text:
Make Google Scholar find public access versions of indexed articles
Google Scholar helpfully nags me about providing public access versions of my articles in order to fulfill their funding mandates. Unfortunately, it sometimes indexes the restricted-access version of my article without finding the corresponding public access version, and I don't see any way of telling it about the existing public access version.  Instead, I see only an option to upload a PDF.
I would prefer not to upload the preprint to Google Scholar, as I don't want to have to maintain multiple versions of the public access preprint.  It's also nice for people citing my work if there's only a single preprint with a single DOI, rather than multiple possibly inconsistent and possibly DOI-less versions.  (Of course, I'd rather they cite the official published version, but they may not always have access to it.)
For instance, here's one of the entries in the "Not available anywhere" section of the public access page in my Google Scholar profile:

Following the "REVIEW" link pops up the following dialog:

And then following the "MAKE A CORRECTION" link reveals the following form:

The form allows me to specify a reason for not uploading the article, but "a public access version of the article already exists on the web" is not among them.  In this case, a public access preprint of the article, with its own DOI, has existed on Zenodo since 1 September 2020.
Is there any way of telling Google Scholar about the existing public access preprint in a way that will (a) allow visitors to my profile to click through to their choice of the official published version or the public access preprint, and (b) dismiss the public access nag message?  Would it suffice to manually add the public access preprint to my Google Scholar profile as a new article, and then merge the new entry with the old one?  Or is there an easier/better/alternative way?

Update on 2024-10-24: It seems the real problem here is that Google Scholar only selectively indexes Zenodo.  Some background and discussion on why this is the case and why the issue probably won't be resolved soon can be found in this issue report for the Journal of Brief Ideas, a journal that publishes through Zenodo.


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What is the best policy to deal with students using their cellphones inside the class?
Is it OK to prevent students from using their cellphones during the lecture by stating that in the syllabus?
and how to deal with students who insist on using their cellphones during the lecture?
(Most of what they do is either to text message or to browse the internet. Often I see those who are used to use the cellphones during the lecture smiling or showing something on the phone to the person next to them which might start a side chat. Is that OK to ignore?)

Ask them to finish the lecture - if they aren't paying attention, it must be because they know the material, hence can give the lecture :-)

Is there a reason why you don't want them to use their phones? For me it really doesn't matter what they do as long as they are not disturbing anyone. Some people learn faster and, even if your speed is fine for most students there usually are same faster and same slower students. In addition, as long as they are not disturbing anyone they are only wasting their own time.

I second @TheAlmightyBob comment: let them using the cell phone as long as these are kept silent. In the good ol' days when cell phones had not yet populated the earth, students used to distract themselves during the lessons with games like Tic-Tac-Toe, Connect Four or by reading  books and comics. So, what's the difference with cell phones? If, instead, a cell phone starts to ring, I firstly give a warning; then, if it happens again, I ask the student to leave the room.

I have a syllabus rule against "gear" that makes noise.  Anyone who wants to quietly ignore me is welcome to do that.  They're grownups; let them make their own decisions to flunk out.

@TheAlmightyBob Allowing them to use their cell in silence usually will cause a start of a side chat related to something on the phone

Modern cellphones are pretty good ebook readers. Students can use cellphones to read course material.

@JukkaSuomela It is not about what they can do with their cellphones. Those who use the cellphone use it for entertainment and passing time and show stuff to their classmates in the classroom which distract the students around them

@Moa Is the class mandatory?

@PiotrMigdal 10% attendance

@Moa Then it seems that they go for social reasons rather than lecture; too bad that they are disturbing others. (If it were mandatory, I could understand that some people learn fast or already know the material.)

What is the best policy to deal with students using their cellphones
  inside the class?

In my opinion: Just ignore them. As long as they are not disturbing the class I don't see a point in doing anything.
There are many different reasons for using a mobile phone during class, maybe they have to check something you said in the course material, maybe they just want to check their time or maybe their learning speed is faster than your teaching speed.
What you are trying to fight here seem to be two things:

The students are distracted by their phones.
The students are distracting someone else by talking to them.

The first thing is, in my opinion, not your problem. They are old enough to decide for themselves if they want to pay attention or not. You are providing them with the opportunity to learn something and if they take advantage of it is up to them.
The second point is (again, only my opinion) a valid point. However, I think you have the wrong approach here. You can't possibly know if banning mobile phones achieves that goal. The reason for using mobile phones is, most of the time, boredom (for whatever reason) and if not allowed to distract them with their phone they might try to distract them by talking with their neighbor. Therefore, a ban of mobile phones might be the cause for more side chats. If you want to reduce these chats maybe you should try it more directly.

Is it OK to prevent students from using their cellphones during the
  lecture by stating that in the syllabus?

The question should be: Is it OK to try to prevent students from using their cellphones. Here you have (as already said by @Nicholas) a problem of enforceability. Students are still going to use mobile phones (most of them (including me ;-)) don't even have a watch anymore) and then you have the problem that it will be hard to enforce your rule.
Again, I think you are trying to fight two things with your mobile ban: Distraction for themselves (which is, in my opinion) non of your business (and most students would just switch to something else to distract them) and distraction of others by talking to their neighbors.
If you want to fight the second point you should, in my opinion, try to enforce this directly, e.g. by asking them if they have a question (or, if it happened more often, to tell them to shut up or, in the worst case, just kicking them out) or, as @Nicholas suggested, ask them an easy question.
Personally, I think it is impossible to distinguish if they are discussing something relevant to the course (which, in my opinion, is great and should not be banned) and irrelevant chats which are a (minor) distraction and should be banned, therefore I tend to ask if there is a question.

