text:
Transition from PhD to postdoc with an intent to change field
I'm in the following situation: In 3 months, I'll finish my PhD in theoretical physics, and I'm certain that I want to pursue an academic career. However, I'm just as certain that my PhD research is a dead end. (My advisor doesn't think so, but I disagree with him.) Thus, I seek to change the direction of my research, but I need a few months to obtain the necessary skills. Anyway, I missed the main application period for post-doc positions (in the US).
Given the following options (feel free to expand this list), which do you think provides the best perspective of leading me to a interesting post-doc position?

Finish my PhD. Get any post-doc position. Do the work I'm required to do there. Work hard in my spare time to teach myself the stuff I want to. After 1-2 years, find a post-doc position I'm really interested in.
Finish my PhD. Get a well-paying job in the software industry. Do the work I'm required to do there. Work hard in my spare time to teach myself the stuff I want to. Work harder to keep publishing papers. After one year, find a post-doc position I'm really interested in.
Abort my current work. Find a new subject and a new PhD advisor.
Live on unemployment money as long as possible. Work hard in my spare time to teach myself the stuff I want to. Work harder to keep publishing papers. After one year, find a post-doc position I'm really interested in.

Pros:

Get the PhD title sooner. Stay in the scientific community.
Get the PhD title sooner. Earn lots of money (6 figure). In a 9-to-5 job, have more spare time for private research than on a post-doc position, where work is never finished. Go to a foreign country.
It's what I should've done 2 years ago. I'll have the education I want when I finish my PhD, not later (but be older anyway).
No immediate advantages over the other options.

Cons:

If a logical continuation of my PhD work, I'll suffer from demotivation. My next advisor will not want me to work on other topics that I'm not paid for. Might have to stay for 2 years.
I'll move out of the scientific community for some time. I know it's hard to get back in.
I'll be even older when I finally get my PhD. Not sure if I would find another advisor. Open fight with my current advisor.
I don't want to live on unemployment money for long.

A particular question concerning the options above: Does being out of academia for a year kill your prospects of obtaining a postdoc position later?
I do have some collaborators who will help me to keep publishing, provided that I put enough work into my research. Also, I'm willing to familiarize myself with other topics on my own (a prerequisite for an academic career anyway).
The next application period will be from October to December 2013, which isn't far away. I'm sure I'll have most of the skills I want by then (and a paper published proving that), but still would have to work until summer 2014 wherever I am applying now.
Please give me honest answers, even if they hurt. I'll provide more information as soon as possible, if anyone has questions.

Depending on your department's policies, it seems that there is a fifth option: Delay graduation until next year without changing thesis topics; use the additional year to expand your skill set and to apply to the post-doc positions you really want in next year's application season.

Hi, and welcome to Academia. Note that Academia SE is a Q&A site, not an arbitrary forum. Therefore I suggest to state more clearly: What exactly is your question?

My department certainly allows delaying graduation. My advisor does not. It's been a fight with him anyway, which I'm losing.

why does your advisor insist you graduate ? is it a funding issue ?

My funding runs out, and he has a strict policy of how long a PhD may take.

As one of my advisors once told me,

The best dissertation is one that is written.

Tongue-and-cheek as it may be, I would strongly advise finishing up your PhD first, especially if you can do it in three months.  If you have doubts about whether your committee will approve your work, then you should be having that conversation very frequently (at least once a week, if not more) with the committee members that you think will have an issue with the work.
If you are indeed "certain [you] want to pursue an academic career," choice (2) may be the hardest path.  I've known a number of people who were certain they wanted to move back into academia after working in industry, but they didn't publish enough once they had a full-time non-academic job, and they weren't competitive for future academic positions.
Choice (3) would be a soul-killer if I were in that position.  To see the finish line three months away and then scrap it for 2-3 more years of work?  Not for me.
Choice (4) would probably be the worst decision -- every day you stay unemployed lessens the chance someone would eventually hire you (although maybe there are a ton of post-docs in your field).  Proving that you've learned these things on your own is difficult, although you would have more time to publish (but will you have a university association still?).
Tough choices all around, but I suggest finishing up the PhD at least.

Thank you for your motivating answer! I don't have any doubts that the committee will approve my graduation. (3) is a soul killer for me, too. (4) means more time (assuming I keep publishing), but lots of other problems. (1) and (2) both mean little time for my own interests. During my PhD, it has been hard for me to clearly draw a line between work and spare time. That might be easier with option (2), but I definitely see that (1) makes it easier to stay in touch with researchers. Anyway, it's become clear to me that changing fields will be double work in any case.

@user1586001 Good luck with the decision!  Breaking into academia is tough, and you may have to continue to work on things other than your own interests for the time being.

Avoid 4! The independent "gentlemen's researcher" (apologies for the non-gender neutral term) of the 19th century is not accepted anymore. 1 is the best solution, especially if you try to find a postdoc position which is close to what you want to do. Or try for some funding for Research Fellows (e.g. Marie Curie), then you might be able to do what you want.

In my experience, when you start a post-doc, you will start working on a topic that is rather different from what you did in your PhD. This is often simply the case because you will be working for someone new who has different research objectives. Some shifting of topic is not only permitted, it is required.
For example, in computer science, if you did your PhD on programming languages you could continue your post-doc research on another aspect of programming languages, though it would be less likely that you could do a post-doc in machine learning.
Think broadly about what your skill set is and be willing to learn new skills on the job when you start a post-doc. Your new boss will expect that you know how to perform research (at a high level), though s/he will generally not expect that you know every single detail about the research you will be employed to do.
Regarding the application position for post-doc positions. In Europe, for example, these are heavily tied to various funding bodies, and in my experience, these are available (at different places) pretty much all year round. The season(s) for each country will vary.

Programming languages vs. machine learning: This describes pretty well the magnitude of the change I'm planning.

Could you find a postdoc that's midway between your current and desired fields? To run with @user1586001's example, probabilistic programming projects (like Church or Anglican) might be a good way for a PL person to get some ML exposure or vice versa.
That said, a lot of postdocs are hired on the basis of promise, rather than experience, and the right PI might let you skip the intermediate step altogether.

Some postdoctoral advisors have a policy of intentionally making their postdocs do something radically different from their previous experience. I know that was certainly the case with my postdoc—I had to start on a brand new technique and a completely different problem than the one I was expecting to work on!
So, there really is no problem with jumping into a new field, if you find the right advisor. I also don't believe that there's an absolute "window"—some people may still have spots available; it's a question of being the right fit for the right project with the right advisor.
You might also have some other options available to you at your current department—is it possible that they can keep you on as an instructor? That way, you could have a little bit more of a cushion to look for your postdoctoral position, while not having to worry about having to take a job out of total desperation.

I believe you that jumping into a new field isn't a problem with the right advisor. The trouble is to find the right advisor. I'm a bit under pressure to find a position (few months left, but can't wait for a year).


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Teaching a blind student MATLAB programming
I teach a first year undergrad class in MATLAB programming, and one of my students is completely blind. Quite amazingly, the student memorises the whole chapter before class and regurgitates with the help of someone saying what the output is.
I wonder if anyone has some advice to help the student? I have heard of Emacspeak. There's also the issue of interpreting graphics - is there any software available that may help with this?

http://matheducators.stackexchange.com might also be able to help.

Has the student asked for help?  It's a fair bet that the student knows what resources are available, and what's needed for success.  I really recommend asking the student how you might be of best assitance.  If not, there is probably some office in your scoop that deals with assisting students that have issues with accessibility.

What is the syllabus of the course?Do you plan to teach more programming and/or also toolboxes such as image processing, simulink,...?

@MikeyMike It's just an introductory 10 lesson course, they go through the basic functionality of Matlab, through to writing loops and conditional statements. In later modules, depending on their degree route, they may use simulink, image processing etc. but I don't teach that.

I'm curious how this went for you and the student, and if either of you found any tools or approaches that were particularly useful with MATLAB.

@BryanKrause unfortunately, this didn't go so well. I contacted the university's disability services to make them aware of the situation, but they were very poor in helping the student with software. My approach was to spend as much time helping the student with his progress and on a positive note, they achieved a first class mark in that part of the module. Remarkable I thought!

Thanks for the update, sorry to hear the university's support was sub-par but glad to hear they achieved some success regardless.

Yes, this is all possible, but I recommend seeking specialist advice. Blind support organisations often have technical advisors who are aware of the latest software and hardware adaptions that are available.
I taught a totally blind student through a whole computer science degree, including 3d computer graphics. The student had a box which was connected to the computer and supplied audio through an ear piece. This translated the screen pixels into sound so images could be perceived much as a hand-held scanner might. As the mouse was moved the pixels at the mouse location were translated to sound. In addition to text-to-speech and other features the student had a complete picture of what was on the screen.
Actually, it was better than that. The student could see windows hidden behind windows, because they saw it in three dimensions in their mind and the rest of us were limited to the limitations of a flat 2d screen. We were totally out-classed and out-performed by someone who although blind could perceive the screen images better than we could!
Ask the student if they have looked into the devices available or already have support from appropriate blind organisations. If they do encourage them to follow up. If they do not, go through the appropriate special needs support office at your institution who are likely to have the right contacts.
Never underestimate the abilities of differently equipped students!
PS: I see you are in the UK. The RNIB is likely  to be able to assist. They have appropriate technical officers if the University does not.

