impact journal for such a work, so the report is likely to be published on, say, the Department's website.

No, I don't think it's a good idea, for reasons that vary with the student's status.

Current students: by releasing information about  a student's work in progress, you make it easier for some other researcher to pick up the same project, and complete and publish it before your student ("scooping" them). This will make it more difficult, or impossible, for your student to publish their work, as it will no longer be novel - a potentially serious career impediment. Even experienced researchers tend to avoid publicly discussing their work before it is ready to publish, and for grad students the risk is greater, as they probably work more slowly than the average researcher and are less likely to win a race.
Former students who graduated: the provisional report is redundant, as a more complete and polished version of the same information is in their dissertation. They would probably prefer that this higher-quality version be the only one publicly available.
Former students who did not graduate: would probably prefer not to publicize the fact that they were a student in your department but did not receive a degree.

In principle, if a student is aware of these issues and freely consents, without pressure from you,  to posting the preliminary report, it might be okay. But it's still questionable in my view, as a graduate student may not have enough experience in academia to fully comprehend the issues involved and accurately evaluate the risks. I'd err on the side of paternalism and not even suggest it.
I think it would be okay to make the reports accessible within your department, so that faculty know what students are working on, and so that students currently writing such reports have access to examples. But I would not share them with the outside world.

+1 This a thousand times. There is nothing to gain for the student and a lot to lose


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Receiving funding as a foreigner from NSF (for a foreign NGO)
I was a university student in Russia but not finished my study because of discriminatory reasons. (I consider my missing professor's diploma as a fake document and Russia illegal.) So I have no even Bachelor diploma.
I continued the research I started while being in a university as an independent researcher.
I tried to obtain funding for research from NSF as an individual. But I was rejected with saying that it is because they don't provide funding for non-US individuals.
If I register an NGO in Kenya, am I eligible I to obtain NSF funding for that NGO for my research?
My girl in Kenya has 4 years university degree. Can I register her in NSF as my student, to become a co-researcher in the future?
Also, how much funding (I mean salary/stipend) ask for:

me?
my girl?

My research is very important (particularly for rich countries including the US). I believe it is equivalent of Nobel prize level (but not in a field where Nobel prizes are given).

https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2012/nsf12070/nsf12070.jsp#cafo is unclear on this: "NSF rarely provides support to foreign organizations." But sometimes provides? Will they prefer a victim of discrimination like me?

Sorry, what? You seem to be an Israeli national, formerly of Russia, now in Kenya, so why are you pursuing funding from NSF? I think you're drastically misunderstanding NSF's mission statement. They provide funding to universities and research institutes in the US, not people working abroad, no matter how important their research.

@AzorAhai--hehim I am still in Israel. Please quote this mission statement as you refered to it. As I understand https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2012/nsf12070/nsf12070.jsp#cafo they sometimes do provide funding for foreign organizations or do I misunderstand. Explain your comment in more details.

@AzorAhai--hehim And on why I don't seek funding for example in Russia. They provide funding only to people with diplomas. When I filed a lawsuit to a Russian court for monetary compensation for illegal discrimination, as it appeared the so called judge put the lawsuit into a trash can.

Sorry, it's not a mission statement that I read, it's just from working with NSF. That's just how NSF functions, they award grants to universities to carry out research proposed by their faculty. They don't fund independent researchers, and not overseas, to the best of my knowledge.

And I wasn't asking about why you didn't apply for funding from Russia, I was asking why NSF, from a country you appear to have no ties to.

National Science Foundation is much more an arm of the US Government than it is a charitable foundation. Don’t let the name confuse you.


