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Having team-members split the grade among them by their personal contribution
In a project-based class the submission is in teams of 2 (self-assigned teams).
In most teams, the grade is the same for both members.
However,  in some teams, I suspect that most of the work was done by one member, while the other was a "free rider". The suspicions are based on GitHub commits and on interaction during the semester. However, I do not have clear-cut proofs since I do not know how they split the work among them at home. I can test them personally, but this is not sufficient since it is possible that the free-rider knows what the other person did.
I am not allowed to change the grade structure in retrospect, so I thought of an idea that is based on mutual agreement: if the grade that the team deserves is X, I will tell them that their total grade is 2 X, and ask them to agree on a fair division of the grade among them. If they do not agree, then the grade is just split equally between them as usual. Effectively, this gives the free riders a chance to behave fairly and give some points to their friends who did most of the work.
The advantage is that the team members know much more than me what work each of them did. The disadvantage is that this may cause quarrels among team members. Is this a good idea?
EDIT: Thanks for all the answers. I am now convinced that this scheme might create psychological and social problems  that are better avoided.

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Is it by any chance a negotiation class?

I am not convinced that everyone participating equally is always a desired goal.  If students are self-motivated they will have varying levels of motivation.  The primary benefit of participation in the exercise should be the learning acquired and the grade should not be very important.

related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/31934/how-do-project-supervisors-address-the-freeloading-problem-in-group-projects

A problem I see here is that this scheme may motivate people to divide the points "tactically". Say our group project is worth 10 points and I only need 5 for my goal (which may be the least passing grade or the best grade or whatever). Then of course I would take only 5 points and give 15 to my collegue (which is more than the project is worth).
Also, it might motivate people to look for their partners tactically: If I am somebody who does not trust other people and wants to do everything themselves (something which should ideally be discouraged in group projects), I choose the person who cares least about their grades as a partner and get much more points than my project is worth.
Moreover, with this setting, you treat the grades as some currency. students will find it okay to do less/more work because they can themselves discuss and haggle about the grade they got. IMO this is also not something which should be encouraged.

I have seen students doing this tactical point division already for projects where there was only a small portion of their points for them to divide (the scheme was: the group grade is some number X. The group may decide to assign grades from X-1 to X+1 to the members, such that the average is still X.) So you should expect this especially when the points are dividable without further restrictions. Furthermore, if you trade grades as currency, students may try to use other forms of goods or currency to barter for a higher grade among group members.

@TheoreticalMinimum: of course. I am assuming OP has througly checked that. Also, the question unfortunately does not mention a country (although I asked about the student's culture in a comment) etc., so it is hard to talk about legal implications.

Very important considerations. Indeed, there can be two students of equal ability, one of which does the work alone, and the other collaborates with a good-hearted free-rider. With my scheme, the other student will get a higher grade for the same work, which is clearly unfair.

I like this as an experiment in ethics, but not as an actual grading scheme.
If you allow team work, you will have a small number of people getting better grades than they might deserve. And...so what? It’s not intrinsically different from making homework part of the grade, where friends will help each other. Your job is to teach and assign grades you deem reasonably, not perfectly just.
That is to say, I’m no fan of any such scheme involving students “dividing the pie,” your self-declared research interest. I for one would have neither felt comfortable nor able to write meaningful evaluations for all my class members, as was suggested here too. Some people might stand out, and you might enjoy sharing that with your teacher; but I wouldn’t have enjoyed pointing fingers at those struggling. And for many I’d have no true opinion. That is not even to talk about personal feelings about peers almost inevitably shading a student-given grade.
I don’t think the benefit of being marginally more just makes up for the hassle and risk for trouble such ideas involve.

This isn't the sort of thing you should introduce after the fact. If you make it part of the course design, known to students at the start, then it might work, though it might just cause more complaining from the students. Teams can "share" the work while doing very different things. Each can consider their own contribution to be essential, while their teammate(s) consider their own to be more important.
But changing the grading structure of the course midstream to the potential disadvantage of some students is questionable.
But, my answer to your earlier question also covers this sort of situation: Peer Evaluation. It lets you learn about some things, but retain control over outcomes.
But repeated questions on the same issue implies that you need to rethink your course design.

I re-read your previous answer; basically you say that the students should evaluate each other verbally, while the teacher gives the final numeric grade (in contrast to my suggestion which is that the students grade each other numerically). But how can I translate the students' verbal evaluation to a numeric score in an objective way?

Actually, they evaluate one another in written form. Telling what they contributed and what the others (or at leas the most valuable members) did. They give a narrative that you evaluate. They don't need to share there evaluation with the others. And note that it is peer evaluation, and not peer grading.  As for objectivity, just assume the grades will be equal unless some fairly vast discrepancy appears in the evaluations. Assume all contributions are valuable and don't quibble at the edges.

Suppose there is indeed a vast discrepancy - how can I evaluate how much grade it is worth? I ask because students often expect a justification for every single point of the grade.

What would happen in your own department if the head took the entire salary budget and told the faculty to divide it up "equitably". How well would it work. What is the expected outcome?

Are you a teacher or a grader? What is your main goal? I think you have lost sight of something important.

Also, you say that "They don't need to share there evaluation with the others". However, if one team member gets less than the other, he/she will certainly know that it is due to a bad evaluation. Isn't it better to just require that they discuss  among them and come to an agreement? Why let them write evaluations "behind the back" of their peers?

My own experience with peer grading is that I learn positive things about students, not negative ones. Some people who are relatively invisible to the professor are solid contributors to the team.

Actually, a student should only know the grade of another if that person reveals it. Don't get into a competitive grading game. It is destructive and immoral. Students, as learners, should be rewarded for their accomplishments. If the system is one of punishment for failings, you need to rethink it.

The idea of peer evaluation is interesting and potentially useful for gaining information about my students, but I do not think I can use it for grading. At least in my culture, students expect an objective justification for every point deducted from their grade. This is why I thought of a scheme based on mutual agreement: you have your objective grade which is X, and you can agree to deduct some points from it in order to be fair towards your friend who did more work than you.

Given that the teams are self-assigned, most teams will consist of people that are friends/know they work well together. These teams will most likely divide the grade equally, even if the actual work done wasn't necessarily a 50/50 split. These teams probably don't contain the free-riders that you are worried about.
Now for the other teams, these will contain the free-riders. However, free-riders are not really known for, after riding freely, agreeing to a low grade. The goal of free-riding, after all, is to get a high-ish grade. What will you do then?
Like Buffy mentioned, peer-evaluation is an option. A professor during my Bachelor's actually had short 1-on-1 meetings with all students at the end of the course. It was mentioned that even if a student did not participate in a specific part of the assignment because the team mate did, they should understand what the others did. They first asked them which part they focussed on how they contributed. After that, students needed to explain the part that the others did. I discussed this with the professor later, during my Master's, and they said that they (practically) always, based on the peer evaluations and these five-minute meetings, could tell who actually contributed and understood what was going on. This will be a (very) time-consuming approach, depending on the size of your classes.

"The goal of free-riding is to get a free grade". I disagree. In my studies there were some free riders (also some who were free riders only for one course) with the primary goal to pass the course. (But in my country, grades are not seen to be very important -- thus the oP should disclose their student's cultural background).

This is the approach we used in a course I TA'ed (the work of interviewing was split among the TAs and the professor.) The rule of thumb we used was: as long as both team members understand the work, we award them the same grade if we think the imbalance in effort was no worse than about 60/40. If we think it was worse than that, then it goes to the professor to handle. (This was rare.)

As someone who would 'carry' in group projects, here's what I figured would improve my experience: explicit minimal division of workload.
John does data tables, Steve writes analysis, etc. This way, everyone's incentivized to contribute something of substance, and John doesn't have to answer for Steve's horrible analytics. What's "minimal" is something the professor decides.
If an individual lacks a mandated part, and isn't graded for respective part, then the 'carrier' is burdened further to clean up others' mess. In one of my labs, a professor actually did and did not take this exact approach for two separate projects but same teams - and in one which he did, at least in my team, everyone's contribution greatly increased (and mine became reasonable).
Not suitable for all forms of work, has caveats, but is an option.