Thanks, this is great advice, but also an incredible story; that is truly amazing the support you gave!

@MikeMiller Oh! the anecdotes I could tell about this one.... having the guide dog in lectures was the most amusing thing. The dog would be sure to let you know if the lecture was boring. It would yawn; roll over, snore loudly (stage snoring), until you made the lecture more interesting ... the class loved it!

Fantastic! I'm glad my student doesn't have a guide dog then! :-)

The company I work for (large multinational) has a totally blind guy doing software distribution and deployment. That's actually an advantage from a QA perspective, because he flatly refuses to action any instruction that is not in writing in case he "forgets" about it! But rolling out an software patch onto 20,000 machines spread across 5 continents without screwing anything up - no problem at all!

My former teacher used a braille machine.
He was reading code line by line... From both ends at the same time !
Try splitting your eyes to look at different things for a laugh

It is completely possible with the right device
One of our student of physics is 50 years old, blind since ever, works 80 % in a company as a coder (!) and he studied computer science when he was 20 years old. So everything is surely possible.
How he does it: he has a device, which is connected to the computer and displays the line in Braille by moving small pins up or down. He then can read around 20 letters a time, reaching the end, the device changes it's pins again to display the next 20 characters.
Additionally, a screen-reader often also helps him to navigate and understand things.
This way, I wrote  once a lab report together with him in latex, no problem at all. And he regularly writes code and exercise-sheets. Quite impressive!
I highly recommend your blind student to get such a device (you may first ask if he is even able to read Braille as not a lot of blind people do) and get used to screen-readers! If he has problems reading mathematical expressions, he can in most cases ask the publisher for the latex-version.

Note that many blind people do not read Braille at all: in Britain only around 1% of blind people are Braille users (though that's probably higher among people who have been blind since a young age). So it's probably better to ask if it would be useful rather than recommending it.

@Max, it is a LOT higher among people who have been blind since a young age

I credit your ambition in this area, but the best answer offer is "talk to the professionals, after talking with the student".  Your school will have specialists in some office that are very familiar with available accommodations for students who are visually impaired.  They will be able to find resources faster than you, and likely better resources than you can find on your own. They will likely be able to make funds available if the necessary tools need to be purchased. This is what they do, and my experience is that people like this are very good at their jobs.  In the US, such people are more or less required for schools to meet their regulatory obligations.  I'm not sure for your country, but I can't imagine that the resource is non-existent.
As I stated in comments, I encourage you do work in conjuntion with the student.  You might approach the student and ask who he is working with already, and if he feels he's getting the tools he needs.  If he isn't using these resources, you should ask if he's comfortable if you try to help match him up with these resources, or if you could provide an accurate description of the needs of a person in his course to the people assisting him.
Be sensitive.  This sort of help is not always welcomed or appropriate.  People are often very good at using the tools they have to accomplish what they need to accomplish, and might resent other people telling them that they need help.
Don't be afraid to talk to the student, and be up front about asking the questions you want to ask.  Don't skirt the issues or euphemize.  Don't be offended if you receive a polite "no thank you".

Thanks, it was a useful comment and this answer is how I had approached the student before asking the question. They were happy with how the class was being run but I thought it would be nice to give them some extra options to help their programming skills in case it was something they would like to pursue in the future :)

I did feel there might be an issue in this case with the student saying everything was fine etc. without realising how difficult programming could be without having some kind of screen reader or especially interpretation of graphics. It's certainly throws up some interesting challenges on both parts!

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Post-doctoral research statement/project: current/future vs thematic
I am currently applying for several post-doctoral positions. For these applications I have to prepare a research document in which I present my current research and my future projects in a limited amount of pages (typically not more than 4 or 5). But there is two possible organisations of ideas:

1) A first approach would be to present first my past and current
research topics and then my future projects.
2) A second approach consists in a thematic organization in which I present for each topic
my past and current research and what I plan to do in this topic in
the future. Some topics can be only past/current and some other only
long-term project.

What is the best organization ?

I would favour option 1.
You are trying to tell the story of your research career so far, and how your story could continue at the institution(s) to which you are applying. Looking at it in this way, you are casting your past and present research activities as "Background".
Your subsequent sections would be about specific projects - the "Future". In each section you can refer to your skill set, showing how this project is based on a firm foundation of skills developed during your Background years.
A reader will get a much clearer picture of you as a scientist - past and future - if you structure your application this way. It makes for easier reading, and you want your admissions committee to be happy.
Splitting up your "story" thematically - showing how parts of your background set you up for the project under consideration - makes it more difficult for a reader.

There is a third option which you may want to explore.
1.) Current research
2.) Plans for future research
3.) Past experience in this area
In other words, structure this the way you would if you were talking to them rather than writing to them. Simon Peyton Jones recommends this approach for writing a research paper, but the same concepts work well for any types of writing. Explain your idea to someone else, and then write it in the same order, using slightly more formal language. When I am explaining my research interests to someone, I will often say something like this, "I am working on Idea B now, and I expect this to continue in to Idea C in the future. This line of research grew out of my previous exploration of Idea A."

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How does a research masters work?
I always thought PhD as being the main post grad research path if you wanted to get funded and that Msc was the way to get yourself ready for a PhD. I recently became aware that not all master courses are taught and some are research based, so I am wondering whether it's normal to do a research Msc (as opposed to a taught one) and if so, are there any advantages to this over just going for a PhD?

possible duplicate of What are the advantages and disadvantages to completing a Masters program before applying to a Ph. D program?

See also What factors affect how long it would take to get a phd, either going via, or without, a masters? and Physics masters and PhD degrees in England/UK

Advantages of doing a research-based Masters (e.g an MRes) before the PhD:

learn research skills
explore your subject
refine your research question
get a big chunk of your literature review done in a structured setting
work out if taking a PhD is really for you - whether you've got the aptitude and the interest


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How would I justify that my work isn't just 'normal' design and creation
Quick info. I'm a 4th year student (i.e. I'll be doing my masters when I complete my 4th year). Some of the work I'm doing now will however influence my masters.
One of my assignment questions in my research module is to come up with a few research strategies that would suit my research project. Whilst I cannot say exactly what my project is, it will in general be a new built system that will make decisions based on what rankings were given by people. (somthing similar to clicking the 'like' button on facebook or giving a review star rating for books as on Amazon.com).
I'm also using the following book (Researching information systems and computing by Briony J Oates) as a guide. I've identified the 'Design and Creation' research strategy as what would be the most fitting research strategy for my project seeing as I would be creating a new system. One of the questions in the evaluuation guide for the 'Design and Creation' research strategy is:
What makes this piece of work research and not 'normal' design and development work?
How would one go about answering such a question? What criteria would one have to look at to say that such a research project is an actual research project and just not your normal run of the mill application?

“ I cannot say exactly what my project is” / “make decisions based on what rankings were given by people” — Gosh! Are you working on Stack Exchange AI? It is true that the algorithm powering the supposedly human moderators could be improved… ;-)

According to the statistics box on the right, this is the 1000th question on Academia. Congrats!

Lol, No I'm simply an honours student with a wild imagination. But from your comment I just realised that there may be numerous uses for my project ;)
1000th question!! :D :D :D

I should've read chapter 8, design and creation properly. The answer is in the textbook (Oates, B., Researching information systems and computing, 2009).
According to the author, the major differences are that in the typical software industry is that the less that is learnt or the less that needs to be discovered the more successful the project is deemed to be. If all is going according to plan then using existing knowledge, avoiding backtracking and changing of design or avoiding having to redo analysis would be seen as a part success. Having to change your design, backtracking and redoing analysis are perceived as a negative risk which needs to be mitigated. These risks could overrun the project constraints such as time, budget etc. Therefore industrial practitioners often leave out risky or uncertain parts of a project.
A researcher on the other hand focuses on these risky and uncertain items because tackling these risks and uncertainties successfully would lead to new knowledge being created. Hence you can claim to be doing research rather than 'normal' design and creation through the risk taking of your software product or process. You can further claim justification for your design by using theoretical underpinnings such as mathematical formulas and or formal methods from the field. You should also be able to say how the knowledge aquired from your design can be applied generally to other situations.

+1 for answering a FAQ in my opinion. I have had a few wanna be grad students give up their idea for "research" for just this reason - it was just 'normal' design.


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How to tell what is 'widely accepted' or 'consensus'
How can I find out what theories are 'widely accepted' in the scientific world at the moment? When I read about a theory, or read a paper, how can I tell what 'the scientific world' thinks of these?