One of my high school math teachers used to make us leave backpacks, phones, even calculators in the front of the classroom during his lecture. This allowed us to spend less time on lectures, but with more dialogue, and gave all of us a feel for how to help each other. Sure, some of us were smarter than others, but when smart students got bored they could raise their hands and ask tougher questions, and when students fell behind, other students who were closer to the same level could offer their own explanations. That wouldn't have been possible if we'd had access to cell phones or even search engines, and it allowed him to more effectively pace his lecture according to class needs.
I don't think there's a universal answer to this question - it's like asking for a 'best' chess opening . . . but a few things to keep in mind:

Cell phones don't just hurt attention span, they hurt class feedback, causing not only a clueless student, but a professor who is largely clueless about 'why' the student is clueless.
People with phones don't have any idea how distracted they are. Not remotely. Even people who know will repeatedly underestimate the problem.
The same students who complain about your anti-phone rules during the first week of class will blame you for their lack of understanding during the last week of class.
Students who are smart enough to get bored of the lecture are often capable of identifying the needs of other students and helping to move the class forward - unless preoccupied by cell phones.

And on the flip side, a student who is determined to use a cell phone but isn't allowed to use it will invest extra focus in hiding the activity. At that level of determination though, I'd have to agree with Almighty Bob's assessment that the student really does deserve to fall behind.
Good luck!

University is not high school. Students will not behave like adults until they are treated like adults. You may be able to force some knowledge in the class, but that will not magically permeate at home, where they are supposed to study.

Regardless of student age, a professor owes his students an honest opinion about what strategies will get them through the class. If the professor holds the opinion that cell phones will prevent the students from understanding the material, he needs to make that clear. I didn't say he had to treat them like children or punish them, I said he needs to keep four listed points in mind, and I don't think your comment specifically rebuts any of them.

Stating that playing with the phone in class is fine, it is yet another thing you want to teach them. Force it is completely different; and in my opinion, hopeless.

You can't help other people during a lecture, or at least not the lectures I had. You just copied the stuff off the blackboard and did your best to listen to the explanations.

By stating that you forbid students from using their cellphones in a lecture in a formal manner, you are making a rod for your own back. Some (many? most?) students will continue to use their cellphones during your lecture. Unless you draw attention to this when it happens, students may feel that the rules you have specified in your syllabus are, instead, suggestions, and some of the other rules may similarly be broken.
If your goal is to increase attention, there are other techniques. For instance, make it a habit to engage with the class by asking (easy) questions. Direct one of these at a habitual cellphone user. Even if the user is fiddling with his/her phone at the time, wait until the silence in the class becomes more engaging than facebook/twitter/email. He/she looks up. You have an enquiring face. What's the answer? Don't know. Oh. Anyone else? Point made. Move on.

I often dim the lights so they are easier to spot and thus shame.

One of my colleagues says that any student found using a phone during class will have their final course graded lowered by two letter grades. While that seems draconian to me, one of my students says NO ONE has a phone out during his classes. Don't know if he has ever had to enforce it, but the threat seems to work.

I'd like to see that hold up in a grade grievance --

Regarding the use of cellphones in class-if I were an instructor, I would make it clear on the first day of class that they don't need to be on cell phones during the class. It can distract others, plus it shows disrespect for the learning environment and the teacher. Stating the issue of cell phones during the lecture by stating that in the syllabus is an excellent approach and needs to be enforced!

You said "needs to be enforced". But, the OP is asking how to deal with students who do not comply.

(am not a professor, but am well versed in common sense)  My approach would be along these lines:
As long as such activities are not impeding the ability of other students to learn, I would ignore students who are focused on their phones.  It is completely within their rights to choose to ignore a lecture, or material that may help them pass a course.
If, however, said phone activity is causing disruption I would ask the student to either put the phone away, or finish the activity elsewhere.
You cannot save everyone, best to focus on those who clearly want to be there.

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How do I set goals as a graduate student?
I'm a young graduate student in the physical sciences. As far as I can tell, the purpose of graduate school is to learn to become an independent researcher. This means becoming a good writer, solving novel problems, publishing good papers and becoming an expert in your field.
The trouble is that these goals are horribly vague. I have no clear idea how to get from my current skill level to that of an "independent researcher". There is some mix of learning from a textbook, reading papers, attending classes and coming up with new ideas. But I find it hard to break it down into subtasks and be deliberate with my time. Instead I find myself wandering from textbook to textbook, learning this and that, solving this small problem and that small problem, wondering if I am really spending my time on the right things.
In many other domains, it's easy to tell if you are getting better on a short-term basis. For example, in bowling you can practice and see if your score goes up. In chess, if your rating goes up. In music, if you're hitting the notes. But in research there is no such metric. This leads me to feel discouraged and unsure of my progress and myself.
What are general, realistic research goals that I can set on a daily, weekly and monthly basis?
Some of my ideas are setting a target for: number of papers read, number of practice problems solved from a textbook, number of hours spent writing about a technical topic, number of hours worked in a state of deep concentration.
The most relevant question I could find is here: Is it possible to measure/evaluate one's progress or development in quantitative terms?