This sounds like a good idea, though it requires more micro-management, since this minimal workload may be different for each individual project.

I really like the idea.  I generally was enough of a carrier that unless I knew someone else in the class I trusted to be a decent partner I simply went it alone--doing the task was easier than doing the task and wasting time on coordination.  Projects that can't be divvied up decently should be nuked from orbit.

@LorenPechtel The worst part is if it matters for more than grade reasons (e.g. jobs), you won't get due credit. I solo'd my final project (which I believe everyone else did in groups), which was very challenging, but I could say without dispute "It was my work". The "but" factor's undue for the 5% of work others did.

I think you need to ask yourself what your learning goal of the group assignment is.  For example is it to (a) learn or reinforce some specific content, (b) learn to work as part of a team, (c) learn project management, (d) to produce something that will then be used for further learning, or (e) something else.
Once you clarify that, it will be more clear how you should approach grading.  Very rarely is it that you want to actually grade the individual student work by directly grading the project. (Do you really expect this game this group is currently creating to be marketable? No. Do you expect this video to go viral? No. )  What you need to grade on in the above scenarios is (a) whether the student knows the content, (b) whether the student  learned about how to work as part of a team, (c) whether the student knows principles of project management, (d) was a usable product produced (but the main assessment in this case will be on what they learn in subsequent use)  or (e) whatever else it is that you want the individual students to have gotten out of this work.
So what does this mean about grading.  First, most of the time in regular classes (I'm not talking about senior projects or something like that) the direct grade on the project itself should not count for very much.   Instead each individual should be assessed on the learning outcomes (and they should be defined in a way that you can actually do this).  For example, you could (a) assess the students on the content knowledge using a test, (b) have each student write up a short essay on what they learned about working in a team, (c) write up a document where they relate their experiences in the group to what they have been learning about project management in the lectures and readings for the course, (d) assess if they master the subsequent material, (e) something else.
In other words,  you have to design your curriculum in a way that achieves your outcomes and lets you assess this at the individual level since your learning outcomes are at the individual level.

People in my department have used some variations on this, but not quite as blunt as the scheme suggested. Firstly we are generally working with teams of more than 2. Secondly the majority of the grade is given to the team overall. We then give the team the option to share a small number of extra marks amongst themselves as they see fit. They might share them equally, or they might give a particular share to the team member that they feel has worked the hardest.
A second possibility that say been used is to award 80% of the grade to the team, but then ask each team member to write a (very) short reflective piece on their experience of the exercise, that is the final 20% of the grade.
Of course, this must all be prearranged and not announced post-facto. In my university it would all have to be in the module description form, submitted for approval by the faculty board a minimum of six months in advance.

However, in some teams, I suspect that most of the work was done by one member, while the other was a "free rider".

This is very common - in academia and in real life. You can't make this go away, and in fact, it's useless to try penalizing this through your suggested grading policy change. It is unrealistic to the extent that you'll not only get backlash, you'll be overruled by your department etc. Just learn to live with the fact that a group project means a group grade.
If you want to reduce the extent of "free-riding" - I doubt you really have any other recourse than individual projects.

Given the OP talked o GIT Hub I presume this is a coding assignment. When I see dependencies in work load, I bring both of the pair into my office separately and ask them to give me a code review. It very often comes apparent who has slacked off, but if not, issuing a group grade is justified because the learning outcomes have largely been met by both, that is they understand the problem and its solution. However, maybe only one student got the benefit of figuring it out and their career will speak for that.

My experience of this is that it is helpful to survey the group members asking each of them who contributed what to the project and whether they felt that the other members had done their share of the work.  When I do these surveys I nearly always find that all groups report that there was a fair division of work.  I also make a point of asking questions of the various team members when they present their work.  After those two steps, I can feel fairly confident in giving everyone on the team the same grade.
Sometimes I do find a problem, either in the responses to the survey or in responses to questions during the presentation.  In those situations, I meet with all of the students in the group and try to clarify who did what.  If there's a free rider, I will lower that student's grade.  I don't raise the grade of other students in the group.


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In France, what are the practical differences between the "Maitre de Conferences" position and the other potentially-permanent positions?
I've a few questions about permanent positions in the universities in France. As far as I'm aware, there are three main types of permanent positions in France:

Maître des conférences: ("master of conferences", or MCF), which is a teacher-researcher position.
Chargé de recherche: ("chargé of research", or CR), which is a researcher's position, very coveted, with teaching being optional. Offered by CNRS.
INRIA permanent researcher's position: very coveted, offered by INRIA. Research-only like the one at CNRS.

My questions are:

Are CR and INRIA permanent positions necessarily more competitive than the MCF ones? I do know that MCFs are also not easy to get by any means (and I myself have neither).
If you get an MCF position, is it possible to switch or transfer to a CR one after a year or two?
Can MCFs do teaching and research in different departments? Such as teach math and research computer science?

It's hard to give a general answer, but yes, they are more competitive. CNRS/INRIA positions are nationwide competitions (in the sense that a MCF is tied to a university, while a CR is tied to CNRS/INRIA which are national institutes, so a CR can request of change of assignment and move to another French university rather easily). They are also intrinsically more attractive than MCF positions: you get no teaching duties for the same salary, and you can still teach if you want to so long as the department has some teaching vacancies not filled by permanent teaching staff -- and they almost always do.
It is technically "possible" in the sense that there is no legal obstacle to it. The only way to do this is to get your MCF position, then apply like everyone else to a CR position when it opens. Maybe things are different in CS (I'm in math) but I do not know anyone who has managed to do it, or even expressed the desire to try. Recruiting committees know that giving a permanent position to a postdoc is life-changing, while giving a permanent position to someone who's already got one is only a change of assignment. They heavily lean towards the first.
Yes, it is possible. I have several colleagues who do it.

Just a note, the positions offered by the CNRS and the INRIA are the same, "chargé de recherche", and have the same statutes. It's just a different employer. CNRS and INRIA are both the same kind of legal entity, an EPST.

Due to the French government defunding universities over the years, recruitments for MCF are decreasing, so conversely, the number of applicants per job posting is increasing. On average, there are between 50 to 150 applicants for an MCF job, depending on your field.

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How do I politely tell a student to take a shower?
There's a student in my class who obviously has some serious body hygeine issues. To preface, this is a fairly packed class -- about 60 students in a small lecture room.  The class is about 2 hours long. The problem has been so bad that when the student comes up to ask a question the stench hits hard. The problem is so bad lately that in the past month, people will leave a seat distance away from this one person, even standing up for the entirety of the lecture just to avoid sitting next to this person when the only seats available are next to the person.
I don't know how to approach him and to ask that they take care of their body. Or will I be a prude if I do try to get him to shower? Maybe it's a unique body issue that he can't fix (unlikely), but I really want to solve this before exams come up, which are going to cause issues. No one has come up to talk to me privately about it but the problem is incredibly obvious.
What should I do?

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Pros and cons of having your doctoral degree on our ID
In Germany and Austria¹, it is possible to have your doctoral degree noted on your passport, official ID (Personalausweis) and similar documents of identification.
Whether allowing this is a good thing in general is debatable but the subject of another question (that is arguably too opinion-based for this site).
Having acquired such a degree, I fail to see any strong arguments for or against making use of this as an individual (and the Internet does not provide much searchable information on this issue either). Obviously, it flatters the ego and can be used to impress some people, but then it involves some effort and may come off as arrogant to others. But I am wondering whether there are some situations where there is a more clear advantage or disadvantage or whether I am grossly misestimating the situation.
Note that I do not ask you to make this decision for me. I am fully aware that I have to weigh the advantages and disadvantages myself. I am just asking for arguments.

¹ which seem to be the only countries where this is possible if some websites are to be believed
Finally, for the search engines: Was sind die Vor- und Nachteile davon, seinen Doktorgrad im Personalausweis vermerken zu lassen?

I would start with thinking about who you will be showing your id and in what situations.

I don't have enough experience in these things to give an actual answer, but I'd assume that, at least in Austria, some people might find it strange to the point of suspicion not to find the fact that you're a doctor in your ID

I did this in Germany. And I got the impression (but cannot prove it) that the Dr in your passport is helpful when dealing with real estate agents or landlords, by letting you appear to be a bit more "serious" and making you a bit more financially credible in their eyes.