Background:
When hearing about development or history of science, the phrase 'widely accepted' is quite popular. One of the common stories seems to be of some discovery which nobody wanted to believe when published, but a decade or a few later the scientific world came to accept it and it turned into consensus. Prime examples in history would be the heliocentric world view or the theory of evolution.
More recently, I have read 'The Selfish Gene' by Richard Dawkins. He takes every chance to provide evidence that the theory of group selection is unnecessary to explain evolution. The book was published in 1976, when group selection was apparently quite popular. In annotations of the current edition, he gives comments about how the scientific world has now more accepted that group selection is wrong. I asked a question about one of his claims which I did not fully understand (irrelevant here) on Biology.SE and - unexpectedly - promptly got answers by people claiming that group selection was presently very widely accepted.

Good question, probably something that many people unfamiliar with a particular field often ask themselves.

Firstly, the "official" ways that researchers state their opinion is by stating it in either a publication or in a presentation at a conference. It is from here that we can gain any idea of what any researcher thinks about a given topic.1
That being said, the only way to know whether something is "widely accepted" is to be familiar with most of the current (academic) literature on a given topic. Only by really having read the publications of most of the preeminent researchers in a given field can you really get a sense of what the consensus is on that topic. This, of course, requires a lot of time and expertise (and, if you don't have access to a university library with journal subscriptions, money). It took me years as a graduate student to learn what was the consensus about certain topics within my own field.
Because of this, anyone can state anything and most people won't know the difference. The easiest way to really determine if it's true is to ask two or three recognized researchers if they agree with the statement of interest. You can do this via email, but they likely won't get back to you. You can ask grad students in their lab and the answer will be that much less reliable, but still close to the source. Beyond that, you'll just have to find experts you can trust and rely on them.

1 Obviously, researchers are people like anyone else, and will discuss their pet theories with friends and colleagues over email and in person; it's very hard to quantify these, and you only rarely see this sort of discourse being formally recognized. Occasionally a publication will cite "unpublished discourse", but that's a rare occasion.

@armatus - While I appreciate the correct designation, I suggest giving any question you ask a few hours before marking one answer as correct. This will often lead to more answers being posted, and then you can choose the best from all of them. If you think this answer is good, vote it up.

I disagree with leaving questions open just to get more answers to choose from (when my question is answered, it's answered - no need to give the impression that it's not resolved when it is; especially with a high quality answer like yours). But it's true that maybe somebody has found a way for them to gauge what scientists agree on at the moment, so I'll leave it open for a bit longer :)

Structured review papers can be a very good route into establishing what's the most-widely accepted state of current research.
In health care, the Cochrane Reviews are a good example.
Some subjects have journals dedicated to such structured reviews, such as Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews
Occasionally, a subject is so important that international organisations are set up to establish the state of the art in a current subject: the International Panel on Climate Change is one such example, and this produces a whole-field review every few years. At time of posting this, one (AR5) is being compiled at the moment, for publication in 2013-4. The previous one (AR4) was published in 2007.


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What are the factors one needs to take into account in order to choose an appropriate mathematical journal?
Several months ago I submitted a paper to a journal. The area covered by the journal is the same as the one covered in the paper. However, I waited several months and finally the paper was rejected by the journal, and they explained to me that it was not of sufficient interest for them. What can I do to avoid having to go through this again if I submit my paper to another journal?

Your question is completely general, and not specific to mathematical disciplines. I've edited accordingly, in the hope this will get more answers.

There is no easy solution to this problem.
I recently went through a situation where a paper was rejected from a journal without review; the same paper, with only minor edits to the abstract and the introduction, was accepted "as is" for publication in another journal of similar quality and impact factor.
The main issue for getting your work accepted may not be that it isn't of sufficient interest—it may be that the way you have presented it does not convince the editors and referees that the work is suitable. Have you hit on the "hot-button areas" that tend to come up again and again in the journal? Have you made it clear from your abstract and your leadoff paragraphs why this article will be of interest to the target audience of the journal?
Small differences—these changes don't require much work—can make a huge difference in the acceptance of a paper.


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Can a letter from a professor not from my university but a high-ranking university carry extra weight?
After reading this question, I started wondering about students applying for graduate school and the letters of recommendation accompanying their applications.
Let's say Student is studying at University A and one of his lecturers is primarily working at University B (lecturer was doing some adjunct or other kind of part-time work at University A). University B is a much higher ranked school. After graduation Student asks the lecturer for a letter of recommendation so Student can attend University B. How much extra weight is the letter of recommendation given in the application process if it is from a lecturer at the university?
I would guess that it would depend on how that lecturer's past recommendations have turned out but I'd like to hear from the experts.
Does it change anything if Student wants to become a PhD and would like to have the lecturer as Student's adviser?

In theory - it should not give any extra weight. In practice - it usually works to the student's advantage.

Getting a good letter is more important than getting a letter from a professor at University B. So if the professor in question only knows you through your attendance of his course, he most likely won't be able to speak to your research potential. As that is the most important aspect of an application for graduate school, this would not work in your favour. (The points in this answer are excellent guidelines for who to ask for reference letters.)
If he is otherwise qualified to write a good letter for you, then the fact that he is from University B might work slightly in your favour, as admission committees tend to give greater weight to letters of recommendation from researchers that they know.

You need tenure track or tenured profs to write your recommendation letters.  References from TAs/Lecturers will give the impression that you did not have sufficiently good references from the faculty in your department to warrant a letter of recommendation.
Lecturers are generally post-docs that are hired on a contract basis, and therefore do carry much (if any) weight in the department.  You're much better off getting 3 great letters from faculty at your current institution.


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What research shows how assessment design can minimize plagiarism?
This past semester has seen an unusually high number of students plagiarizing in one of the subjects I teach. To be specific, it was five times the previous maximum I had seen. This has lead me down the path of digging into ways to reduce plagiarism from my students.
I read this question which was great and had several good answers but it was broadly focused. I would like to dig a bit deeper into one specific area: How can assessment design be used to minimize plagiarism?
I realize that exams are less likely to have plagiarism but I want to avoid those because they are timed and I don't want my students to be assessed in non-real-world situations like that. So, I want the assessments to be take-home but I don't want to put more constraints on this question.
I really want to know what research has been done showing the effect of different assessment design and how it has impacted student-plagiarism (with a focus on what minimizes plagiarism)?

What concerns research on interventions on plagiarism, ERIC lists quite some empirical studies which look at the effect of different lectures, assignment or other kind of educational interventions on plagiarism behaviour or knowledge about plagiarism.

According to your profile, you teach management. So we are looking at writing, rather than equations?
This review article discusses steps taken at a university in Australia, and provides some lit review. It is open-source. In regards to research on assessment design, it recommends:

Regularly change the questions/prompts
Projects should require original analysis rather than be summaries or definitions.
More marks should be associated with the process of project creation, rather than the final draft. Examples of intermediate assignments are research journals, annotated bibliographies, and first drafts.
Change product from text-only to something else - a poster, an oral presentation.

Above is the "answer" to your question. You may also want to consider why your plagiarism is suddenly increasing. The linked article points out that many students plagiarize because of lack of training in how to effectively write without copying a source. If you have a cohort of students from a background of poorer preparation, I would recommend a module on how to write without plagiarism.
Best of luck.

Thanks for your answer. I look forward to reading the article you linked. By the way, the problem is not understanding how to cite. They actually copy-and-paste from other students changing every 3rd word - clearly trying to "trick" the plagiarism software.

Dee and Jacob (2013) (preprint) conducted

a field experiment that evaluated the effects of a web-based educational tutorial in reducing plagiarism. We found that assignment to the treatment group substantially reduced the likelihood of plagiarism, particularly among student with lower SAT scores who had the highest rates of plagiarism. A followup survey suggests that the intervention reduced plagiarism by increasing student knowledge rather than by increasing the perceived probabilities of detection and punishment.

Potentially including an educational tutorial in your assignment design would reduce plagiarism.

While this link may answer the question, it is better to include the essential parts of the answer here and provide the link for reference.  Link-only answers can become invalid if the linked page changes.

I have heavily edited the answer to try and make it free-standing. If you think I changed the meaning of your answer, please feel free to roll it back (or improve it).

@jakebeal I edited the answer, what do you think?

@StrongBad Much better.

I don't know the answer from any direct experience (could point you to pages like http://drexel.edu/dcae/assessment/assessment-plans/) but two things I can think of off the top of my head without knowing what subject you teach or at what level: 1) Have students have some input into their own assignments built around objective criteria that you specify and 2) have the students take some part in grading one another.

The OP has asked for an answer supported by reference to research. This seems to be a guess, not supported by research or even experience.

Oh no, if only I'd said that in my comments!  The horror!  No one should ever try to be helpful!