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Are there cases when UoPeople degrees are not accepted?
UoPeople (University of the People) is an extremely non-expensive (because it is a non-profit organization and is run mainly on donations and volunteer work) online university offering several Associate, Bachelor, and Masters degrees in several fields of study.
For example, I recently started a study for a degree. I paid $60 admission fee and $20 (it would be $100 or $120 - I don't remember for sure, if there were no scholarship for me) per course plus $17 per a proctored exam when an exam is proctored, with no other fees if I recall correctly (well, I think there is also a small graduation fee).
Are there (many of?) known cases when degrees or credits of UoPeople were not accepted (e.g. by employees, other universities, etc.) where degrees or credits of most other online university courses are accepted? Or are there rumors of it being not legit or not competitive enough degrees?
If you can mention any such cases, what were the reasons of valuing UoPeople students not well?
In my opinion, UoPeople is a quite legit university by the following criterions that I consider the only valid criteria of a legit university:

It provides hard enough and relevant enough courses.
Rating well is not easy (as I know now - I studied in another university in the past and there it was easier to get good grades).

In other word, in my opinion it means that the degrees are not at all fake. (Just like as Linux is gratis but it's not a fake or bad software but could compete well with Windows if it were advertised enough.)

https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/8681/what-is-a-diploma-mill

Note:  the UoPeople web site says "US degrees are accredited".  In that case, US students with those degrees should be in the same position as US students with in-person accredited degrees.  This is the purpose of accreditation: to distinguish legitimate institutions from diploma mills.

UoPeople isn't really accredited.  It's accreditor is the Distance Education Accrediting Commission, which is not one of the eight traditional regional accrediting bodies that accredits colleges and universities in their geographic area.  Generally, only regional accreditation - meaning accreditation by one of these 8 accreditors - count.  Although exceptions are made on a case by case basis, only credits and degrees from regionally accredited universities are automatically accepted as legitimate by most universities.

@AlexanderWoo okay... so what's the difference between the regional accrediting bodies and this other thing that they have "accreditation" from?  Is the DEAC accreditation worth anything at all?

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distance_Education_Accrediting_Commission


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Increasing speed of paper peer-reviewing
When reviewing a paper for peer review, I consistently find that I spend way more time on a paper than if I were just reading it for understanding.
How can one increase the speed at which they review papers, without compromising on the quality of the review?

You shouldn't!  Keep the habit of being a thoughtful, careful reviewer!

I think speed primarily comes with experience. Reviewing will nevertheless take lots of time for good reasons. Unlike when you read a manuscript (MS) for referencing in a MS of your own, you need to read everything. You also need to think about what has been referenced in detail and evaluate if omissions have been made in the referencing. You need to look at figures and tables for errors or problems, or just to suggest improvements. If you can, you also can or should comment on the language and structure of the paper. To cap off, you probably need to read the paper more than once, perhaps not in the same detail but one read is not enough. In all, this takes time. With each review this may become easier and you will be able to expedite the review.
I personally probably spend around a working day on a normal MS. Early in my career it may have taken twice the time. Some MS may take even longer. I don't think there exist any dependable short-cuts apart from being well read-up on the subject in general, and being experienced in reading and commenting on MS and reports. I am, however, convinced that the larger reductions in time occur early on since the benefits of experience comes quickly.

I have the impression that the most important influencing factor is outside your control: the quality of the paper. Very good papers are a pleasure to read and review. Exceptionally bad papers are not a pleasure, but are quick to review. In between these 2 extremes, worse papers take longer to review in my experience.  (This assumes that you accept reviewing only for topics you are reasonably familiar with already)

You will get better at this as you gain experience… but it will/should never be a blazingly fast process. The two reasons you will become faster at it are:

You gain more experience in the process itself, as Peter says.
As time goes by, you will probably give up faster on very bad papers. I remember one of my first reviews, where I wrote 2 pages of minute review of a paper, concluding that it should be rejected without a doubt for lack of originality (giving a reference to earlier work which the authors had re-discovered). Now, I would not bother with the in-depth review when it has become clear that the manuscript should be rejected.


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Paper ending: conclusion vs. conclusions
What should the last section of a scientific paper be called? Conclusion or conclusions?
I always felt like conclusions were things to take away from a paper, and a conclusion was the end of something (a book).

I don't really think there's any rule, more of a question of personal style. Thou my I did end a paper with "Discussion and Conclusions" or something similar, whey I had a lengthy last section. Also, "Conclusions and Future Work" sounds feasible.

When I am unsure, I use 'Summary'.