@CrepusculeWithNellie Real estate agents want to see your passport?

I did add the degree to the passport, and I can tell you that so far it only had disadvantages (though no severe ones).

I added my master degree, and did not need a new passport since. So now that I have my PhD, its not even accurate anymore.
In China, authorities looked at my passport and me very sceptically, when I did not add my degree to the train ticket, and thus the name differed between passport and ticket. They did not understand my explanation, but let me pass on the train anyway ;)
Most time I book a flight ticket, I can only select Mr/Mrs as title. So I have to think everytime, whether I should add the degree in the name field. Usually I don't do it, hence again the ticket and the passport show different names. It caused a strange look in America, but no serious problems.
My new colleagues (in a foreighn country) looked at me like i was crazy, when they saw it.

What country are you talking about? I am pretty confident that it’s not possible to add a master’s degree to a passport in Germany (not sure about Austria, as they are even more obsessed with titles).

I did it in Austria. Yes, it seems we are slightly more obsessed with titles than others ;)

My husband did it in Germany and in this experience it has the slight advantage that people will subconsciously tend to respect you more and treat you slightly better, but only in Germany and Austria. In the rest of the world it has no effect. Also in Germany it seems to be expected that you put your Dr. (PhD title) on your ID (but not the lower ones like MSc) so the confusion can be the other way around when you sign your emails with Dr. Whoever and then present ID without the Dr.  people can get the impression that you're using a vanity title.

In Denmark everyone seems to be on a first-name basis. I have the feeling that adding the degree to a mail I send would already be very weird up here.

@Sumyrda: Actually, according to the German ID law (http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/pa_g_1986/__4.html), the Doktorgrad is the only academic title that may be added to your name on your ID. But saying that it seems "to be expected" that you do that is a gross overstatement. Actually, I know of no Dr. holder of my generation who has done so, but this decision may depend on your motivation to obtain a Dr. in the first place.

@Schmuddi Different perceptions I guess ;) My sample size is small (around a dozen) but all German Dr. whose ID I've seen had the title on their ID. I only mentioned that adding the MSc would be unexpected because I've never seen anyone do it but Lot mentioned that they did it. However, when my husband first had his PhD he didn't immediately change his ID right away, and he really did get a strange look and a question about it - I think from someone in a bank - because he had the title on his business card and in this E-Mails but not on the ID, so that part is purely anecdotal evidence.

@Lot You are flying with the wrong airlines.

To add to the existing answers: Systems which automatically process your passport (such as certain airline online checkins, e.g. United for international flights) might have problems matching the name on your ticket with the name on the ID, and refuse to complete the online checkin, which can be a nuisance (e.g. since you have to queue up at a counter). For the same reason, specifying a title on the ticket can be an issue, since not all airlines' systems are able to process that properly.

I'm a German, living and working in Austria, and I never added my "Dr." to any official document, and I always left the "title" fields blank, in paper or computer forms unrelated to my job.
I consider the use of academic degrees in Germany and Austria outside academia rather anachronistic.
I do not see any advantage of using it.

I recently discovered this possibility to add doctor (or professor) in many documents in Germany as I moved to Berlin. So I asked about the why and impacts to my colleagues (I am working in a research laboratory; so it was several doctors from different countries at the table).
Every foreigner at first agreed on how pretentious someone has to be to ask for adding it anywhere. Germans agreed and told no impact except if you are doctor in medicine then it can be useful in plane (as the company should then know there is a doctor on board) and for your neighbors in case of a true emergency. And for same reason they recommend to do it for medicine doctors (hence, it would make sense to do it for nurses and firefighters as well, no?).

It is also a possibility, and indeed common in Hungary. However, as Hungarian culture is much different from German, I can list some advantages I heard about, but they might be less relevant for you.

I have heard about police officers being more lenient when they see "Dr." in your driver's license. I even have heard about getting away with speeding because of that.
Medical doctors are also generally more friendly when seeing it in your ID. (Please note the level of the Hungarian health care here.)

Actually these are (imho) because lawyers in Hungary are legally required to put "Dr." into their ID, so when they see it, they are afraid you will sue them.

Many countries do not have a place for any form of title or honorific, but for those that do so, I can see only a handful of pros or cons.
On the pro side:

Some people, after seeing your document, may treat you better than other people in anticipation of a better outcome for themselves, such as a tip or good review.
It may serve as verification of a degree in some employment situations.
If you were emigrating to a nation that permitted certain high value professions in, the document may assist in verification.
If you have a common name, it may better identify you so that you may not be mixed up with someone on a no-fly list or similar thing.

On the con side:

It may identify you as a target for thieves if a hotel worker uses the information to identify you as a potentially valuable target
It can create confusion if travel documents do not match your official documents.
Governments have sometimes created kill lists for members of the intelligentsia.  The Khmer Rouge did and Russia currently has a list of professionals to be killed in Ukraine.  The listing of a degree may make someone vulnerable in revolution or war.

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How to respond to an upset student?
My finals were held recently. Due to some timetabling issues, I had to organize for some students to take the finals early, but still within finals week. The dates were mutually agreed.
One of these early final takers was very upset when I stopped them writing at the 2 hours and ten minutes mark after starting (for a 2 hour exam).  After they gave me their paper, they looked very upset and stomped out of the room.
They performed poorly on the exam but eked out a D overall for the class.
The fastest student in the class finished in about 45 minutes; the majority were done by 90 minutes. I don't usually set time-critical midterms or finals.
When the student was upset, I didn't respond at the time nor did I follow-up with them afterwards via email or in person.
Should I have done anything more? If so, what?
I believe that college should be about more than just grades, and wanted to give the feedback to this student that their behavior was extremely unprofessional.

Define "upset"? What did they do in practice? Were they disrespectful to you? Visibly annoyed?

@FedericoPoloni : Visibly annoyed, and stomped out of the exam room. Not much was said.

Having given them 10 minutes extra is more than generous...

I have to say, I don't even find leaving the room without saying much after a very bad exam result  particularly unprofessional. Assuming that they were in fact mad or disappointed about the exam, what more can you ask for? Should they have been happy about doing really poorly?

Maybe the student was mad with him/herself. Not your fault in any case

I was pondering at the title, thinking if I should open it: "...to an upset student"? or "...to upset a student"? I can give a lot of advice on the latter! :)

Since when are students professionals?

@TRiG Well, they're not yet, but they're learning to be engineers (in my case), so I expect them to learn how to be professional in an engineering context.

Clearly the student wasn't doing well all along if the course grade was D.  If you were going to do something(tutor) about(which not obligated to do) it should have been months ago when it would have made a difference.

@Zeus, yeah, I was wondering that myself, whether "upset" is an adjective or a verb..

Adding the two characters of "an" to the title is apparently below the edit threshold.

@dwizum OK: I could go either way, but added for your sake. :-)

I would remove the grade from your question (someone could look at your name, find a class you gave, and if they remember that class and the incident have an idea who got that grade) and just put if they passed the class or not In my University a D is not passing if its a pre-requisite course so that's not even clear.

@JGreenwell The grade is not their actual grade. I don't publish student grades outside of the usual university reporting schemes. The D was for illustrative purposes only. :-)

I would have done the same thing.

I would not intervene unless I felt the student was at risk of harming themselves or others.
As you say, college is about more than grades, learning how to handle failure is part of life.
Moreover it’s not unlikely that their performance on the final was the icing on the cake: they had a bad day/week and were upset about all of it plus the final.
Unless you’re willing to allow them to retake the exam (which is probably a bad idea unless they offer a good reason), reaching out to them and telling them they should deal better with exams will likely annoy them and demotivate them further.

Good point about the icing on the cake. Finals Week tends to be one of the most ...emotional... weeks on campus no matter where one goes. +1.

Thanks! Most people answering have given good advice, but I'm checking this answer because it's succinct.

Part of life is - or should be - having your friends, family, teachers, colleagues - help you out when you're down, at least to the extent of expressing concern and empathy, and an opportunity to share what's troubling you. -1.