Don't stress out. Trust whatever program you are in to guide you. If you are early in the program and are still taking classes, do the best you possibly can in those classes. If you have extra time, do things like sit in on seminar talks or talk to people about their research. "I find myself wandering from textbook to textbook, learning this and that, solving this small problem and that small problem" sounds like exactly the sort of thing a first or second year graduate student should be doing. That is the only way to get a decent breadth of knowledge.

Nobody can tell you how to set goals. Because goals have to work for YOU. For some people vague goals work, for others they don't. Some people are stressed out by trying to reach a long term goal, others prefer not having short term goals. First goal: Get settled. Figure out how it works for you right now. (That will change anyway during the process.) It is a process. Don't over-think the process, it is supposed to be fluent.

The trajectory of "progress" and how to measure it depends heavily on your field, or even your subfield, so it's impossible to give general advice about benchmarks. For example, I've heard many people swear by writing x words per day, but this is an approach which works well in the humanities and much less well in theoretical physics.
Check the CVs of people you admire in your field--especially more recent PhDs--and look at the timing of their publications and other accomplishments. Find out what kind of expertise and experience went into those accomplishments. Then work backwards from there to where you are now.

Becoming an independent researcher is hard, and is nearly impossible to do on one's own, which is why one has a Ph.D. advisor, to give structure, guidance, and advice (hence the name!). Plus, in the physical sciences, one typically is part of a research group that also serves as an intellectual home. Even if you're a beginning student, taking classes and not yet part of a group, it's very good idea to start to associate with faculty and more senior students; it's (probably) enjoyable as well as useful.

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What is the difference between DBLP and Microsoft Academic Search Graph Dataset?
Recently Microsoft has released a dataset, Microsoft Academic Graph. I have used DBLP dataset before. I want to know what is the difference between these two datasets.

I am not very familiar with both data sets. But it is pretty clear to me that the Microsoft Academic Graph (MAG) data set is much more comprehensive than the DBLP one in at least one aspect: field of study. As far as I know, DBLP data set covers only computer science subject domain, whereas MAG's coverage goes far beyond that. For more details, see this relevant MSR paper.

@AyushiDalmia: You're quite welcome (feel free to upvote and/or accept :-).

Aleksandr is correct, dblp only covers computer science. On the other hand, dblp is able to curate its data manually by human editors while Microsoft needs to rely on algorithmic entity disambiguation, (Although, to the best of my knowledge, some results from dblp are regularly imported to Microsoft Academic Search, too.) So the choice you have here is essentially either using a smaller, focused data set with a somewhat higher accuracy in identifying its entities and in correcting errors (dblp), or using a much larger, more expressive data set with a slightly lesser accuracy (Microsoft),

@MRA: Thank you for your comment. While it is targeting the OP, I read it with interest and I agree with your points. Just FYI: when you want somebody to be notified of your comment, either comment directly to their post, or tag them by name (using at-name format, as above), if you comment to somebody else's post (the post owner will always be notified).

Microsoft academic search dataset is part of the initiative by Microsoft for providing searchable interface to users for searching through the corpus of research data in all areas of research. This includes publication, year, author or any such relevant information pertaining to the dataset. Whereas, DBLP dataset as an academic initiative from the university of Trier to create a dataset regarding the research publication in area of Computer Science. Therefore, scale and scope of both the dataset is different.


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Requesting LORs from the same recommenders for a different field
I might be in a rather unique situation. I earned my bachelor’s degree from my university in May 2014. Since my junior year of university, I was convinced that I wanted to take the LSAT and apply to law school. I had originally planned to apply to law school in the first semester of my senior year and start attending in fall 2015. However, after taking my first LSAT in October 2013, I decided to focus on my senior-year GPA instead of spending the entire fall semester studying for the LSAT. I retook the LSAT after graduating and applied to a few different law schools. I always knew that law school was expensive, and I heard that it is useless to go to law school these days unless it is a prestigious school. After getting accepted to a law school, I made the ultimate decision to not pursue a legal education mainly due to financial reasons and job prospects. The school only offered to give me loans and gave me only two weeks for an enrollment decision after emailing me the acceptance letter.
I changed my career path and will apply to a few different master’s programs in the field I would now like to study.
Currently, I am working at a part-time job, while making preparations to apply to graduate school this fall. When I was applying to law school last fall, I had requested recommendation letters from two different professors. I am just wondering, but would it be possible to ask these same professors again for recommendation letters? Would they think that I look like an undecided, wavering person and thus, be reluctant to write another letter for me? Also, would I just candidly explain my one-year gap after my graduation in my statement of purpose?

A professor who cared about you will be happy that you have come up with a way you think will work for you to embark on new and exciting studies.  //  Also remember that parents (mostly women, but men more and more often) face gaps in employment and studies all the time, and Academia has learned to deal with it.  It's okay to have a gap.  This isn't a race.