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Are alternative metrics taken seriously by hiring committies?
Knowing that there are some members of hiring committees here, I am hoping for some insights.
Having read Rise of Altmetrics, I started to wonder what would be the best way to measure the impact on my publications. I do care for many reasons but one of the reasons is to impress others enough to be able to get a job/promotion/tenure.
So, my question is, do hiring committees take alternative metrics (Facebook likes, mentions in blog posts, etc.) seriously when trying to measure the impact of someone's work or are other issues like impact factor more important?
This question is related but is more about measuring the impact of a journal but my concern is measuring the impact of my own work (which might be in several journals).
This question is also related by asking how impact measurements affect job prospects and has some excellent answers but my question is specifically about 'unofficial' metrics like tweets, downloads on SlideShare, etc.
This question is also related asking how to measure readership of journal articles but my question is whether alternative measures are taking into serious consideration but those making hiring/tenure decisions.
I know there is the h-index (with its own flaws) but that seems to measure my publications as one unit (all publications taken together, therefore measuring me overall). I'm more interested in measuring the impact publication by publication in order to show an improving trend.
On a side note, it seems that there is a general feeling that a publication in a high impact factor journal equals a high impact publication. This feels a little off to me since one might convince the editor their work is important while at the same time fail to convince their academic community of the same.

I have not sat on a hiring committee for a higher education faculty position, but I would avoid putting soft alternative metrics on application material.  If I was on a committee and saw that someone listed Facebook likes on his CV, I would think it was odd (possibly unprofessional?), and I would wonder why he felt it necessary (i.e., is he trying to bolster a poor record?).

Alternative metrics might be suspicious to people that are not familiar with them. If you want to show that your recent work had a lot of impact, why not just add a statement like "my recent 2 papers, which were published 2 years ago, have already been cited more than 500 times"?

@Bitwise There is no question about citations. My question is based on the idea in article linked above.

@earthling in the end, these alternative metrics quantify some form of citation, what changes is usually the method of quantification and the definition of a citation (e.g. a loose definition could include social media tags and blogging). The h-index that you mentioned is also based on citations. I just think it is more straightforward to give the actual numbers rather than some metric that aggregates them into a statistic.

I served on a hiring committee in mathematics at a research university in the United States, and I don't believe that any of us paid attention to the sort of metrics you describe.
My personal inclination is that I would not recommend listing any of this information unless it is unusually notable, e.g., if someone particularly well known blogged extensively about your work. However, different countries, universities, and departments might operate differently.

I think the "unusually notable" is good - if Paul Krugman's blog featured your work as The Thing That will Change Economics Forever? Maybe mention it. Random blogger things your nifty? Maybe not.

If altmetrics such as the number of Facebook likes, the number of mentions in blog posts, etc. would be considered as a measure of impact and rewarded by hiring committees, then scientists would have significant incentives to increase their altmetrics. Such altmetrics are very easily manipulable (e.g., by creating fake Facebook accounts, fake blog posts, automating downloads), so once they will start to be artificially increased their relevance for estimating impact would disappear.
I have not heard about altmetrics being taken seriously by hiring committees, and given the argument above it is likely that it will not happen in the future, neither.

This is more of a comment than an answer.


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Can I include under-review content in my PhD Thesis?
In the verge of writing up a PhD thesis, is it fine to include the content of the work which is submitted to a conference and is "under review" at the time of writing up. More specifically if the conference has 'double-blind' review process.Or is it advisable to wait till the review decision on publication is out.
Please suggest.
Thanks, KR

This really depends on the times. If you are writing up at this moment, I'd wait a little bit for acceptance/rejection before adding it, because it could be rejected, and then you would have in your thesis a paper that has been rejected. Rejected papers seem not to exist... PD: I just saw your history (don't judge me!) so the basic advice is: do as in the other question (if you can't wait).

@Trylks I don't understand, doesn't a rejected paper (assuming that the work is correct) simply get resubmitted to another journal?

@AruRay I think the problem arises if it gets rejected because the work is not correct.

Ask your supervisor.

@AruRay as gerrit says, the main problem is a rejection because the work is not correct. But even in the best case, assuming it's correct, resubmitted and accepted in a different journal, how are you going to edit the journal name in the printed book of your thesis?

"I think the problem arises if it gets rejected because the work is not correct." …in which case your committee should not approve your thesis! (You know, there was a time when most PhD theses did not contain peer-reviewed work…)

I am sure this may vary but this is standard procedure for our theses since they are based on papers. A student will typically have about four papers/manuscripts in their thesis ranging from published through all stages of revision in a journal to not yet submitted manuscripts.
You will need to check with your local guidelines what is expected from a thesis to figure out the details but it would seem difficult to demand all published papers unless the period to complete a PhD is open ended.

Thanks a lot for all the responses. I will contact my advisor for his suggestion and refer uni guidelines for this.

You can do it, but you should clearly label it as "submitted to xyz" to make clear it is not accepted, yet. You should update the status ("accepted for xyz", no additional remarks) according to the progress.
Nonetheless, you can (and should) write about the topics in your thesis since it is your work you are describing. The only difference is that the statments you are making are not peer-reviewed, yet.
In general, it is a good idea to ask your supervisor about it since some can have different opinions on this topic.


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Correct term to address the "academic publications"
I am trying to use/find the correct term for the practice of publishing research results in academia, mainly a reference to the practice of publishing research findings in a formal journal or conference.
The term has to have a clear contrast to the practice of publishing full data-sets of research results (ex: in a repository), but which is also a sub-form of "publishing of research results"
I have started my work by using the term "Scholarly Communication" which was somehow influenced by one of my mentors. Although I was happy on the initial suggestion, I am finding myself not so keen on the use of it, as it seems cheaper in contrast to for example: Academic Publishing which seems broader to include more research ventures (done also by non-scholars, but still viable for academic recognition).
The problems with the term Academic Publishing are two for my perspective. 1) I have not been able to find a strong definition of it, and 2) it is so broad that can include the "publishing of research data-sets" which I need to reference separately.
Would appreciate a discussion for a creative term which coins the academic publishing as it has been referenced traditionally?
Update 1: Considering also Academic Literature referenced in a comment below by darthbith

You could just be specific and say journal and conference publications

I have used the phrase "archival literature" to refer to journal publications; conference publications in my field typically aren't considered "permanent" and are typically not accessible to people that don't attend the conference. However, depending on your field, "archival literature" may specify both journals and conferences...

@nivag Although it is a correct usage, it might be tiresome for the reader to read "journal and conference publications" repeatedly in different paragraphs.

@darthbith "archival literature" might not necessarily be academic literature. I will add "Academic Literature" to the question as it seems an plausible choice for what I am looking for.

Would this be a better fit on the English Language and Usage Stack Exchange?

@aeismail I don't think so...

This seems unanswerable as it asks the putative answerer to engage in telepathy. What do you mean by "academic publications"?

"For purposes of this study, we define a frog to be any publication of research findings that has underdone stringent peer-review." (Or whatever your definition is.)  From that point on, the proper term is "frog".  However, I recommend using "research publication" instead of "frog".

I suggest "(modifier) dissemination" with (modifier) used to make things more specific.  Usually I find the phrase "dissemination of (noun)", and it often refers to a formal release of information, where some semblance of validation of (noun) has occurred.  You might find "result dissemination", "data dissemination", "report dissemination" useful.  Of course, I'm already getting tired of seeing the word "dissemination" used many times in the same paragraph.  I also suggest some synonyms to alleviate developing madness in the reader.

If a thing is publicly available, it is literally published, nevermind paywalls. It would be an unhelpful abuse of language to have "publication" mean exclusively "publication in a traditional, recognized, peer-refereed, journal". I propose (only partly facetiously) referring to the latter as "gatekeeper publications". :)
Srsly, there is an issue here. If the NSF or NIH require that we make our research public, but we can't get it through the gatekeepers, then what?
So, if you want to refer to publication in peer-reviewed journals, say "peer-reviewed journal publication". This might be in contrast to "internet publication". Adjectives.

I absolutely agree with your note. Actually I was trying to differentiate between two forms of publishing, the research report in the form of a scientific paper vs research data-sets (which are actually needed to support a research paper)

A data set is probably the sort of thing that should just go on your web page, or in an archive. Should be made publicly available, but since it doesn't make sense to "peer review" the data itself, you won't "get credit" in that sense.


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A MD-PhD in Oncology
I am about to finish my Bachelor Degree in Computer Engineering and Computational Biology, and planning to apply for a MD-PhD with focus on oncology. After talking to my academic advisers, I had very bad impressions about MD-PhD Program ("such a waste of time", "please just focus on one thing at the time"). However, it seems that such critiques are targeting the general approach of MD-PhD programs, and I still think that for the case of cancer research, it would benefit me a lot to gain the experiences in both.
To that extent, I have one question with two sides: Does earning an MD help improve my research as a PhD (for example, identify more significant and meaningful problems), and does earning a PhD side help me become a more skilled practicing oncologist?