According to the Little, Brown Compact Handbook, in MLA style the final section is called the "Conclusion", while in APA style the final section will be labeled "Discussion". When using either citation style (and I would assume this holds no matter what citation style you are using), this section will contain your summary/interpretation, the conclusions (plural) that you wish the reader to take away from the paper, and perhaps a call to action or an outline of future work. So you are right,

conclusions [are] things to take away from a paper, and a conclusion [is] the end of something...

though not necessarily the end of a book; a conclusion can be the end of a paper, article, etc.

There is no real right or wrong here. "Conclusion" is quite common; "Conclusions" indicates that there is more than one, although I am sure that is not the intent. It is also possible to replace the conclusion with a "Summary" or "Synthesis" (both often occur in review papers). In some cases the discussion and conclusion is combined in "Discussion and Conclusion(s)". In other cases, the last section might be "Recommendations".
In short, the last section might be called many things but it should summarize the important points of the discussion. That is the main point of "Conclusion" and its "relatives". So from the point of view of content it is all the same.

If only one 'concluding factor', then use Conclusion. If more than one; then use conclusions.


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Should I accept to review a re-submission to a different conference
(My field is Computer Science, where conference publications are the norm.)
I reviewed a paper submitted to conference A six months ago. The paper was borderline, and was eventually rejected. I wrote a reasonably lengthy review.
I've now been asked to review a re-submission of the same paper from the same authors for conference B. At first glance, the differences between the versions A and B are quite minor.
While I would have no problem reviewing the re-submission, I am worried about any bias (real or potential) that could occur from having access to a previous version of the work. This may be seen as preventing version B from standing on its own merits and having a "fair" shot at this conference.
It's possible that my review of paper B will have the same comments as paper A, or at the very least my review will be written in a similar style. As such, while the reviewers are anonymous, it's quite possible the authors will realize the same person reviewed the two versions of the paper.
Should I accept this review, or suggest an alternative referee?

Possible duplicate: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/7200/asked-again-to-review-a-paper-when-the-authors-dont-wish-to-modify-it

Yes, accept. You can start your review by stating:

I reviewed version A of this paper @ [previous conference]. The differences between versions A and B are quite minor. My review remains largely unchanged:

You can then provide a revision of your previous review.

Is there a chance that this will bias acceptance at B - since you are telling them A rejected the work already?

@anything Reviewers write reviews independently, so the OP's review will not bias other reviews (before the discussion phase). I like to think that there is no bias during the discussion phase either, but perhaps that's optimistic... I suppose any such bias could be avoided by providing just a revision of the previous review, but then the authors might think the OP's review is lazy, because it is largely copy-and-paste, whereas the above opening makes the OP's position clear.

"I reviewed version A of this paper @ [previous conference]. " Careful there, this has a high risk of revealing the identity of the PC member who assigned the review.

@lighthousekeeper No more than "providing a revision of your previous review" does. PCs usually have sufficient overlap to avoid identification, there's also an aspect of denability for PC memebers (e.g., I didn't review it, a third-party did).

@lighthousekeeper The list of PC members isn't secret and I don't see how providing the text of a previous review reveals any information at all about which PC members might have handled the paper.

@DavidRicherby The intersection between PCs may allow some interference of the PC member that handled the review.

@user2768 There might not be any intersection. And even if there is, a particular reviewer might be a natural choice: I've reviewed a few papers more than once each and I don't remember it being the same PC member each time (and they've certainly never said, "Hey, you reviewed this paper already for me for conference X; any chance you could do it again?" which you might expect if it was the same person). And, ultimately, so what? The author can often make a pretty good guess of which PC members would be interested in their paper and may have even chosen the conference on that basis.

@DavidRicherby Sorry, I don't understand the point you're trying to raise. Are you claiming providing the text of a previous review reveals [no] information at all about which PC members might have handled the paper even when there's an intersection?

@user2768 "I submitted this paper to two conferences and received a review from the same person on both occasions, therefore the paper must have been handled by the same PC member" simply is not a valid deduction. Even if there is an intersection, it's completely possible that the paper was handled by different PC members each time. Indeed, more than once I've been asked to review a paper by two members of the same PC. I'm really not seeing an issue with providing the text of previous reviews. If you're worried about it, provide it as confidential material for the PC only.