Would it be possible to ask these same professors again for recommendation letters?

Yes, it is possible.

Would they think that I look like an undecided, wavering person and thus, be reluctant to write another letter for me?

If they don't want to write another letter, they can decline.  You can briefly explain what you've been up to and should explain briefly why you decided to pursue the new field of study.  It's possible your recommenders might see you as having stronger skills for the new field than for law, in which case your letter might actually be stronger than before.  Much of what they wrote might be general enough that they won't have to change much from the prior letter if they do choose to write you a new one.

Also, would I just candidly explain my one-year gap after my graduation in my statement of purpose?

In your statement of purpose, while not trying to hide or paper over your one-year gap, focus on why you want to move forward in the direction you're applying for.  If you had experiences or learned things in that one year that helped inspire, drive, or prepare you for that field, it may be helpful to mention them.  Help your reader understand why you want to work in the field you're applying for, and think about what those reasons are (esp. if you have reasons that go beyond just job prospects).


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Examination review courses and the (wrong) motivation of participants
Short summary of the situation
Our faculty offers special courses after the end term exams and before the resit for students who failed the first attempt and/or did not participate in the final exam. These courses do last for eight work days six/seven hours each day and we aim to provide learning environments for the students where they can repeat the contents of the lecture and exercise together. Each group has one assigned tutor who is there to help and guide the students, especially for individual problems.
I am currently working in the team that is planning those courses and we want to rework them slightly since we noticed that they aren't working as expected.
Im comparison to the tutorials during the semester (1.5h for an exercise sheet per week) these review courses take double the time. The tutors who participated in the review courses then started to split the days into two blocks of about three hours each where they just did the same sheets from the tutorials during that time. Near the end, that is the final 1.5 days they started to exercise with past exams.
Other tutors did organize their courses such that they were almost reproducing the lecture instead of exercising a lot.
In general we are giving the tutors the freedom to structure their courses on their own and they should do what they think is suitable for their groups. However the tutors should really support the students during the preparation for the exam, maybe give a short introduction or overview about particular topics and maybe discussing more complex topics with everyone. The tutors should create a learning environment where the students can work on their own or in small groups and help where it seems necessary.
Unfortunately all ideas to restructure and change this a bit had a huge mistake. All my arguments on why to introduce X or change Y in a specific way were based on the naive assumption that the students who enroll for the courses actually want to learn something. The question is whether this is really true or whether they just want to pass the exam with the least amount of effort. If the latter is true, the tutors who make the students think they are prepared enough for the exam are highly esteemed while the ones who promote competences are not. This is a wrong mindset of course and we want to change how students think about this and how the courses are being held.
Only if we achieve clarity we can have lasting change in a sense that we want to communicate on what the courses should be about or not. That is why the courses I held were different than the others. I usually prepare a bunch of new exercise sheets about all topics for all eight days and I let the students work 75% of the time alone or in small groups of two or three people. Every now and then when there is a completely new topic or something that has to be introduced properly I am presenting it alone to everyone to make sure that they are all on the same page. However most of the time I am letting them work, do own research or ask questions while helping most of them personally.
Unfortunately the students who joined on the first day, hoping they would learn everything from scratch without prior knowledge were no more present in the following days or were disappointed as mentioned above.
In the end I am actually wondering whether you have handled such situations as well and whether you have some input on how to properly communicate and at some point change the expectations of participating students in the long run.

Questions and Issues

About the tutors - We want to communicate this problem to the tutors and even though they are pretty free on how they organise their courses we would like to find a "common denominator" and be on the same page about the pedagogical idea behind these courses. Is there any way to find a compromise between "do whatever is the most suitable for your group" and "please don't just repeat the entire lecture and don't do all on your own and motivate them to work and actually learn something"?
About the students - We'd like to reduce the number of students having the mindset of "well, even if I haven't done anything so far, I can just attend the course and know just enough to pass the exam". The participants think that this is what will happen and what they need, but it isn't. Since the tutors are pretty free we are not signalling the intentions of the courses via the tutors to the participants. So what are possible options to clearly state the students do have a perception of the courses that wasn't intended?

I am having troubles understanding what concrete, answerable question you have. Can you please make this more explicit in an edit?

@xLeitix Please refer to my updated question - hopefully the edit makes it a bit clearer.

Your current title refers to these sessions as "Examination review courses". I have a hard time seeing any way around the fact that this is signaling that these sessions are, in fact, preparation for an exam.
One option would be to terminate these sessions if one didn't want to ever "teach to the test".
A second option would be to transition the main course to be focused more on conceptual discussions of the mathematics, and not mostly drill exercise sheets. Then the post-exam review sessions could still be focused on prepping the exam (as advertised), and you'd have the desired distinction between the two sessions. But I'd argue that trying to fix the conceptual issues in the post-exam sessions is putting the horse after the cart.
It is a fundamental problem that conceptual discussions prepare students better for the next step, but teaching-to-the-test gets higher pass rates (and happier students and administrators) at the current step. Someone recently cited a paper in that regard that I wish I could find again.