@einpoklum that is true, just not sure whether offering students unsolicited life tips is the best thing to do. If the student reaches out to you that’s an entirely different matter, and I completely agree with you in that case.

@Spark: Don't offer that student tips, offer them an opportunity to talk, and empathy. At worst it would be a waste of time, at best - it could be really helpful for them.

It may well be that the student was upset due to frustration with their own performance and had nothing to do with you or with being cut off. Their actions may not reflect unprofessional behavior as much as just immaturity. Frustration often boils over into anger and the anger is often misplaced. You may have experienced this yourself, actually.
I don't think you need to be proactive here, though it is fine if you want to be. But your best response is to just listen, even if it is to a rant. If you think that some encouragement is needed you could give that, as well as offering to give suggestions on how to do better in such courses.
But you can leave the next move to them, I think.

Thanks! I think I'll aim to be more proactive earlier in the semester for some students. The university has an academic alert system that I should probably use more frequently to help struggling students.

It is normal for exams to have time limits.
It is also normal for exams to be stressful for students, and thus I would not worry much about a minor lack of professionalism in this context.

Thanks! Yes, it wasn't a huge deal, but I've seen people in jobs be put on PIPs for similar behavior in the workplace.

.. and how often do staff in industry undergo time-limited final exams assessing their performance in the workplace? :P

@AdamWilliams actually, quite frequently in some professions (accountants, junior medics, probably others). But this is not that scenario :-)

@PeterK. Except college isn't the workplace, and a decent number of university students have never had a job. Comparing the workplace to an academic course is apples to oranges.

@ChrisCirefice Completely off-base. The majority of the students I teach have jobs, some of them managerial. That’s partly why this student looked so immature to me: most of the rest of them are very professional already.

I believe that college should be about more than just grades, and wanted to give the feedback to this student that their behavior was extremely unprofessional.

Beyond the answers you've already received here, it's important to avoid giving feedback when someone is not receptive to hear it.
This student was in the middle of finals week, had a number of exams ahead of them, had just taken a lengthy exam, believed they just performed poorly, and was likely very concerned about their grade in the course and potential outcomes resulting from that grade. They may have had other things going on that you weren't aware of too. They had an emotional reaction to all of that and made their way out of the room. That moment is not a good time for them to be receptive to any instructor policing their tone and professionalism.
If there's a more extreme situation where there's concern for a student's well-being or behavior that's impossible to ignore, that may be a different case where some action is called for, but as for looking upset and stomping, what practically are you going to achieve by giving this feedback? Is the student likely to take away a lesson about professionalism, or will they file it under "I was having an awful day, and then I got yelled at for not smiling about it?"
There may be value in reaching out to the student later to offer encouragement, a listening ear, advice, etc... But trying to provide feedback on precisely how they should behave when they're upset is not going to go well and will not be effective.

Thanks! I don't believe there was any major issue with the student, so I didn't escalate anything. I think I will email them when next semester starts, just to offer that encouragement.

Students get upset all the time and the best way is to let it happen.  Unless there is something statistically wrong with your exam - i.e. everybody gets a really low mark - there is really nothing to be said or done: there's no reason to believe this is not habitual on the part of the student.
What can be done on your part is keep all records relating to the change in scheduling, if you have such records.

Thanks!  I don't think there was anything wrong with my exam; several students did excellently, several mid-range, and a few poorly. I always keep records of communications about scheduling off-time appointments, including Blackboard announcements, emails, and Outlook calendar meeting requests (the university uses Outlook for its main email system).

Sometimes people are upset at no on in particular, they just need to work it out on their own. This is one of those things.
You shouldn't reach out to the student unless you really know what you're doing. The student might not be happy about you reaching out and complain to the university. You have no duty to reach out either.
Sometimes instructors offer additional work (such as an extra project or assignment) for credit to let failing students bring up their grade. If you have an actual deal of this sort you can offer, that's a fair reason to reach out. But if the student already got a D, it would be hard for you to move the grade by more than a letter without it being unfair to other students - especially if they didn't know that such an opportunity would be offered! So even if you go above and beyond for this student, their grade would at best be a C, which isn't much better. They're better off just retaking the course. If they retake it with you, it might be a pretty good idea to start a dialog (privately) about what parts they struggle with the most. You can frame it as wanting to improve the course so the student doesn't feel singled out for failing.
Don't worry too much about the time - it is what it is. Some people give extra time at the end of exam - but if you've taken 2 hours to do an exam other people did in 1.5, you've probably had all your best ideas already. Even an additional hour is unlikely to make a difference, unless the exam was specifically designed to gauge speed of work (if it was, you wouldn't have so much variance in how quickly they finish). If the student complains, you can point out that everyone gets the same amount of time, so giving an extra ten minutes is already special treatment for that student at the expense of everyone else who didn't get extra time. You would already take the overall class performance into account when grading, so if everybody had done poorly in that timeframe, presumably the best students could get an A despite not getting every question right.
Also, the final is a bit late for interventions. There's not much graded material left... Unless the student does retake your course, or comes to you for help, there's nothing you can do here - the ship has sailed. For future students, you can play close attention to early midterms and quizzes, and act accordingly during office hours, lectures or when providing study materials. Inevitably, some people in every class will score low. If you really want to prevent this, you can build in "second chance" type rules in your syllabus: For example, option to do a project for extra credit, or dropping the lowest mid-term mark from the average. If you put these in the syllabus and make them clear in the beginning of the course, it's a lot easier to help failing students overcome their low exam score while still being fair.

I do have a reporting duty if I believe the upset is caused by various illegal things such as sexual harassment. But I don’t believe that’s the problem here.


text:
How to deal with students leaving the class for 10 min during the lecture?
In the freshman classes I teach (the class is like 30-35 students), some students would step out the class for 10-15 minutes and come back. The class time is 1 hour and 15 min. This is always interrupting.
I have asked the class before that this is a poor classroom etiquette, you have 15 min between classes to do whatever you want, so if you leave the class during the lecture please do not come back. Yet, they still do it.
Anybody is facing similar situation? and how you deal with it?
Clarification: I made it clear in class that if you need to leave, please inform me in advance. Or if you have a medical condition that requires you to leave regularly, please let me know. My question is not about those cases

I would have to say that not every student has the luxury of being able to do what they want for 15 minutes after class. Sometimes it takes me a full 15 minutes just to walk to my next class.

How far is the restroom/toilet from the classroom? Is that what's taking so long, or are they smoking breaks?

For clarification, I think the question should also state whether being present in the class is compulsory to achieve some goal, or voluntary. That can have a significant effect on how far you can afford to deter students from attending the class. Also, is it the fact that someone is leaving the room and coming back (which I find questionable - adults should be able to cope with that; from what I have seen, it is commonplace in conferences and business meetings, too), or way how they do it that appears to be so interrupting to you?

How is it 'interrupting'?

@CapeCode The room doors are in the front of the class near the board. Someone is walking towards the door will be distracting, same when he comes back.

What country is this in?

@O.R.Mapper Attendance contributes 5% of the grade, I take it at the beginning or at the end of the class. May be a possible solution is to start taking it at random times?!

Their loss. Unless they are walking on desks or something.

I remember having one lecture that ended very shortly after another lecture started, and I should have attended both. I thought it was better to leave one 10 minutes earlier (quietly, picking a seat close to the exit) than entering the other ten minutes late. Obviously if people take a cigarette break during your lecture, that would be very rude.

I would simply lock the door and consider that a lesson: There's no coming back if you leave. However, that may be yet another of the reasons why I've never and I'll never teach.

Missing information: what country is this in, what subject do you teach, what is your style (Socratic method? lecture from blackboard? slides? orally? from textbook?) How engaged are your students? Is your style boring or engaging? Have you asked them for suggestions on lecture format and breaks? instead of trying to force something on them. Why not ask them before asking here?

@Trylks when I was an exchange student in Denmark, a teacher would do precisely that 3-5 minutes after the lecture was scheduled to start. We witnessed one or two instances when a person arrived a bit late, but it was quite embarassing to interrupt the lecture and knock the door, so they never did it again.