This is a good question. A certain extended family member of mine earned a MD-PhD from one of the ivy league medical schools. Apparently, it was a good way to get a MD while being funded. Most become medical research professors.

possible duplicate of MD-Phd (MSTP): What are the benefits?

@Daniel. I'm aware of that post. My question is focusing on cancer research.

If you are aware of a previous question that is similar and might be considered a duplicate, it is best to include a link in your question and explain why your new question is not a duplicate.

Since you indicated that you are focusing on oncology, it seems likely that a PhD will enhance your oncology practice. This thread on The Student Doctor Network explores the pros and cons of an MD-PhD in Radiation Oncology. The general consensus is that it is worthwhile if you plan to be active in research as an MD, otherwise it may be a waste of time, money, and energy.
As Shion mentioned in a comment, most MD-PhD's become medical research professors, while it sounds as though you will be in active medical practice. There is a possibility that having a PhD may exclude you from consideration by the hiring boards at non-research-focused institutions. At research-intensive insitutions, the PhD will probably help your case, and certainly can't hurt. It appears that many practicing physicians at top US cancer centers are MD-PhD's. See here, here, and here.


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Job Websites for University Teachers
What are the main websites teachers look to when searching a new university teaching job? If it varies by discipline, I'm talking about finance in particular but business in general would also be appropriate.
As far as location, I'm looking for teachers from the US or from the UK (but anyone with decent English skills would be considered) to come to beautiful Asia.
I saw this post but it seems focused on research jobs (PhD positions, postdocs, etc.). I'm really looking for teachers to teach financial subjects.

jobs.ac.uk is pretty standard for research, teaching and admin academic jobs in the UK.

@DanielE.Shub Thanks but I see they have a grand total of 29 jobs outside of Europe (Asia, Middle East, Africa, and Australasia). Is there no place with more of an international presence?

The first part of your question suggests that you want to find resources on how to find jobs in Asia. That's easy. Googling "Academic Positions Asia" found me this website (www.unijiobs.asia), (on the first hit) which claims to be "Asia's University Jobs Portal."
This seems to be what you are looking for. The site seems to have a fairly comprehensive set of search tools, with the ability to do keyword searching or to search by position type, by discipline, or by location.
The end of your question suggests that you really want to find people to fill positions that you have. Listing on sites like I just found and like what you found will help, but in general, you need to advertise. The best advertising is to be had in the publications or on the website(s) of the professional organization(s) relevant to your discipline.

In terms of advertisements see http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2699/are-pay-announcements-worth-their-price-to-hire-people


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How do you record your lectures?
While reading this question, and specifically Chris Gregg's answer, I started to think about recording my lectures in order to help students review, help students who missed class, and generally provide a way for people to learn about the subjects I teach.
So, how do teachers (with the same goal as I wrote) record their lectures? Do they simply ask someone to record them with a video camera? Do they go in and do more serious editing like you see in Coursera videos where the video transitions between the lecturer's face and slides being drawn on by the lecturer (as described here)?
I'm curious what my options are, considering my university provides zero support for this idea of recording lectures.

Thanks for the shout-out!  This is what I said about the topic when it came up a couple of months ago.  I don't edit at all, but I do provide slides separately because it's hard to read on the board when I'm presenting.

This looks related: Using iMovie and Keynote to Make a Web-Based Keynote

"help students who missed class" I think you meant to write, "help students to miss class".  Because if you provide good video recordings of your lectures, many will elect to do just that, thinking they can skip class and just catch up online. If you're OK with that, then try it. I myself feel it's not good to encourage this at a brick and mortar college.

If you could record lectures it benefits everyone - our uni uses Panopto, but you could use OBS or even just bring a hand-held microphone recorder ('Zoom Handy Recorder' or the like); everyone would benefit even from just a simple audio recording to follow along with the course notes/presentation files.

@Vix One issue is that when you give students one more reason why it is OK to miss class, more of them will then miss class. While some students are advanced enough to make an informed decision based on how they learn best, there are students who simply give into the laziness and end up hurting themselves.

Whilst I appreciate that @earthling- some of us have unresolved mental problems which inhibit our ability to attend lectures reliably (the cause of this is a topic for another question) but without recordings we would fall even further behind than our more able colleagues and deeper into disrepair; encouragement and consultation with the students as to their lack of attendance begins to address the deeper issues I alluded to - there is often a reason, we wish to be attending and on-top of our studies, mixing us with the lazy/apathetic would be to diminish our possibility at good outcomes.

@Vix I get it, I really do. I was only mentioning one factor for consideration. Finding a way to help those who need the help along with not enabling others' lax behavior would be something I would very much like to read about.

@earthling "Help will always be given at Hogwarts to those who ask for it.” - this quote sprung to mind, and yet another reply at 4am (wondering why I miss my lectures?) - at this moment in time I'm researching and attempting to implement raymarching which is totally unrelated to my studies but fascinates me. As long as the offer of help is known, and occasionally reminded, perhaps you could issue recordings on a case by case basis after a little bit of enquiry as to why they are failing to attend (then you can determine who is lax vs. struggling and in need of help to catch-up).

If my lecture is done via a presentation (not my preferred method, but necessary for some classes), I record the audio of my lectures along with a "video" of the slides I use. I use Camtasia to record everything, so the only other thing I need is a microphone.
When I give lectures at the blackboard I don't record them. However, for those lectures I provide a fairly detailed set of course notes.

To clarify, are you saying you record using Camtasia while you are lecturing/presenting in front of students? One thing I'm wondering about is how to capture the audio of student questions (whose voices might be too weak to be picked up by a mic in the front of the room).

You can solve this problem by repeating the question.

For people using Linux (as I do), an alternative to Camtasia is Kazam. It's very simple but does the job.

The system my department uses for large lecture classes captures two video feeds: One showing the lecturer and the screen, taken from a camera mounted on the ceiling, the other showing whatever is currently being projected onto the screen, captured on route to the projector.  (I normally lecture with a document camera, printer paper, Sharpies, and the occasional small prop.)  Audio is captured separately from a microphone on the instructor's lapel.
My department's playback system allows the students to show either or both videos, at adjustable sizes, with synchronized playback, and to slow down or speed up playback.  The capturing system automatically locates transitions between slides (or, in my case, new pieces of paper) and provides navigation landmarks for the students.
The system is almost entirely automated.  In particular, the lecture videos are not edited at all.
I also provide detailed course notes.

My preference for teaching undergraduate courses (in physics) is:

Audio-record the lecture using a small MP3 player hung around my neck, and provide the file to students as a MP3 file
Write coherent notes on the blackboard that students can use as the basis for their own notes

I specifically do not do the following, which I believe is harmful to students' learning in such courses:

Provide detailed printed notes
Use slides (except for occasional complex Figures and animations)

An old question, but a new answer.
Since COVID-19, I've become more familiar with tools such as:

Zoom
Streamlabs

and, depending on the audience, I use one or the other.
Streamlabs allows me to compose a video view that includes my laptop screen, the webcam in the corner, and some text to title the video.  I can then share the output of Streamlabs on Zoom, if that is the system the school uses, or stream the output straight to YouTube for playback later.
Even if the students are in-person, many of them (once or twice a semester) miss class and are thankful for the video version of each class so they don't fall to far behind.


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What is the best way to design a paper questionnaire to support scanning and converting to raw data?
When surveying my students for various reasons (which have nothing to do with my institution which does not care about, nor fund, any of my "research"), I find that online surveys get a very low response rate. Sometimes, if I'm lucky, I can get up to 50% of students to respond (sometimes only 10%). However, if I hand questionnaires out during class time I can usually get 80-90% completion rates.
The problem comes that I end up with hundreds of paper surveys and keying them into a computer takes hours. There must be a better way.
I am actually looking for two pieces:

How can I design the paper survey to best support scanning and having a computer convert the scan into raw data which I can then explore
What kind of software can do the scanning and conversion (I realize this might be a question for softwarerecs.SE)

For point 2, I usually use multiple choice or Likert-type scales so full OCR is not required.
Are there standards for questionnaire design which support this process?

Depending where you are, there's a good chance your institution has a Scantron system, which you could just use.

While academics need to frequently do this, I do not see anything academic specific about the question. I think softwarerecs.se is the way to go.

@NateEldredge Sadly no such system at my institution.

@StrongBad I agree about the software but I believe questionnaire design  belongs here more than there.

While this question is the reason I asked http://meta.academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1696/are-we-migrating-away-too-many-questions, I think it is a good example. Despite my statements in that question, apparently it is not clear to me how I feel about migration.

Have you considered asking your students to do an on-line survey at a specific time in class? The response rate may be more affected by in-class vs. not-in-class rather than on-line vs. paper.

@PatriciaShanahan One challenge is that not everyone has the ability to connect in the classroom. I've got 60-80 students in the room so having them take turns at a laptop that I bring it would simply take too long.

Could you design the survey so that it can be done on a smartphone, without requiring a laptop?