@DavidRicherby I don't believe anyone made that deduction. But, if you received reviews from different conferences and the contents of those reviews overlap, then they are surely from the same person (I've not heard of plagiarized reviews).

@user2768 I you receive substantially the same review, of course you can legitimately infer that it was written by the same reviewer. But the identity of that reviewer is not revealed and you were talking about making inferences about PC members, not reviewers.

@DavidRicherby The identity of the PC member might be inferred if the PCs intersect on a single member. Of course, the inference might be incorrect, but, in some case, there might be reasons to believe it is correct.

@user2768 Now we're just going round in circles. Who cares about the identity of the PC member? And who cares about preventing people from making deductions when everybody should know that those deductions are false? I really don't see where you're coming from.

@DavidRicherby I really don't see where you're coming from: Revealing (with a decent probability) the identity of the PC member that handled a paper violates that member's anonymity. That's surely an issue?

@lighthousekeeper fancy offering your thoughts? The discussion arose from your comment.

@user2768 I've explained multiple times why it doesn't reveal anything at all with any reliability.

@DavidRicherby You're arguing that leaks aren't reliable, that's rather subjective, as is my counter-argument that leaks reveal something. In any case, I don't think either of us has evidence to definitely conclude either way.

I agree with @user2768. If the overlap between both PCs is one member, then it's reasonable to conclude that the paper was handled by that member, even if that conclusion is not 100% reliable. This kind of conclusion making is called inductive (as opposed to deductive) reasoning, and people (including judges, scientists, engineers and physicians) do it all the time.

Did you receive the full manuscript or just an abstract when you were invited to review? In some fields, potential reviewers are sent the abstract alone, and based on this they choose whether to review. Only if the reviewers who consent are sent the full manuscript.
If this matches your case, you should go ahead and review. If not, consider the following:
(1) Did most of your review comments in the first review deal with accuracy and use of good scientific methods?,
or,
(2) Did most of your review comments in the first review deal with originality, scope and relevance?
If the answer to (1) is yes, then you should review, and mention your previous review as suggested by @user2768. The reason is simple- if there are factual mistakes, they ought to be pointed out, irrespective of history. In fact, it shows that the authors are trying to conceal mistakes/shortcomings and hoping to get lucky with a lenient review.
If the answer to (2) is yes, then maybe forget about the first review, and evaluate how different the two conferences are. It is possible that one may demand greater originality and the other may demand greater rigour, and so on. Similarly, scope and relevance expectations could be quite different. If you find yourself unable to evaluate this, possibly you are being biased by your previous review, and you should consider declining the review. Otherwise, by all means, accept the assignment.

In both cases I received the full paper with the review request. Most of the comments were about originality (2), and since both conferences are relatively similar, I worry that my second review would be similar to the first since the two paper versions are similar.

If its an originality issue, and a borderline case, I think I would give the benefit of doubt and let it pass on to another reviewer (i.e. refuse to review). Probably depends on how strongly you feel about the (lack of) originality - if you have a strong opinion, put it forward, if ambivalent, refuse to review.


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Should I add a short-term visiting scholar affiliation in paper submissions?
I'm currently a visiting scholar with a small stipend at one institution, but will be there for a short period of half a year only. At the same time, I'm still affiliated to and get a salary from my home institution. I'm actually spending all of my time at the institution where I'm a visiting scholar for the half year period.
Now I'm wondering whether it makes sense to add my visiting scholar affiliation to any papers that I'm submitting during this period? Even though I would have worked (at least partially) on these papers from the visiting scholar affiliation, this affiliation will not persist until such a paper is published, maybe not even until it is being returned with reviews. Instead, I could be using only the affiliation at my home institution, which would be valid for more long-term.

It's conventional in my field (electrical engineering) to use the home affiliation in the "regular" affiliation field, then note the visiting affiliation in a footnote.
e.g. in footnote,

Jane Doe conducted this research while she was a visiting scholar at the Institute for Quantitative Basket Weaving.