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When do you switch a student membership to a non-student membership for a professional society
Students enjoy discounted memberships to many professional/academic societies. However, membership renewals rarely align with one's degree date. So when do you switch your membership from a student member to non-student membership? I see two obvious possibilities

When your degree is conferred, and you are no longer officially a student

or

The first renewal notice you receive while not being a student

Surprisingly, it seems like very few societies address this issue in their guidelines.

For what purpose are you switching?  Because there is a higher membership fee? Because full members (and not student members) are entitled to some benefits that you want to use?

I strongly recommend embracing laziness: adjust your membership the first time when it becomes relevant.

Personally, I would wait until the next time that you need to renew your membership.

Each society has probably its own rules. The first option seems difficult to enforce for a society and I guess they probably are flexible.

The IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) mentions this in the Qualifications for IEEE Membership:

Graduate Student members, upon graduation or upon reaching the total cumulative eight-year limit as a Graduate Student member (whichever occurs first), will be transferred automatically to member grade.

And the change of membership, i.e. Member Grade Elevation:

Student elevation is handled twice a year - in June and August. Once an IEEE Student member or Graduate Student member reaches his or her graduation date (based on information provided by the student), IEEE elevates them to the next grade of IEEE membership for which they qualify.
The first elevation is done in June (Student members or Graduate Student members with graduation dates between 1 January and 30 June).

That sounds a bit contradictory "Graduate Student member (whichever occurs first), will be transferred automatically to member grade" and "(based on information provided by the student)". That isn't an "automatic" process.

Yes, you are right, it's 'semi-automatic'.

The American Mathematical Society has a program where many institutions pay for their graduate students to be members. The AMS writes on the relevant page:

Please contact the AMS once you know that your institution will no longer nominate you. You can choose the appropriate dues level at that time. Special offers are always available for former graduate students.


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How to create incentive for students to take surveys?
I started to do questionnaires and surveys to assess my teaching methods and the learning gain of my students. How to convince the students to participate in these surveys? Is it OK to give small course credits for taking these surveys (say 1%)? otherwise, what are the incentive for the students to take these survey?

Why force them? If you force them them the results are less likely to be relevant - and “bribing “ them with grades.... So, I just identify those students who have a serious mature attitude and ask them - usually in a group 2 or 3 of them, and say “I’m considering changing X” what do you think? They will say “oh thats good or don’t change all of it - just consider this bit” . I find the feedback from the serious students - even asking students who did the course the previous cycle / semester - is always constructive and you can discuss options which they consider constructively .

What you can or cannot give credits for should be regulated somehow. At least at my university (in Germany), you cannot give any credit for this. Also, enforced feedback is not going to have the same quality. People just tend to select the most neutral option for anything and get over with it. Or they might even be annoyed by it and that can show. I know you are not exactly enforcing it, but not being able to get full credit for a course unless you give feedback can feel like it.

@SolarMike "Serious" students often have a different perspective from those less passionate about the subject -- and those students are often precisely the ones whose responses to various teaching methods we are most interested in. Getting a more complete sample is always good.

@jaia and the not so serious students give responses looking for an easier ride...

@SolarMike Yes, but at least they are giving responses. In my experience, they do give their honest opinions, which is all you want in a survey.

@jaia so the difference between what you look for and what I look for is you want "quantity" and I want "quality"...

@SolarMike Yes, because if my question is, "What do the students think of X?", I need a sample that's as large and as representative as possible. You can't draw any conclusions from an unrepresentative sample. In informal conversations, quality rules -- I often talk with my best students. But for more formal assessments, you have to get as representative a sample as possible or your study has no validity.

I think that giving some small course credit for a survey like that can be a good idea. Taking the IRB protocols as a model, you might give course credit for the survey, and also some alternate assignment for a student who has some point of principle that makes them not want to disclose personal info like that. Then you've really covered your bases.
In my own case, I give a study survey like that after the first exam. Since this happens to be in sequence and in the same format as three earlier quizzes, I think many students assume that it's for credit and complete it without me saying one way or the other (it's not, and has a different title, but it serendipitously works in my favor that way).

I am at a program at a public university in the US where we often ask students to fill out these kinds of surveys. To get the broadest participation, it is customary to either make the surveys worth a small amount of credit (especially if the class has a "participation" category in grading) or give a bit of extra credit, say 1-2% on the final exam. Personally, I prefer the latter.
Of course, this credit should be awarded regardless of what the student says. Do you use course management software? My university uses a custom version of Moodle, which includes a Questionnaire module. You can set this up to automatically award participation points with no connection to what the student said. Other course management software may have similar functions. You can also use SurveyMonkey and download a list of responders.