The existing answers seem to me extreme.  I don't think some sort of draconian blanket "leaving-the-room policy" is needed here.  I would suggest the following:

For students leaving occasionally: Ignore it. They are adults and sometimes things in their lives may take higher priority than your class (e.g. going to the bathroom, feeling unwell, family emergencies, etc).  If it's distracting to you, well, deal with it.  It's a classroom, not a funeral, and you are a professional.  Take a breath and get back to teaching.
If you see a particular student leaving often: Have a private word with them to see if things are okay.  They may have special circumstances that you don't know about (chronic illness is one distinct possibility).  Once you know their situation, you may be able to offer specific suggestions that will reduce the disruption and/or get them more engaged in the class.
If, after talking to them, you are convinced they are just walking out from spite, and they won't stop: Follow your institution's policy on disruptive students.  Your department chair should have further guidance.  It may ultimately be necessary to drop them from the class.

A short break in the middle of a 75-minute class is a reasonable idea, but I would keep it very short: perhaps 1-2 minutes, enough to stand up and stretch, not more.  It should not significantly reduce the amount of time students spend on task.  (Otherwise, as mentioned above, you may encounter problems with your institution's authorities that your class does not provide as much instructional time as promised by its number of credit hours.  Moreover, some students will see it as wasted time and resent it.)  Better yet, break up the lecture with some other sort of productive activity (small group discussions, problem solving, etc).
I don't think it's appropriate to publicly shame students for poor etiquette, or shut them out of class if they leave.  You will unfairly punish students who legitimately need to step out for a few minutes, and anyone who is doing it from spite or boredom will just be further alienated.

I couldn't agree with this more - particularly with regard to illness etc. Even if a student appears otherwise healthy they may suffer from anxiety attacks or digestive problems, or even Thrombosis which would certainly require moving regularly! Don't ever shame a student without knowing their circumstances, you could do a lot of harm. Perhaps ask people who know they regularly need to leave, to sit themselves in the back corners?

Very good answer, except perhaps for the "use all of the 75 minutes" part. In my experience, many students (not to mention other people, like professors) can't or won't concentrate effectively for such a long, uninterrupted time. A 10-minute break in the middle might actually achieve more learning.

@Thomas: It might, but at many places that is not a decision the instructor has the authority to make. My point is that, rather than including a long break during which students are not doing anything, you can break up the time by having them do something different. My feeling is that this will be more effective than 75 minutes of lecture, with or without a 10 minute break.

@djechlin and others: Well, it takes a good teacher, and a good structure of the lecture to make a 75-minute lecture worth the time. We have 100-minute lectures here, and as a lecturer or assistant, I have to confess that it's not an easy job, but it can be done. As a student, I was well-know for simply falling asleep at some lectures, because the way it was done was beyond my capabilities. I wouldn't, however, encourage systematic breaks in the lectures, since it's very difficult to make such a break short enough.

@NateEldredge Where does a professor or lecturer not have the authority to stop lecturing for five to ten minutes and say "okay, stretch break"? North Korea?

@TylerH: I haven't found an official policy, but I'm pretty sure my (US, public) institution would frown on it.  We were recently warned about ensuring our classes met on every day scheduled.  With two 75-minute classes per week, a 10-minute break in each class is the equivalent of cancelling two full weeks of classes in a semester.  I think 1 minute sounds like a stretch break.  10 minutes is more like a "smoke break" and may create the perception that the instructor just doesn't feel like preparing a full class worth of material.

@NateEldredge I agree that 10 minutes is pretty long for a 1 to 2 hour class, but I think two to five is pretty reasonable. It allows people to stretch, maybe get water if there's a water fountain outside the classroom, pee if they really have to, check over/catch up on notes, ask the professor a question about something without waiting for it become entirely irrelevant/forgotten, lets students check their phones, refreshes them and their attention spans for when you "start" the class back, etc. The benefits are myriad!

Have a 10-minute break in the middle of the lecture. (E.g., 35min lecture + 10min break + 30min lecture = 1h 15min in total.)
1h 15min is far too much without any breaks. There are plenty of studies that show that students do not really pay attention to the lectures more than for maybe 20-30 minutes in the beginning of the lecture (and for a short period of time right before the lecture ends), so by telling everyone to take a 10-minute break you are likely to improve the learning outcomes (even if you have got slightly less time for teaching).

You are reducing the number of credits this way of that course! You cannot just throw 20 min away from class official time per week

@Moa: You do not get credits for sitting in a classroom, you get credits for learning things.

Allowing students to leave in the middle of the class may be disturbing to the class time. They will need 5 to 10 minutes after that short break to come back to the class, one by one... How should an instructor control the students coming back to the class exactly in that break time? Then he may have problem with organizing the class after that break. This way, he will miss about 20 minutes of his class. I think freshman students are grown enough to sit one hour in the class and pay enough attention to the content.

Dear Jukka, this is a credit hour system. You must deliver lectures for certain period of time per week. Not doing so, means you are not doing your job.

@Moa: Don't you have the freedom to make the most effective use (= best learning outcomes) of the time that is allocated for your lectures?

@EnthusiasticStudent: It is not so difficult. E.g., the first lecture starts at 10:15, ends at 10:50, the second lecture starts at 11:00, ends at 11:30, that's it. Everyone is there on time for the second lecture, just like they are there on time for the first lecture.

@JukkaSuomela I like the idea but who guarantees that Everyone is there on time for the second lecture?

@EnthusiasticStudent: The same guy who guarantees that everyone is there on time when for the first lecture. Every student is of course responsible for making sure that they are there on time for the lecture.

And yes, of course sometimes some students come a bit late, but handling this is not really related to the break. One thing that helps is that you as a lecturer stick to the schedule. You start your lecture precisely when it is supposed to start. Usually students feel a bit embarrassed if they come late and disturb the lecture; next time they will pay more attention to the schedule.

I almost always include a break in the middle of a 75 minute class, but it doesn't need to be 10 minutes to be effective, for the students I have. Just 2-3 minutes works fine. I start again at the announced time even if some students aren't back yet.  At each break I strongly encourage the students to stand up, even if they aren't going anywhere.  The break does seem to make a significant different in their ability to focus during the second half of a long class.

+1 for the first paragraph, -1 for the second (so net 0); I find 1.25 hour lectures quite easy to sit through.  However, especially for longer lectures (e.g. 4 hour summer classes, or 2-3 hour night classes), a short break can be very rejuvenating.

1h 15min is far too much without any breaks — [citation needed]

I find it quite literally scary that there seem to be universities where an instructor cannot decide on her/his own whether to have a short break in class or not.

@xLeitix If you add a break and finish later, the break before tohe next lecture could be eaten just by going the the other lecture room and students may have no time to relax before that one.

@JeffE is (maybe accidentally) right: you could give a reference on the time frame. IIRC there are studies (with adults) that show that lecture times above 45min are mostly useless.

@JeffE Citation Provided It appears that 15-20 minutes is how long you can go before your brain zones out. I won't say that 1h15 is too long, but it is getting up there in terms of brain drain. Most of my lectures that I've taken always take a break at the mid-way mark for 5 minutes for the 1.5hr sessions, or every 50 minutes for the longer sessions.

When-I-was-a-student lessons used to be 2 hours long each. Should not be a problem, unless you make a 2 hour long monotonous monologue. That would not exactly be a problem either, but more of a solution for insomnia.

@VladimirF Nobody mentioned finishing later; the point was whether instructors should be allowed to decide how to use the time allocated to their lectures most efficiently (e.g. 75 minutes without breaks vs. 30 min + 10 min break + 35 min).

Not to offend your teaching methods or style, but perhaps you should ask yourself why the students are leaving in the first place. I would suggest talking to one of them outside of class and asking honestly if there's something you can do to help their learning experience that is non-disruptive to the other students.
I had a professor who was brilliant but not good at teaching because he had difficulties relating to his students. Because of this, several students would leave for 10-20 minutes at a time in the middle of class because they felt they weren't getting anything out of the class. If your students need more stimulation during lecture, try switching up your teaching style once in a while. Include a little bit of interactivity with trivia or jeopardy-style extra credit in the middle of class to keep everybody participating and excited to learn.