@PatriciaShanahan It's the same issue: I have many students without connectivity. The only connectivity I can depend on is my own (hence MY laptop) tethered to my phone. Too many students with too few devices to accomplish the task in a reasonable time.

Have you considered outsourcing the keying to Mechanical Turk or a similar crowdsourcing service? Then your only job is to throw the stack of forms into a sheet-feeding scanner and upload the images. Obviously you have to consider things like privacy, duplicating the tasks to cross-check accuracy, the hassle of initial set-up, how to pay for it, etc. but I still think it would be much simpler than trying to roll your own scantron-type system, and I suspect the cost would be pretty reasonable.

@Pont I have no desire to re-invent the wheel. I'm looking to see if anyone has solved this problem already. It seems like something many, many people here would use already (paper surveys then scan-OCR).

What if you ask the student to participate in an on-line survey and in order to motivate them to do so, you offer them some points in their final exam? E.g. say the exam has 100 points for all correct answers and you give an extra 5 for those who participate. Down-side: Survey can not be anonymous.

This does really seem like it should already be a point-and-click level of "easy", even if it has restricted options. Though this may also help to explain why so few professors I've ever encountered design and administer their own evaluation forms, especially for large classes!

I can offer some help with scanning paper questionnaires as this is something I've done in a previous job. But, first, I would suggest it's quite involved so you may want to at least revisit improving your 'digital' response rate first.
Audience response devices
One option may be to allow the students to use 'clickers' to respond to questions. I would recommend having no more than 10 questions that can be answered on a multiple choice or Likert scale, which fits your requirements. Our department use something like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audience_response
We've found that about 10 questions can be answered in about 10 minutes.
Re-consider your online/digital surveys
If clickers aren't suitable - for example because the students are not physically situated together - you could consider reviewing your digital survey, purely because it's significantly easier to obtain data from responses. To improve response rates, I tried to follow these rules of thumb:

No matrices, ever.
No more than three questions per page.
No more than six pages.

Obviously this is going to vary depending on how much detail you need, but these reminded me to keep the questions light.
Scanning paper surveys
So, with all that in mind if you still need the paper copy route, here goes. To make it worthwhile you need:

a scanner designed for automatic throughput. That is, a single sheet personal/small office scanner is not going to speed things up for you if you have to manually change ~200 sheets. Something like this Fujitsu ScanSnap might do the trick.
Software that recognises marks. I used Eyes and Hands, which is deprecated and has been superceded by ReadSoft as far as I can tell. ReadSoft can recommend a compatible scanner.
There are some requirements about how you set your paper questionnaire up, and this needs to be precise. Therefore I recommend something like QuarkXPress or Adobe InDesign.
You need four recognition marks for each page, one for each corner. I often found a character from the header or text ok for the left hand side, but on the right hand side if text wasn't justified I needed to manually add some marks.
You need to lay our tick or text boxes quite clearly. For example, it's quite common to see tables without any padding used for response boxes on paper surveys but you need a gap between them for the scanning software to recognise them unambiguously.

With these basic requirements you can set up a survey to be automatically scanned and entered in to a spreadsheet or database.
Clearly this is quite involved so you may be able to find a company who can do this for your commercially. Some market research or survey companies might be able to do the heavy lifting for you.

Your answer is very detailed and certainly covers the points. However, I am quite disappointed in how complex this actually is. Now I am thinking of giving up scanning and auto-recognition and moving towards finding/building a (simple) voice-controlled data-entry app so I can just read out all the answers and still get the raw data for processing.

It certainly was - and probably still is - quite an involved process. I've not used the software @Willie Wong suggests, so that might make things smoother for you. And you could get away with just Word, but it would be difficult. But you would still need to lay out your surveys in a way that was compatible with your software, and get an automatic scanner. Perhaps post an example survey and see if people can help improve it for better response rates, or look to see if a company would do the scanning for you?

In terms of the software solution, as one option I would suggest playing with the AutoMultipleChoice software package if you have access to a Linux computer. The software can certainly output a CSV file with each response recorded for you to do your own data analysis (i.e. you can completely ignore the "grading" part of the software and just use it to capture data).
A few caveats:

As the software is designed for multiple choice exams, each page is barcoded. You will have to convince the students yourself of their anonymity (if that's necessary); this can be achieved by randomly distributing the copies.
The software supports autoshuffling of the multiple choice responses, as well as the question ordering. This can be used to great effect (if you want to avoid biases due to ordering of things), but sometimes you have to pay attention (questions of the type "on the scale of 1 to 5, rank blah" really shouldn't have the answers ordered "4, 1, 3, 2, 5".)
The software was written by French people; the English documentation reads fine but with some slightly quirky word choices and grammar constructions.
Make sure the students use a dark black pen to mark the questionnaire, and make sure they fill in the boxes. Experience has told me that blue ink or pencil, or tick marks or "X"-marks are often missed if you scan them using the default settings. You have to play with the contrast and darkness settings on your scanner a bit to find the right settings.
The scanning can be painful if you have a large stack and not one of those automatic-feed photocopiers.

Have you looked at Akindi? https://akindi.com/  You or the students can print out the answer sheets which are similar to those used by Scantron (you know, the SAT's and such).
I will also add to the notion made elsewhere that with so many kinds bringing computers and smartphones to class that using something like SurveyMonkey.com (or similar) will probably be even easier than going the scanning software route.

This question covers quite a wide area to be comprehensively answered. The first point that comes to mind is "Why are you doing a survey and keying the results in?"
Is it because your institution requires it of you? Do they require the survey to be performed as part of a teaching quality process? Is the desire for the survey your own and on your own initiative? (You just said "for various reasons") I say this because when someone starts doing a task that is difficult I ask "Do you need to do that?"
The surveys could be for you to learn about your teaching in some way in order to make a teaching improvement, perhaps. The surveys could be caused by you performing research on your class students in order to collect data, perhaps. The surveys could be done because you are teaching the students something about the role of surveys in business or marketing, perhaps. Maybe you are doing the survey as a substitute for other forms of summative or formative assessment, perhaps. (... and even more reasons I could speculate on).
I'll address these points in more detail. If you are surveying the class for your own personal teaching quality improvement, then I suggest that typing the data is not necessary. You can collect two kinds of data (qualitative and quantitative). The numerical and statistical parts are probably less important if the only consumer of the results is yourself. What is important are the detailed comments from the students. These involve reading all the responses irrespective of whether the survey was done on paper or online. I have used all three systems over the years (online survey, scanned paper survey, just paper survey) and for qualitative personal feedback it takes the same time to read them all.
If you are surveying the class for personal research data, then research ethics approval comes into play. In most research ethical approval and participant informed consent is required and this usually rules out mass questionnaires of classes of undergraduates! If mass surveys are required then some form of funding for appropriate data collection tools should have been part of the research plan.
If the surveys are part of teaching business and marketing processes then perhaps the investigation of how to do them better should be part of your teaching preparation, because helping students learn how to solve these problems in a business context is what you might need to include in the course, perhaps.
Having challenged the need for the survey or the data entry, lets assume your premise that it needs to be done.
I would next look at the relationship between yourself and the institution. Does the institution expect an online survey of the class and are they providing the web facilities for this that they expect you to use, or do they expect you to organise some form of online form yourself and provide them with the data? If the institution is expecting you to collect the data by a method of your choice and enter the data into their systems then they are leaving themselves open to external criticism of their quality mechanisms. This means that there is no audit mechanism that the data collected about any course from any group of students is valid and meaningful. One should challenge it through the various management and committee structures that exist in an institution for that purpose. The goal would be to either get the need for data collection to be properly supported or abandoned.
If you are trying to improve the response rate to an institutional provided online student questionnaire by substituting a paper copy and inputting the data yourself also sounds suspect. If the institutional data collection permits someone other than the accredited student to give feedback, then again this leaves the institutional mechanisms open to criticisms if any external audit  were done on the data. It also means that you could equally criticise the invalidity or validity of other courses or faculty data as untrustworthy.
(Does my analysis begin to hint that perhaps your question is a little weak in construction, because this feels like answering an undergraduate course assignment from a business school; you can grade me later..)
OK. Lets continue to assume that doing a paper survey to collect quantitative and qualitative data is sensible and valid. What software and facilities are available? There are quite a few vendors that offer surveying capabilities in bulk supported by combined online and paper surveys. These have been adopted by quite a few educational institutions, my own included. A quick google search for such things shows many many vendors. There are online survey makers (some free), there are OCR questionnaire tool makers and those that do a combined job. There are those that do the data analysis for you also, and some that operate at an institutional level. Just so many to choose from. Perhaps you were just asking us to sort through the many offerings - oh! if it were that easy to answer.
Its hard to get cheap and good together. Those tools that provide what you need are often priced in a way that only make it economic for adoption at an institutional level, which is why action for a solution at an institutional level is often the best route to a solution.
I have used (and written) software to handle the OCR and data extraction from paper sources for large populations (~100,000). It is not easy, and also depends on your technical skills and processing and customising your data handling.
The first technical task to consider is the paper handling. How do you plan to OCR the physical material? If you have to use a single sheet scanner and turn the papers by hand then you have a problem. It is not a sensible task for an academic to perform, it is time consuming, tedious and error prone. If you have so few sheets that it is not tedious, time consuming and error prone, then it would still be faster to process the data by hand by reading and calculating yourself! You need a bulk sheet scanner that does accurate paper placement and has high speed sheet feed. These are not cheap. The salaries of clerical staff to do the scanning and paper handling are also not cheap. These are further reasons why solutions are best sourced at an institutional level and not a personal one.
OK, lets continue to assume that we can get the paper OCR processed in a reasonable manner. We need software post-processing. What software to use? It either comes with the package you buy/adopt or you have to customise. How capable are you at the customisation. I wrote textual matching algorithms using regular expression pattern matching combined with structural parsing of the resultant text generated by the OCR. Handling user errors was not easy , but you can structure the questions in a manner that permits regular expression matching to find the necessary glyphs.
For example:
 1. This is a Question?                             X
 2. This does not have an answer