At my university, there are standardized surveys for this kind of thing that are run by the student association. They contain both general satisfaction grades (on a scale from 1 to 6) in different categories (quality of lecture, use of media, ...), and a free-text field for written feedback. The survey is filled out on paper and then returned to the student association, who does the analysis. This is done by default in every course of our department.
The aggregate results of the satisfaction survey are made public for everyone to see, and a more detailed report is sent to the lecturer.
The survey is filled out during one of the last lectures, where we usually reserve a 10-minute timeslot in the beginning for this. We usually get close to 100% participation, for a number of reasons:

Culture. This is normal at our institution, so no one questions it.
Trust. It is run by the students themselves, so no one thinks "oh no, I can't write anything negative, what the professor recognizes me?". This is also helped by the fact that many of our lectures have 50+ and some have 200+ students in them.
Transparency. 1. and 2. are hard to emulate at your university, but if you promise to release the aggregate results, it may drive participation, as this helps other students decide if they want to take a course (I have decided both for and against attending a number of courses based on the evaluation results I saw from previous years).
Feedback. Some of our faculty also take the time to respond to the feedback in the last lecture (if the results are delivered in time) or in a course-wide eMail (if the results are provided late). There, they answer common questions, give justifications for specific decisions that were criticised, and commit to specific improvements that were pointed out. This shows the students that their concerns are really taken seriously, and that their answers aren't just ignored without reading. Extra credit if you start off the next iteration of the lecture with "based on previous feedback, we have decided to change X."

So, while 1. and 2. will be infeasible for you, maybe providing Transparency and Feedback for the students (and committing to this before you have them fill out the forms) would drive participation, regardless of extra exam credit.
Also, if you like taking the hard route, you could try to get your student association / any organized student body to organize these feedback things for all lectures in the department or even the whole university. This will obviously be a non-trivial change and may take more time than you are willing to invest, but would probably be an improvement that all students would be thankful for.

These are good (I think most schools have something of the sort) but because they're standardized, they typically won't include the questions a particular instructor most wants to ask. And they're done at the end of the term, which is too late to be of use until the next time the course is taught.

@jaia In our case, the instructor can add up to three questions (there are fields for "instructor question 1, 2, 3") orally while the sheets are filled out. The fact that they are done at the end of the term is a curse (you can't improve earlier) but also a blessing (the students can give feedback on more aspects of your lecture). We also like to do a separate anonymous poll in our eLearning-system after 4 weeks and after the exam to get more feedback, which usually gets less participation, but still gives some good info (especially the one about the exam - which questions were good / bad).

I'm going to go the other way, and say this is a bad idea.
If you were trying to do research with the survey, rather than just evaluation, the answer would be an absolute 'no'.
A problem I see with this even for this purpose is that to allocate marks you need to record who has submitted the survey (and if you don't want to reward blank/stupid submissions, also who submitted which one). That is not a good method for getting the students to say what they really think (although it might reduce the number of deliberately inappropriate comments).

-1 Not true. It's common, esp. in psychology, to have a default course requirement that students participate as subjects in research; but have alternative assignments for those who opt out to get the same credits. One example university policy here: http://faculty.fgcu.edu/koneil/sona/alternative.html

@DanielR.Collins It might be ok where the research is something that is not affected by whether the person has been paid. When the topic of the research is something dependent on expressed opinion, paying the subjects would impact the results. Also, I can see being a research subject as a legitimate learning exercise for psychology students, as they would benefit from understanding how it feels to be in a study.


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Undergraduate recitation/discussion session: when is it (not) counted as a credit hour?
I am a member of a curriculum committee where we want to improve our undergraduate physics program. One way of doing that is to include weekly discussion sessions with our courses.
After looking at the undergraduate physics programs in some universities, including top ones, I have noticed the following:

Such sessions come under different names: recitation session, discussion session, tutorial session, problem session. Are they all the same thing? if not then what is the difference?
The total number of credit hours for a course that has 3 hrs lecture and 1 weekly discussion session sometimes is listed as 3 Cr. in some universities or 4 Cr. in other university. What are the criteria to include or not to include that session in the course credits?

(Replies are welcomed from math, chemistry, biology, computer science, engineering, geology, etc.)

Every university is different.

@JeffE I understand that universities are different. But there must be a reason why some universities count the weekly discussion session as a credit hour and some do not.

Every university/department has its own reasons, most of which can be described as "tradition".

Just add a couple more points that may be more applicable to you as a committee member.
Usually, most academic degrees granted by universities are accredited by some overseeing organizations. These organizations evaluate the school's syllabus, infrastructure, and other personal and academic factors, and determine if they would continue their acknowledgement of the degree's representativeness. You can scout around and see if your department has some of these accreditation processes, and learn more about the missions and criteria of those overseeing organization.
Second, check your school's and department's mission/value statements. When proposing a new course, these statements would come handy as a supporting point. Similarly, if your department has a good academic competency checklist, you can also refer to that list, and evaluate if, overall, your institute's degree is enabling these competencies, and if a discussion-type course can further strengthen so.
Third, understand the process of approving a course. This process varies school by school. However, most often there should be a committee (probably called curriculum and academic committee, etc.) that meets regularly to approve new courses or remove old courses. Ask if you can sit in one of those meetings and learn how the process happens. Meeting with the chairperson or secretary would also be helpful.
Fourth, if you happen to be a student representative, don't forget to use your connection to solicit students' ideas. Be very present and actively seek inputs (even it means standing out at a large lecture and ask them to fill in your online survey, etc.)
All these should give a good preparation.
Now, your question is difficult to answer because it does not just depend of school, but also is an evolutionary process of its own within each of the schools. A credit-counting discussion course might be a result of an informal journal club started a couple decades ago... likewise, a current informal discussion could be a remnant of a credit-counting course many years ago which was crowded out by expanded syllabus or was cancelled due to constant under-enrollment. You'd have to check with some more senior faculty members to understand the ins and outs. And here, knowing the school culture and history would help.