"Because of this, several students would leave for 10-20 minutes at a time in the middle of class because they felt they weren't getting anything out of the class." Hm, but why only for 10-20 minutes and not for longer or forever? If they weren't getting anything out of the class, I don't understand why they would come back at all. To me this sounds more like they deliberately decided to perturb the class as much as possible, seeing that they can get nothing out of it.

In the classes I teach some students would step out the class for 10-15 minutes and come back. This is always interrupting.

Consider the following questions:

Can you rearrange your classroom so it's less distracting (door in the back rather than front or sides)?
Who is it distracting, you, or the other students?
Is it the same students?
Does it happen every day in every class, or is it more rare than that?
Are several people leaving and entering at random times throughout the period, or is it just two interruptions per class when it does happen?

The students are adults.  They are free to make decisions about their time.  Honestly, 1.25 hours isn't too long to expect an adult to sit and listen to a presentation or lecture.  They do it all the time at any other performance, be it a movie theater, play, or otherwise.
You should first consider whether the interruptions are truly preventing the students from learning.  If the only problem is that you are interrupted, then honestly you need to change so such interruptions don't bother you any more.
If you can alter the layout of the classroom, then a physical change might improve the situation.
Finally, if you truly feel that these interruptions are unacceptable and cannot be accommodated then you have the following options:

Talk to those who leave.  Do it after class every time they leave.  "You understand that you are expected to attend the whole class period. If this was an emergency, then I can excuse it."
Start giving out useful hints for upcoming tests/projects/etc.  Save them for the time when people leave.
Start making it an issue of attendance. "If you leave during class I will mark you absent." Alternately every three times they leave they get counted absent for one day.
Start making it an issue of grades.  "In-class attendance without breaks is a requirement for this course. If you do not attend, or you interrupt class to leave or exit between the start and end of class, it will impact your grade in the following ways."
Start giving 5-10 minute pop quizzes.  Keep some handy you can use at a moment's notice when people leave.
Grow up.  You are an adult.  Your students are adults. You and your students can ignore the exit/entrance of a student and continue on without remark or change in pace.  There's no need to punish those who leave.  Make your presentations as informative and interesting as possible, then move forward and ignore those that leave or enter at inappropriate times.

Wasting your time and energy getting upset will only hurt you. Train your patience and ability to carry on in the face of adversity, and you'll become a more effective instructor.

"You are an adult. Your students are adults." Sure, but even adults get distracted by too loid noise and/or lots of movement. You cannot ignore it totally even as an adult or there wouldn't be do not disturb signs in libraries. So I kind of doubt it doesn't affect the other adult students and doesn't lower their concentration at all. There is probably some balance needed.

Punishment

Attendance contributes 5% of the grade, I take it at the beginning or at the end of the class. May be a possible solution is to start taking it at random times?

Others already mentioned that students can have valid reasons to leave your class for 10 minutes, among other [*]:

health issues (anxiety issues, bladder problems, a bad back, etc.)
pregnancy
family emergencies (which can be quite regular in some cases)

Punishing them for these issues would not be the right thing to do, and it might very well violate your schools non-discrimination policy.
You should also keep this in mind when talking about the issue in class (because it can - depending on the situation - easily come across as public shaming and thus 1. discourage students from taking your class and - again - 2. violate the non-discrimination policy).

[*] If your students are leaving in small groups, these reasons could also explain that (good friends helping with an anxiety attack for example).

Suggestions on handling this
Ignore it. There are enough valid reasons that students might step out[*], and honestly, non of them are any of your business. And the students are already punished: They missed part of the class, and possibly cannot follow the rest of the class that well because of missing information, so they have to work at home to catch up.
If you still want to take action:

try to apply for a room that has exits at the back
analyze your material: are there parts of your class that are boring/unnecessary? students might be leaving because of this
create a questionnaire asking about this, which the students can answer anonymously

If you want to talk with the students about it:

do it privately and individually
apologize for bringing it up in class in front of everyone, suggesting that they have poor etiquette, and asking them to not come back
don't ask for their reasons, or at least accept "private" as a valid answer
ask how you can help them (for example, provide them with a seat closest to the exit)

[*] This is still true if some students step out just because they want to smoke. It is not ok to punish the students with good reasons along with the students with bad reasons.

Or bring it up in class and ask the other students what they think.  Do they think it's disruptive? Would they generally appreciate a break halfway through? Is there a problem with the venue (e.g. bad air circulation which is ignored by some, but highly distractive for some others)?

At my university, there were classrooms where the outer door handle locked after class started. If you left, you couldn't return until someone let you in. To be clear, students could leave, but not return without assistance.
This approach worked very well for interruption deterrence.

we have those doors in some rooms as well, and in my experience, they cause quite a distraction. Students leave just as often, but they cannot just sneak quietly back in, but have to knock, disturbing the whole class, and the student closest to the door, who has to stand up to open the door.

IMHO grading based on attendance is not optimum.  If a student who is there 50% of the time can learn everything a student who is there 100% of the time can, do they really need to be punished for it?
A compromise view might be: base the grade on various factors, like exams, attendance, participation, homework, and what not; with each student being given the option of an alternative weighing: mostly exams.  If someone then does poorly on exams because they missed part of the class, that's their problem.  But if they do well, why worry about seat time?
One thing I definitely dislike: someone comes in late and the instructor stops speaking and waits for the latecomer to sit down and settle in.  And then complain about "what the latecomer did to disrupt the class" (guilt tripping).  I think the instructor should just keep talking and let the chips fall where they may.  (The latecomer/break taker must not of course be so loud as to make it impossible for the instructor to be heard.)

The statement

if you leave the class during the lecture please do not come back

is ambiguous. If they leave class are they allowed to come back or not? The best solution in my opinion is not to create rules like this since it effectively backs you into a corner. Some things, like being respectful of classmates, need firm rules and require you to enforce them. Things like bathroom breaks probably do not, but if your ability to teach really depends on students not interrupting class, then you need to do something about it. the best thing would be to change your teaching style such that interruptions are not hugely distracting. If you cannot change your teaching style and students coming and going is hurting the rest of the students, then you need to do something about it.
I suggest at the start of the next class you clarify your original statement with:

If you choose to leave class during the lecture you will not be allowed to return.

Then the first time someone gets up to leave, interrupt the lecture and remind them they will not be allowed to return. The reason I suggest two warnings is this is a change in behaviour. If they leave and attempt to come back, stop your lecture and tell them to leave. Do not resume your lecture until they leave. Hopefully it will not come to it, but if necessary call the campus police to have them escorted from the classroom. One sacrificial student will probably be enough to regain control. The key is if you see students coming and going as a critical issue for you teaching you need to take control of the situation. Hopefully, you can modify your teaching to handle students coming and going.

Campus police seems like overkill (if I were a student in the class watching this unfold, I would probably drop that class ASAP)

@ff524 I think it is unlikely to come to that, but if a student won't leave, then you are in a difficult situation.

Moreover, there are countries where there is no such thing as a campus police. But, in the end, do you really want to lose the respect of your students by calling a higher authorithy for something you should be able to deal with?

So, just to make things clear, are you proposing that the students should urinate on the floor or miss half the class? Yes, of course students should plan bathroom breaks between classes but sometimes plans go wrong, people get delayed, the cleaners pick a bad time to clean or there's a queue. Forbidding students to return to the classroom is draconian and ridiculous. Creating a huge disruption out of a small disruption is counterproductive and, frankly, stupid.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

authors: Vladimir F Героям слава


text:
Technology for redesign of a math seminar room
I am a math professor, and we've just moved back into our building after a year-long renovation. One of our rooms, currently piled high with junk, is to be made into a seminar room.
I'm on the committee charged with coming up with a design for the room, and making recommendations to the department chair. We will continue to host chalkboard talks and in-person meetings, and we'd also like the room to be suitably outfitted for:

hybrid meetings, with some participants online and others in-person, so everyone can hear each other and see the board

presentations, where someone at the board is recording or presenting to a live online audience, and people watching online can easily follow

other needs which may arise over the coming years.

I've sent out a survey to my department and gotten some ideas. Beyond that, what are the important factors or options to consider when making these recommendations to my chair?