 3. This question has a textual free form answer:
    =====================================================

    Answer goes where we can find it

    =====================================================

Can be pattern matched to detect the glyph mark after a question or the absence of a mark. The problem with real paper is that dirt and coffee stains can also look like response glyphs. Human post processing is required. I had to write a data error checker before I could write a useful data capture phase. If you are not into heavy professional coding, then one must adopt a professional and probably pricey solution or service provider. (Sorry, institutional again).
I also assume you know there is a whole science and scientific discipline to making surveys and questionnaires?
(For example: The Duke Inititiative on Survey Methodology, Odum Institute an UNC)
Perhaps you should be involving some professional input to your problem, rather than us dilettantes? (But then I'm back to an institutional level again)

Thank you for your (long) answer. As for my motivations, they are my own: Doing my own research into different pedagogical techniques. My institution does not care about any of it (in any way). Student opinions I can just read. However, in some cases I want to do some number crunching (multiple choice, Likert-type scale, etc.) and that is just easier on a computer. My needs might be better categories as optimal mark recognition than OCR. I will update my question accordingly.


text:
What guidelines exist for volume of evidence in an undergraduate business assignment?
When teaching undergraduate students, I find freshmen students to be mostly unaware with the idea of including evidence to support the author's opinion. That is, they write something like:

Leaders should be friendly and support those in lower positions in the organization. Being friendly makes others like you and that makes them work harder.

Where it should be more like:

Goleman (2000) wrote about affiliative leadership in which the leader focuses on the emotional connection with the followers. In the ABC case, the leader is likely to be well served by using affiliative leadership due to the fact that workers who feel a strong emotional connection with their manager are known to push themselves harder in order to gain the approval of the manager (Jones, 2008). This implies that the leader should not only be affiliative but should also withhold compliments from the subordinates in order to maximize output.

I remember my teachers telling me the guidelines was 80/20. 80% of the writing should be from the student and 20% should be from external sources, which support the student's opinion.
Meanwhile, I have read quite a few papers from students where they basically have a citation for every sentence. This makes me wonder if they actually know much. After all, if 80% of the writing is from academic sources, it shows that the authors of those papers understand, not that the student understands. However, I also consider that the fact that the student knew which text to include should count for something.
Then I start thinking about plagiarism. If the student has simply quoted their way through a paper (with proper citations) then someone else could submit the same paper and it would not count as plagiarism because everything is cited.
Is there any generally accepted guideline on the percentage of writing in a student's written assignment which should be from the student and what percentage should be from other (hopefully academic) sources?
I realize that this might vary by field. My field is business management.

Nice question but I fear it would greatly vary from field to field. I don't think it would be easy to pinpoint an optimal ratio that would be applicable in all scenarios

@posdef I suspected as much, that is why I included my field, though I wonder if there is a guideline that spans fields.

Context: my Bachelors degree was in Management and Electrical Engineering (double major).  Though it was several decades ago, I think I understand your field and setting.  My current PhD field is Computational Social Science and it includes some Organization Science.
I agree with your general intuitions, and the 80/20 ratio seems reasonable but I would definitely not be presenting that as a rule or even as a guideline. Instead, I would say that the nature of the paper and the arguments should dictate the use of evidence and citations.
Papers that analyze foundational ideas might only have one or two citations -- the original seminal papers.  But there might be so many ideas in those papers that the student should devote considerable space to examining them.
In contrast, papers that summarize or survey a sub-field will have a very high number of citations and quotes from the research literature.  The students task is to present the survey as a cohesive whole (if it is one) and to show how the various lines of research tie together or diverge.
Rather than focus on citations, I think its better to focus students on the principles of argumentation -- with analogies to legal arguments and formal debates.  Too often students will believe that their points are "obvious" and "common sense", or maybe "best practice", and thus requires no justification or support from evidence.  Disabuse them of those notions through Socratic questioning: "How do you know that?  Why do you believe that?  How would you persuade someone who holds the opposite view?" and so on.
Once their argument has a structure, they can begin assembling evidence to support it and defend it from criticisms. That evidence might come from published research or other sources.  But they shouldn't include any citations where they do not need support.  They also need to consider the credibility and relevance of the evidence.  No matter how authoritative a citation might be, it shouldn't be included if it is not highly relevant to the student's argument.
Here's a test that students can apply after they have written their paper, in a final edit pass:

For each citation or piece of evidence, ask:

Would my argument be weakened if I removed this?
Can I replace this with stronger evidence?

For each point in the argument or assertion, ask:

Is this adequately supported with evidence or citations from the literature?
Is the evidence and support both credible and relevant?

Have I, as author, fulfilled my role in this paper, given the nature and goals of the assignment?

Hope this helps!


text:
Can I refuse a stipend during a PhD program?
I was admitted to a US PhD program (in computer science, if that matters) with fellowship + stipend.
I am getting a separate stipend from my government (which is higher than the university stipend), but they forbid me from getting an additional stipend from the university.
Is it OK to ask the university to just pay for my tuition (with the fellowship), and refuse the stipend?

Make sure your government is ok with that! It may be not obvious, but they might be forbidding you not only from getting a direct stipend, but also from getting direct or indirect benefits. So check out very carefully what exactly they forbid you and what they allow.

Yes. The university will generally be happy to work with you to make sure your tuition is covered and call the money whatever they need to. As you are saving the department money, you may also ask the department to provide some additional travel or research funds instead of the stipend.

You may have to make sure you talk to the dean of grad studies at your department about this. Sometimes the person with administrative duties will not know how to handle this and may tell you it is not possible when in fact it may be possible to work something out.

Also you're getting a conversation with the dean about how you're making his program more cost efficient. He'll like that.

@corsiKa I am not sure how Hadi is using Dean, but at least in my experience Deans in the US and UK do not get involved in this stuff.

Usually, this would work, but not always.  A Sweden-based scientist I know declined a PhD student who came with their own funding, because he did not want that there would be two classes of PhD students in his group.  The externally funded PhD student would have a different amount of money, different rules for vacation, sick leave, and other benefits, and he considered this to be detrimental to the group.  Therefore, he declined the student.
(At least, this was the reason I was told.  There could have been other motivations that I was not told.)

I can only imagine the response of the department head to that one. My departments promotion committee would not look to kindly on "I turned down that funding because I was worried about the inter-personal issues it would cause."

@StrongBad It is definitely not uncommon to turn down externally-funded students in Europe. What gerrit mentions is one reason, another is that sometimes there are concerns about the quality of the externally-funded student. Afaik, deans or department heads do not typically get involved in such cases. (also, the decision power of department heads over professors is more nominal than anything in many European universities, anyway)

@xLeitix yes, my UK department turns down externally funded students fairly regularly because of concerns over the quality of the student. I see no problem with that. We do not regularly turn down externally funded students because of inter-personal issues.

Perhaps the reasons this professor told me were not the true reasons.

@khayal Sadly this is not an accurate description, at least in some European countries.  There are often fewer applicants that places people would like to fill


text:
Names/salutations for international students of unknown gender
I often receive e-mail (typically inquiring about studying with me as a graduate students) from students, especially foreign students, whose gender/pronouns I can't easily tell (they haven't specified). (For people from the Americas and Europe I can usually guess reasonably reliably, but I get fuzzy when we get to names from Asian/African cultures). Let's say their name is "Foo (given name) Doe (family name)". I normally start formal e-mails "Dear [whoever]".

Applicants don't typically have a PhD, so I can't address them neutrally as "Dear Dr. Doe"
"Dear Foo" could work, but I generally like to be a little bit more formal with people I don't know (could argue that the rank differential [professor/prospective student] makes this OK?)
"Dear Doe" is not a form of address I ever use with anyone else, seems weird
"Dear Mx. Doe" is unusual in North America (and seems uncommon anywhere outside the UK: (Wikipedia)
"Dear Mr./Ms. Doe"?
Look up the name on the Internet and make a guess based on the region of origin?