Thanks for the informative answer. I am not a student representative, I have a PhD :)

@Moa, oh my apology. Edited my answer.

As JeffE states, there aren't really any hard and fast rules about when recitation sections count for credit and when they don't, because of the multiple overlapping credit systems used.
For instance, in the "Carnegie" units system, such as that used by MIT, the amount of credit associated with a class is strictly dependent on the number of hours expected to be spent on a class per week. For instance, a 12-unit course requires 12 hours of work per week on average, while a 9-unit course would be less than that. The number of hours spent in class is included in the total, but does not strictly govern it.
Other faculties may have their own rules for deciding how much a class is worth. My undergraduate institution, for instance, had a fairly strict reckoning system: 1 "unit" for most classes, 1.5 for language classes, 0.5 for labs "bundled" with a lecture course, and 1 unit for labs "separated" from a lecture course. Recitation and discussion sections did not carry any extra credit.
So it basically is what the tradition for your school in assigning credit should be, and what regulations your university has with respect to this matter.

This MIT system you described is often used but with some small differences. For example at my university (and almost all in Belgium) it's calculated by dividing the amount of expected working hours by 25.
For example, I have a course of System Analyses for 4 credits, meaning I'll have to spend roughly 100 hours studying it.
A lot of universities have this rule "1cr = x hours of work" :)

@DylanMeeus: What you're describing is the ECTS system, which assigns the credits based on total work for the semester divided by a factor (at my university, this is 30, not 25). The MIT/Carnegie system represents hours of work per week, which is a little different.

Yeah, it's used with some differences as I've mentioned :P But still based on hours of work. :)
Also I might add there is a limit of 66credits / year in most courses, so that should be taken into account as well by the university.


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How widespread is the use of "last author = teacher" on student papers?
In our lab (at Nankai University, in China), students often write papers where they are first author.  However, we use a convention where the last author signifies the student's teacher.  I feel that this is uncommon.
I have not heard of this done outside of our lab, but maybe this is more common than I would guess.
Question: How widespread is the use of "last author = teacher" on student papers?

By "teacher" do you mean the PhD supervisor? In such case, it's quite common in many fields.

Yes, but maybe undergraduate, masters, or PhD, and not necessarily as an official supervisor [e.g. if a student just visits].  (It's the word commonly used here, e.g. "Teacher Liu".)

In my experience undergraduates seldom do enough work to be put as first author, but for a few master's students and PhD students it's quite common to have the supervisor last, sometimes even in cases where the supervisor has done enough work to deserve joint first authorship.

I automatically assume every last author is the lab head or supervisor. I know not every field does it, but I'm so used to it now.

In my field mathematics, we typically only add the supervisor if he had a substantial contribution to the paper, and we list people alphabetically...

I propose we make this a community wiki (or at least the answer), or else we'll just have dozens of answers with people saying whether or not this is common in their fields.

My understanding is that in China, after the second co-author, all other others are there for 'guanxi' purposes -- to keep up working/personal/social relationship.

Does this answer your question? What does author order indicate?

As pointed out by others in the comments, this is very common in my field (Operations Research); at my institution this is the norm and is common in other disciplines.
A professor told me during my PhD that the marginal benefit of having their name first was small compared to having the student's name first.  Moreover, papers coming from a masters or PhD usually deserve to have the student's name first anyway.
I'm sure the community will have various opinions but I find this a good practice unless there's a clear contribution level issue.

Updates:
It is common to place students first then rest of contributors in alphabetical order. Further, as @BryanKrause points out (comment), it may be beneficial to not have your name first if it helps make the case you're capable of supervising the research process.

This is also true for the biological sciences. For someone in a senior role, like a professor, I'd argue that having more last author papers is more important than them having any first author papers (not merely that there is marginal benefit to first authorship) - the latter sort of raises a question of "Why aren't you supporting a student to do this work?" (occasional first authorship and reviews/editorials would be exceptions)

@BryanKrause, great point.  I've added this to the "Updates" with attribution.

@BryanKrause That is assuming the supervisor did any actual supervising - or even properly read the draft and didn't just wave it through...

In many social sciences (Anthropology, Psychology, Sociology) last author signifies the supervisor of the student's work, including Ph.D. or Masters supervisor, postdoc adviser, sometimes undergraduate supervisor of an honors thesis, or a graduate student in that role. In Engineering and more applied social sciences (industrial-organizational psych, human factors, or applied vision science) it also often is extended to be the individual who holds the grant and funds the work.
I have seen this convention cause feelings of unfairness or even suspicions of misconduct among those who arrive in Engineering labs from fields uninitiated to the practice. I usually advise these individuals that 'when in Rome'...

Norms differ between fields. In economics, the supervisor typically is not added as an author for a student's paper, unless the contribution of the supervisor was at the level of a coauthor's. The benefit to a student of having a solo-authored paper relative to a coauthored-with-supervisor one is usually greater than the benefit of another paper to the supervisor. In the recommendation letters for job applicants, the thesis committee members go to great lengths to emphasize that the job applicant's papers (solo or coauthored) are independent work and the supervisor or other coauthors had minimal input.