If you are at a big enough place and there is a school of architecture, you might consult with them. Or, the engineering school might have some architecture knowledgeable folks.

I have yet to see a good hybrid concept. I really like in-person teaching lessons, and lessons over zoom. I hate mixing both at the same time, because you get the worst of both worlds. It's slow, exhausting and less clear, for both teacher and students. My concept would be : everybody in person if possible, if not, everybody online.

David Jordan in math at Edinburgh put a lot of thought into this and figured out a great setup for Edinburgh and the ICMS, and was excited to try to spread info on this. I’d suggest contacting him and he can tell you their setup.

I believe hybrid can work very well but it depends strongly on the setup and equipment.  I recently ran a 1-week workshop at ICERM with the participants split between physical and virtual.  We were able to have seamless and natural-feeling discussions among all participants due to outstanding acoustics and equipment.

@DavidKetcheson In my experience hybrid only works with a very disciplined audience and if only very few people are going to speak. Sound catching equipment will record and amplify any whispering or paper shuffling which is very annoying to the online audience. If you only have a few people who want to ask independent questions it works out. If you have an interactive discussion this will be big mess and often the online participants will not get their turn.

@NoahSnyder Awesome thanks I will be sure to contact him.

I don't know what your plan is, but I'd wander around asking pointedly "But is it optimal?". Maybe even demand a proof.

You originally asked "how should I go about researching available options" -- which is great, that's what we normally encourage people to do. But we now have 9 (!) answers, every one of which provides options directly rather than telling you how to go about compiling options. So, I have updated your question to match the answers.

The choice of setup may also depend on the size of the room.
Designing a room for, say, 30 people is much different to ~100

I will not answer your question directly, but give you my concerns born out of experience with having to use on-line class-rooms that are not well maintained.
It is quite easy to install some impressive systems such as cameras that detect motion and focus on the presenter or cameras that capture where a presenter is writing on the white-board and amplifying that part of the screen automatically. It is difficult to get a university to commit to keeping a high-tech seminar room working. It is even more difficult to get a university to upgrade such a room and replace worn out equipment.
Concentrate on the basics such as a good, reliable internet connection preferably Ethernet, that will not go through an overloaded authentication server whenever you want to connect. Some outside presenters will still want to use transparencies, while others want to use their Mac or Linux machine, so be careful you have hardware and a software that can interoperate with your system. It is cheaper and more reliable to have a grad student film a presentation with a camera on a good tripod instead of having an automatic ceiling-mounted camera. Get some microphones with a USB connection instead of trying to get an automated sound catching system.

+1 for keeping it simple. I'd also say that interactive whiteboards are generally to be avoided in favour of a camera pointed at a dumb whiteboard/blackboard. The dumb version never has surprise restarts or calibration issues.

I 100% agree with the gist of this answer. I would only add that a document camera can be used instead of a blackboard such that the document camera output is not only projected onto a screen but also shared online. Compared to the camera on person/blackboard set-up, you lose seeing the speaker in the video feed but you gain reliability and quality of sharing their writing. Plus the document camera is found directly next to the speaker and if a cable is disconnected (happens more frequently than you might think) it can be plugged in again by the speaker...

This is key. You want an actual computer that a human operates, not something too “smart.” That way it’s upgradable. Having one person in the audience hit a button when the blackboard changes is easy to arrange.

+1 to the document camera - I was starting to write something like that in an answer.

@user2705196 one issue I've had with document cameras is the don't clearly show when you have gone "off screen". It's probably ok once you have got used to that particular one, but for a one off presentation it is a new challenge every time you turn the page.

"Some outside presenters will still want to use transparencies". Sorry, but I find this implausible.  In my experience, transparencies are now essentially obsolete, just like the overhead projector equipment that supports transparencies.  I don't think I've seen someone give a talk with transparencies in over 10 years. A talk with slides from a computer: sure. A talk with a document camera: a bit odd, but sure.  But transparencies? No.

Anecdote in support of this answer: My department recently moved into a new space with some elaborately equipped seminar-rooms. These rooms all had some problems of the sort that are hard to spot when designing a room on paper, but obvious as soon as you move in and start using the room.  In the lower-tech rooms, these problems were solved easily and quickly — moving tables and whiteboards around.  In the more technologically elaborate rooms, there are so many integrated systems that it looks like we won’t get the problems fixed for the foreseeable future.

@PLL yes, that seesm very plausible. What kind of problems specifically?

99% of seminar attendees want coffee.  Design it with coffee equipment.

Ideally free coffee (and tea/drinking water!) making equipment. The cost is nonzero but is comparatively small in the context of a departmental budget. The benefit of unpredictable, random interactions between people in the vicinity is likely to be very positive – both in terms of morale and overall academic output.

There are usually places outside the seminar room much more suitable for coffee before/after talks

Here's a problem with hybrid format for which I don't know a solution. I listen remotely to a hybrid seminar. Some people are in-person, others on zoom, and they chat and interact. But in-person crowd hangs out before and after the talk, enjoying the coffee and the conversation. I can't imagine a way for the remote crowd to be part of that conversation.

Yeah, I got this feedback from my colleagues too :)

A decent coffee machine tends to be loud and will be unusable in a seminar room without disrupting everybody trying to do math there, there are good reasons to have that stuff behind a wall in a kitchen(ette).

Though this answer is popular for some reason, it appears to have very little to do with what the OP asked about hybrid meetings/presentation to an online audience, for which coffee in the room is going to have absolutely no relevance.

This doesn't answer OP's question.

@BryanKrause The question specifies chalkboard AND in-person AND hybrid AND online audience AND "other."  I did not see anything in the question specifying that the equipment had to be usable by people outside the room.

If my post is not an answer, how about the question suggesting wheelchair access?

@AAM111 Would you elaborate?

In contrast to Anonymous Physicist, I do think you should have a simple desktop computer with an internet connection. Not everyone wants to lug around their personal laptops (and some people might not have one either). But you should have a simple solution so people can connect their personal laptops. My university purchases highly overengineered systems for this, and it ends up being complicated for most people to get working properly. Plus it's insanely expensive. Instead, I would just go for a good-quality KVM switch, which is just a black box that lets you hook up a mouse, keyboard, and monitors to multiple computers.
The other thing I would recommend is checking the acoustics in the room. If nothing else, have good-quality acoustic panels on the walls. If it's not carpeted, consider doing so. And maybe consider adding acoustic panels to the ceiling. Heavy curtains for windows will help to dampen exterior noise if that's an issue. And maybe check the doors; cheap/lightweight doors won't block noise from people talking or walking in the hallway as well as heavy good-quality doors.
Having fine control over the lighting to make sure lights close to the projector screen can be turned off while leaving lights on for everyone else is nice. And investing in a quality projector screen can make a big difference in the quality/brightness of the image. And definitely get a decent-quality projector; particularly one with very good brightness.
Depending on the size and layout of the room, you might want two projectors (one very nice conference room I've been in is very wide and has pillars blocking some viewing angles, so there is a projector screen for each half of the room with the speaker placed between them).
If it's a room where long meetings might be held and people need to use their laptops, tables/desks with built-in power outlets are also nice to have.
Make sure there is a good-quality wireless access point in the room itself; you don't want a bunch of people dealing with sketchy wifi access because there are a bunch of walls between their devices and the nearest access point.

A few weeks ago I was passing by a conference room, where a hybrid talk was being presented  both in-person and remotely, and also recorded. They positioned a young lady outside the door with the instructions ro shush whoever talks in the hallway (she shushed me). I think she'd be happier if the door had been more soundproof, and she listened to the talk inside.

KVM switch is not required. Just the V switch. Most projectors have multiple types of input cable, so plug the most obscure one into the desktop computer (leaving the others free for laptops); feed the others to the desk as loose cables; tether the remote to the desk; and put a note somewhere saying to select the right input. Another way I've seen to do it is to have one input cable with various adapters tethered to it for different kinds of laptops. It's stupid and simple and it works - provided the presenter realizes how multiple inputs work. Really good ones can autodetect.