Is there a best practice?

Never guess somebody's title; it's a part of their name, so you should only address somebody by a title they have chosen to be addressed by.

What's with the formality? If they do come, we'll be on a first name basis. A plain "Hello" is fine.

"Hello, " works for me

@kaya3 The only alternative seems to be guessing that they are happy for their title to be omitted.

@EspeciallyLime If somebody would be unhappy for their title to be omitted, then they should not omit their title when telling you their name. They can hardly complain that you call them by the name they call themselves. If they introduce themselves without giving their title, then you are not merely guessing that they are OK with being addressed without their title; you have evidence they are OK with it.

For a comparison, I think addressing somebody by a guessed title is as wrong as if somebody introduced themselves to you (in writing) as Alex, and you respond by addressing them as Alexander when their name might be Alexandra, or Alex might not be short for anything. If somebody has given you their name then that's the name you address them by, don't make something else up yourself.

@kaya3 It has always been normal to sign a letter with one's full name but no title, even in times when omitting a title in reply, or using someone's given name without explicit permission, was unheard of.

The Wikipedia article says "Mx" is "accepted by the UK government." That does not mean it is commonly used. I would guess that 99% of the UK population have never used it, and would have to guess what it meant. Compare that with the fact that everybody in the UK knows what "Ms" means.

@EspeciallyLime Assuming you are talking about people who would be unhappy to be addressed without their "Dr." or "Prof." title because that could indicate disrespect, it seems quite normal for people to include such titles in their email signature. In any case, if somebody is upset about being addressed by the exact name that they put in their own email to you, and insists you should address them by their title (which they didn't previously tell you), it is pretty easy to just say "sorry, I didn't want to assume - I suggest you include your title in future correspondence so that people will

know how to address you." That seems to me to be the absolute safest option because if anyone is offended that you didn't assume something about them, then they are just going to get offended by a lot of benign things and you can't really do anything about that - whereas it is more reasonable for somebody to be offended if you do assume something about them which turns out to be incorrect. Of course, sometimes somebody's title can be inferred (rather than guessed), e.g. if somebody signs their email "Jane Doe PhD" then it is presumably safe to address them as Dr. Jane Doe.

There are many gender-ambiguous "traditional" names in the UK and US, and many more "modern inventions", For example Alex, Andy, Charlie, Hillary, Jackie, Jo, Leslie, Noel, Robin, etc.

If it's just email, do you even need the formality of a salutation?  I just go with "Hi," myself, if I use anything at all.

I like to maintain a little bit more formality when responding to someone I don't know, especially if I'm acting in an official capacity (e.g. as graduate chair; I didn't mention that in my question)

@Marc Glisse - There are huge cultural differences in this. Getting an informal reply to a formal email could be really offensive/distasteful to some. It could make them feel they are not taken seriously or are not respected.

as a non-binary person in the UK, what the wikipedia article is referring to is just that the government offers it as an option on dropdown lists online (and quite a few other large businesses have followed suit). Most people are still unfamiliar with it, or have just seen it as a vague curiosity. I've never experienced anyone using it for someone who's gender they do not know, only ever for people who have actively chosen to state that it is their title (usually because they are non-binary)

For a salutation in communications written in English, I would suggest using:

Dear F. Doe,

or

Dear Foo Doe,

These salutations seem pretty gender-neutral (gender-inclusive) and sound natural to my ear. They avoid any assumptions on the gender or title of the applicant. This is probably close to the form that you are currently using already.
Justification for this particular best practice: Gender-inclusive writing: correspondence (Linguistic recommendation from the Translation Bureau, Government of Canada).
From the same source, it is clear that a "best practice" might change for communication in a different language. For French, they would recommend:

Bonjour,

or name-specific:

Foo Doe,

However, language dependence is just a side note for this particular question.
Other guidelines also exist, and if your educational institution or country has them, they are definitely worth taking a look at and considering for use. But choosing some guideline that targets gender-inclusivity is what one should do nowadays (unless something obviously flawed is discovered about a certain guide at some point).

Indeed, this is what I do when writing to editors of magazines, for instance...

I suppose it does assume you know which name is to be abbreviated, which can sometimes be unclear, e.g. with Chinese names, who sometime use native Chinese order (Family Given), and sometimes flip them to Western order. I'm not even sure if would be normal to call someone e.g. "Mao Z."

@AzorAhai-him- True. And then a "Dear Foo Doe," is perfectly good I guess.

When responding to emails to people I have not met, I usually copy the name from the signature and add "Dear" in front.

This is the best answer - the simple principle is that somebody's name is what they tell you their name is.

Especially if it's unclear which part(s) of their signature would be "surname", or if that even makes sense.

This answer is good but I accepted @AntonMenshov's answer because it goes into a little bit more depth.

@BenBolker This answer is actually better because it works for people who only have one name.  I've gotten emails from Javanese students before.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mononymous_person#Mononym-normal

First, even in cases where you feel you can guess the gender, I suggest you to avoid using Mr or Ms because, first, there are exceptions that are easily misgendered and, second, you don't know the pronoun of the recipient. As an example of the former, Andrea in my country is a masculine name whereas in other countries is feminine. Many an Andrea has been misgendered along the years (a few years ago a former student of mine who had moved to Switzerland told me that he started signing off his emails as Andreas to avoid this).
Guessing which is the family name and which is the given one is also risky because in many Asian countries the family name is written first, but some people use the Western convention when writing to international recipients. In 2006, while organising a conference, I addressed many participants in the wrong way, until I realised about the exchange from the signature of someone I was familiar with.
So, in most cases, I've been using Anton Menshov's solution, with full name, for quite a while. For students, I also use

Dear Student

A bit impersonal but safe.

In fact, it's happened numerous times in math that the author ordering has been non-alphabetical (our standard) because even collaborators confused family vs given names of East Asian coauthors! (see https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/150414/19607)

Your former student, Andreas, may find that some people assume that's a female name too.  (Source: personal experience)

@AndreasBlass fwiw, that has never happened to me.

@AndreasGrapentin: If I had to guess, it might be more common for people to wrongly assume "Andreas" is a female name in regions where "Andreas" isn't a common name in the first place but "Andrea" is.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


text:
Should I pursue my PhD dream based on my Undergrad experiences?
I'm an Undergrad student from one of the Indian Institutes of Technology and I still have a year left to complete my Dual-degree course in Computer Science(offers me M.Tech & B.Tech by the end of June 2014). I've a not-so-proud-of gpa of 7.5/10 which is around 3.0/4.0 which I assume is pretty low when compared to my seniors' gpa who've taken up a PhD. But, what I've experienced from a last summer's industry internship and the previous summer working under a professor doing research is that I really can't work in the industry for a longer time writing Software as making money is the least of my concerns. The research work yielded in a rejected publication though I was way more satisfied than the internship
I worked under another professor the next winter, published an article in a highly reputed journal in the field of Complex networks and working on another publication this fall. I'll be working along with IBM in a research internship this summer and hoping to do well. A bit of a late realization haunts me day-to-day. Needless to say, my transcripts suck. So, to dodge all the obstacles that I created myself, I'm planning to do research work extensively for the rest of my Undergrad time. Also, I'm thinking of joining the industry after my graduation for about a year or two before PhD for two reasons. One being, my work experience can be of help and can make up for my poor transcript and second being that I can reinforce the industry-is-not-so-interesting belief. The second being not so important.
So, is pursuing PhD from a reputed university still in my scope? What suggestions can you offer for increasing my chances that I can do during my last year? Reading a lot of questions in this forum site, I believed this might be a good place to vent my rant. Thanks a lot in advance.

A 3.5+ is generally preferred but a 3.0 and some solid test scores (GMAT/GRE) can really bump you up in the admissions line.  Keep working on your publications and when it comes time to write your personal essay talk about how you have published already but really want to develop those skills so you can be a prolific researcher.
If you love research, and the creation of knowledge, then go for the PhD it will give you the best training and opportunity to advance your research.

GMAT for grad schools? In what disciplines?

GMAT is used primarily for business schools.  Some CIS programs are housed in the business schools with MIS programs

My cents:

Academia is broken ([1] and other articles).
However, you need to show your future employer that you are not just a Adderall user [2].

Thus, I would get a Master's degree in ECE. Now, why ECE and not CS. I consider CS (as well as physics, chemistry, etc) to be a fundamental science. Industry usually is looking for more applied field, which in the case of CS is ECE (IMHO).
Now, in US, is possible to get Master's degree in ECE for free. Apply for PhD school, then drop out with Master's, preferable with thesis option. This way you will show your future employer that you can do: independent research; describe and present your results.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5429651
[2] http://www.cnn.com/2011/09/01/health/drugs-adderall-concentration

This is not an answer and is not related to the question in anyway.