Very field dependent, and possibly even regionally dependent. In my field, the last author is the person who contributed least. First is the person who wrote the paper, then in decreasing order of how much work they put in, including supervisory work not directly related to the paper (so teacher/supervisor would probably be second or third).

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Is it acceptable to look up a student on the Internet to find out whether I have a conflict of interest?
This is a follow-up to this question, which I ask due to debates arising in the comments. While I ask it in the first person to keep things simple, it is not based on a real experience of mine.
One of the students in my course shares a last name with another person, I depend on (say a supervisor or teacher of my own courses). This name is not very common, so I suspect that they are related and I have a conflict of interest.
It is acceptable that I look up the student’s name on the Internet to find out whether they are actually related? I am not talking about an intensive search here, just what is publicly and directly available on social media and similar.
My current thought about this is:

If I do not investigate or find out that they are related, I would report a conflict of interest.
If I find out that there is no connection, there is no conflict of interest and I save all the time of the above step.
If I do nothing, I may be accused of knowing (or suspecting) the connection and having a conflict of interest afterwards. So this is not an option for me.

I am mainly interested in the ethics of the situation. Assume that there are no official rules covering the situation. Some commenters on the question linked above considered this stalking.

@DSVA: Arguments against this were brought up in answers to the other question. Briefly: You could to disclose confidential information or impose unnecessary pressure onto them.

First of all, let’s get something out of the way. You, and me, and everyone reading this, has on occasion googled the name of someone we know - a friend, colleague, student, professor or whatever - to see if we can find out more about them. Some of us do it more frequently than others, and some of us are fine doing it out of sheer curiosity while others feel a need to rationalize their behavior with arguments about trying to avoid conflicts of interest... but all of us do it. So, if it’s “stalking”, then everyone’s a stalker, and the word “stalking” ceases to have any meaning. Which would be a shame, since there are in fact genuine stalkers out there, and it’s sadly necessary to have a word to describe their behavior.
Now, getting to your specific question: you ask about ethics, but this simply isn’t an ethics issue. You can ethically google whomever you want whenever you want. It’s what you do with the information you obtain once you have it that may or may not be ethical. It may also be inadvisable to google your students, or generally to develop the habit of googling lots of people, for reasons unrelated to ethics. Personally I try to keep my people-googling to a minimum so that I don’t walk around feeling that I’m a nosy person who gets into other people’s business that doesn’t concern me. (I also worry that I might find something I would be better off not knowing, and then I’ll have to either pretend that I don’t know it, or admit to the person that I know it because I googled them - pretty awkward either way...). In any case, I don’t think it’s unethical, and if you feel like you have some good reason to do it, I think it’s perfectly fine.

Interestingly your reasons unrelated to ethics are what I would consider ethical reasons. You are concerned about making the other person (and yourself) feel uncomfortable, i.e., avoiding harm to others and yourself. You are not arguing with standards, technical reasons, etc. It may not “heavy” ethics because the stakes are low, but it’s still ethics. (Also see this Meta discussion.)

@Wrzlprmft interesting meta discussion, thanks. I guess I’m on the side of those who don’t consider any question about interpersonal relations to be related to ethics. For example, seeing your comment pick at my logic caused me a momentary discomfort. Should we then have a debate about whether your comment was unethical? No, I don’t think that would make sense... It’s like what I said about “stalking” - when a word is used in such a loose sense that it starts applying to almost everyone or everything, it loses much of its meaning and usefulness. Let’s leave “ethics” for more serious things.

To clarify, in my comment above, “don’t consider any question ... to be related to ethics” should be “don’t consider every question ... to be necessarily related to ethics”. Some such questions are, of course, related to ethics.

For example, seeing your comment pick at my logic caused me a momentary discomfort. Should we then have a debate about whether your comment was unethical? – We don’t need to have a debate. However, your potential discomfort being outweighed by the benefit of having this debate was an ethical conclusion. I do not make this ethical decision for every single comment (I once made this long ago), but we can consider the ethics of posting critical comments this way.

I guess I’m on the side of those who don’t consider any question about interpersonal relations to be necessarily  related to ethics. – I do not claim that every question about interpersonal relations is about ethics either. For example, one might ask how to convey a rejection in the least hurtful manner. This question has a clear goal (minimize suffering of the student) that is not finding the most ethical choice. Whoever asks such a question has already made the ethical decision to invest time for the benefit of the rejected and this is not up for debate.

I'd report a conflict of interest based on my speculation about the unusual name, without doing any internet searching at all (which would be inconclusive, anyway). This avoids the risk of stalking, while accurately expressing (to your higher-up) your concern, and not leaving you vulnerable to later accusations of having acted on some conflict-of-interest motivation (since you reported your concern).
So, in brief, I'd think it is unnecessary to do any such internet search as you propose.
Given that lack of necessity, if one would nevertheless like to find out more about one's students, that does verge on stalking ... even though perhaps the object of one's interest never knows about it... and it could be argued that indulging in web searches regarding some of your students (how do you choose...?) prejudices your treatment of students.
So, best to not do it. Just report your concern, without snooping.

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