Seconding the acoustics comment, be sure to test it with the microphone and speaker setup you plan to install before making any permanent installations. This includes both physical location of speakers as well as setting microphone gain and testing for the "roving lecturer" that paces while talking. We have a very large, impressive lecture hall that suffers from horrific feedback problems because this was not accounted for.

Lighting problems are common in seminar rooms.
Get good blinds that block sunbeams.  In an office, you can move desks and chairs out of the sun if needed.  In a seminar room, it is much harder to move a wall-mounted board/projector screen/video display.
There should be separate lighting for the board and the rest of the room.  The lighting controls should be easy to locate and clearly labeled.
Adding a million technology controls to your seminar room just causes disruption when your visitor is preparing their seminar and needs 15 minutes to find the switch that turns on the light.

Thanks. I think things like lighting are beyond our control unfortunately.

Make sure that there is wheelchair access, and extra-soft flooring across the front where lecturers may stand for a long time.

Soft flooring? Never heard of that.

does soft flooring make it more comfortable to stand??

@user253751 Yes! Soft flooring makes it much more comfortable and less tiring to stand for a long time. You can buy them standalone for standing desks ( e.g. https://ergostandingdesks.com/products/mount-it-large-anti-fatique-standing-desk-comfort-floor-mat ), however since my university was very modern they had these permanently built into the carpet at the front of lecture theatres. They were wonderful.

It is funny that no one discussed the choice of blackboards yet. I would say it is the most important thing and most noticeable when done wrong. You likely will want multiple panels. The best system I have seen is also the simplest. Have two blackboards above each other in a position that they can both be completely readable without them overlapping and also without either of them being too low to see. Have them set up such that if you move one up the other one moves down (they should be movable by hand, no button please, that is always slow, annoying and malfunctioning).
Don't go for more than two panels, it is confusing and almost never convenient especially if not all three can actually be read at the same time. And they rarely can be. In order to have enough vertical space for three blackboards it will probably mean one of them has to be on the floor and the other obscenely high. If a blackboard can't be completely visible at the same time as the others it basically makes that blackboard unusable anyway.

I certainly hope to get high quality blackboards. I love the setup you describe, but unfortunately the ceilings are not high in this room enough to have one over the other.

As an example, this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npA8sI-k328 of a recent hybrid talk in Cornell's new building on Roosevelt Island shows what happens when a room has no blackboard. There are 2 projectors showing the slides, but the presenter can't write something on a board that's not already in the slides. Also the presenter has to hold a  microphone in his hands at all times.

One piece of classroom technology that I really like is audience response systems / keypads. In a physical classroom, every seat has a keypad that allow the listener to press a key and, for example,

"raise a hand" to ask a question - it's actually easier done now if the talk is delievered via Zoom or Webex than in person, especially in a calculus section with over 50 students.

respond to a multiple choice survey, or vote.

anonymously ask the speaker to speed up or to slow down and provide more detail.

The keypads can transmit the information through wires or radio. If you google "Audience response system", you'll see a few choices.

Many people (not necessarily me) like to have a "document camera" in the classroom that looks down on a horizonal whiteboard. (Again, google it for a few choices). It is intended to let the speaker put a book or paper notes on the whiteboard, and have the image show on the big screen(s), and also to the remote audience. Some people who use such cameras also like to write on the horizontal whiteboard as they speak, and the audience can see it better on screen than on a traditional vertical board on a wall.

Of course most people have their notes and slide decks as computer files these days, rather than as a stack of papers / transparencies. The standard that everyone expects is - the seminar speaker brings a USB-A flash drive, with the slide deck as an Adobe pdf or Microsoft Powerpoint (or LibreOffice Impress etc) presentation. The flash drive is mounted into a USB-A port of a Windows computer in the classroom, which casts the presentation to a big screen. Usually, the presenter holds a wireles "clicker" with slide show controls for "next slide" and "previous slide". A very fancy clicker also allows the presenter to point at things on ths screen (a pjhysical laser pointer does not work well for remote audience).
There are 2 problems with this traditional approach:

Microsoft Powerpont under Windows often does not display 100% correctly presentations created on other platforms. For this and other reasons, it's usually better to make slides in LaTeX and to output pdf (don't expect the classroom computer to be able to read a dvi file).

Some presenters want to bring their own devices and to display, for example, Mathematica animations, or their live interactions with a web server. There are 2 ways to accomplish this:

provide an HDMI port. The presenter can feed whatever video and audio into the port through an HDMI cable and have it shown on the large screen and loudspeakers and broadcast to the remote audience.

allow the presenter to install client software on their device (again, google, there are several choices) that will allow the presenter to connect to a school server over wifi and cast whatever audio and video is on their device.

Depending on the size and shape of the classroom, consider having several large screens showing the same slides, so that from every seat, at least one screen is clearly visible.

The presenter should be able to attach a wireless microphone to their clothes, and have their voice sent wirelessly to loudspeakers around the classroom and to the remote audience. ideally, the presenter should be able to change the loudspeaker volume. You may want to talk to an ADA expert on how to make the large screens and the loudspeakers more friendly to vision / hearing impaired audiences (google T-coils).

Many seminars have desktop computers.  I suggest leaving that out of your seminar room design.  They are cheap to purchase, but:

Nobody wants to spend time updating them.
Logging in is inconvenient.
Copying files to/from the desktop computer is often frustrating.
People leave them on, so they waste energy.

If a computer is needed for presentations, bring a familiar laptop.

Wouldn't that depend on the ability to join the PC to departmental network? If adding the infrastructure is standard or easily done, then the PC can be remotely maintained.

Not sure about this. Many presentation slides are available online before the presentation starts, and it's not difficult to setup a passwordless linux box with no intranet permissions. It can also be set to turn itself off after 2h inactivity.

Frank, here are two suggestions.

Make sure the screen is shifted off to the side a bit, not coming down directly in front of the center area of the board.  It is super annoying when the screen covers the center part of the front board, as it makes it awkward to use the fully available space on the board with the screen. When my department moved into a renovated building, I made sure all the classrooms had the screen come down shifted off to the side. For example, in the view of our classroom 314 in the math department on the page https://classrooms.uconn.edu/classroom/mont-314/# (note: before clicking that, see the comment below about the large images on the page) you can see the screen storage space along a part of the ceiling that is off to the side in front of the far part of the front board.

Have boards on the sidewalls if possible. This can allow someone to put something on a board ahead of time that stays up for the whole presentation.

Ouch, two 11 MiB images on your mont-314 page! Good thing I have the browser extension to block large images, or I would be left with no internet towards the end of my monthly mobile services package (I only have mobile 4G Internet access). I wish web creators would have a little bit more respect for people with limited traffic :)

@VioletGiraffe The flip side is systems - like SE - that put arbitrary small limits (I think 2 Meg.) on image uploads, which is far smaller than the typical modern smartphone default camera settings. The solution for both problems is automated server-side processing of images - allow large image uploads but resize/downsample automatically so that default displays work on most devices.

Note: I'm not from academia, but from an IT company.
Firstly, I suggest making as much as possible of the walls a black- (or white-) board — and on the side and back walls too. I've seen once a room with walls covered by dark panels that resemble normal blackboard so that you could use chalk on it; where I work they cover the walls with some special white film that allows one to use standard whiteboard markers. One of the advantages that you will get is that if there is a lot of relatively independent discussions in groups (e.g. after a seminar), each discussion group can use their own part of a wall/board.
Secondly, while many people here suggested keeping the equipment simple, I would still suggest installing a decent equipment that would allow integration of both in-person and online attendees. At our company we have some advanced equipment in conference rooms, obviously somehow integrated with zoom, with decent microphones so that zoom participants hear everything that is said, and large TVs where these zoom participants are shown when they are talking. As a contrast, I sometimes organize events and read lectures at local universities, and when I ask them to make the meeting available for both in-person and online attendance, it's always a big hassle and mediocre results. As a result, the last time I was organizing an event, I simply talked to my company asking to make use of our conference room — and it turned out much better than my previous attempts at the universities.
Thirdly, I don't know if this is possible at your current stage, or if it's something obvious and already done, but think about electrical sockets in the floor, so that people seating in the middle of the room have some place to plug their laptops to.