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Do's and Don't's of Undergraduate Research
I was fortunate enough to get a position as a researcher for the Mayo Clinic's SURF Program this year. My PI's lab focus is on the the immune system's role in CNS axonal and neuronal injury, specifically through the lens of how innate and adaptive immune effectors interact w/ infected neurons.
Although I do research under a professor at my college and I volunteered for a state university lab during the previous summer, this is my first REU/SURF opportunity, and I REALLY want to make a good impression. Here are my questions:
What are the do's and don't's in terms of being a skilled and efficient researcher?
Since I am still an undergrad, I know that I will be a less useful asset to the lab than a grad student or post-doc, but what can I do as an undergrad to not burden my colleagues and PI?
Thank you all for your help! Wishing you all the very best!

I wish more people asked questions like this.

I've removed "biomedical" from the title of the question, since your question isn't field-specific.

"what can I do as an undergrad to not burden my colleagues and PI" the awareness you show by this question already means that you are far further towards this goal than the vast majority of interns. Congratulations and keep going this way.

I will be a less useful asset to the lab than a grad student or post-doc — [citation needed]

These big-list questions really aren't suitable to our Q&A format: it's just too broad, with too many possible answers.

@EnergyNumbers I think the more specific question asked by the OP - "what can I do as an undergrad to not burden my colleagues and PI?" - is an answerable question that is not too broad.

To me, the quality that makes a student not a burden is the following:

A willingness to learn for themselves and good judgement about when to stop and ask for feedback.*

If a student isn't willing to try things out and learn independently, then it creates a burden on the supervisor. I really don't appreciate when a student asks me how to do something before they do a basic Google search.
Similarly, if a student doesn't know how to judge when he/she is "stuck" and needs help, this also creates a burden on the supervisor (because the supervisor has to keep checking on the student to make sure they're progressing).
The dos and don'ts (to avoid being a "burden") that come to mind are:

Do ask your supervisor this question at the very beginning, to find out what he/she expects from you.
Do take detailed notes when you have a meeting with your supervisor or somebody teaches you how to do something, so you can refer to them later
Do keep a written record of your own attempts and progress (such as a lab notebook) to show your supervisor during meetings
Do ask a question if you don't understand an instruction or something that is said, because it will be much better for everyone involved if you clear things up sooner rather than later.
Do mention your own ideas to your supervisor, if you have some that you think will make your research better.
Don't think that just because you are an undergraduate, you can't make much of a contribution. Obviously experience helps, but it's really only a small piece of what makes someone a skilled researcher. Willingness to learn is a much bigger piece, IMO. I've had high-school summer interns who were better than any of the M.S. students in the lab, simply because they put in more effort to learn.

* Source of the quote: The Unwritten Rules of PhD Research, by Marian Petre & Gordon Rugg

For what it's worth, I think the same formula would apply in most non-academic roles. Almost all jobs involved being instructed by others at some point. Aside from knowing whether you can progress on your own, also develop an idea of the relative value of your time and other people's. e.g asking someone else to spend 5 minutes explaining something that would take you 10 minutes to work out on your own, is not a good use of 10 person-minutes, unless their time is worth less than yours. And maybe not even then because you interrupted them, so you cost them more than 5 minutes productive work.

... and not asking for help when you're stuck doesn't just create a burden on the supervisor to check on you, it also means that for the whole time you're stuck you're not achieving anything. On the reasonable assumption that your supervisor wants you to achieve something, they would want to un-stick you once you're stuck. Getting that balance right is a lot about self-awareness but also reading cues from the supervisor, asking for feedback, and accepting criticism/correction.

I love that book. it's excellent.

@SteveJessop: and in addition is something that needs to be learned (as in try and possibly fail many times). As a mentor I learned that many good students are shy in terms of asking to get unstuck. (In constrast, many bad students tend to be not shy at all and unable to read clues when not to disturb). (I attribute it to a thourough training to exam situations where you are not allowed to ask if getting stuck)

The purpose of REU/SURF programs is to educate undergraduates about research, and to encourage them to make good decisions about graduate school.  Secondary benefits include advancing science and the careers of the participants. Note that these are not the same goals as of a PhD program (such as in ff524's answer).
The very natural desire to be a "skilled and efficient researcher" is orthogonal to these goals; in some circumstances it will be counterproductive to be skilled and efficient.  Your supervisor sees the whole project while you only see what's been set in front of you.
You should set your goals as:

To learn as many details of the lab dynamic as possible.
To participate in the lab dynamic in the manner you are expected to.
To do the tasks you are assigned in a skilled and efficient manner.
To noticeably improve in your abilities and understanding, over the course of the program.
(stretch goal) To have a good and creative idea that transcends the tasks you were assigned.  Share this idea with your supervisor; do not just implement it.  Do this at most once during the summer.

To expand a bit on (2): Listen carefully, including to body language.  Your supervisor has a role in  mind for you.    Different faculty have different expectations with regards to issues such as creativity, asking questions, frequency of meetings, quality control, etc. You need to meet these expectations as well as you can.  Exceeding expectations may not be a good thing; that's why I recommend doing it at most once.

Exceeding expectations may not be a good thing; that's why I recommend doing it at most once - What does this mean?

If you are given task A, and you do tasks A and B.  Or, in a discussion, you are told to use method A, and you point out that method B may be better.

I completely disagree - if you think you can do better than what your advisor tells you to do, you should absolutely speak up and suggest it.

I agree that that final comment really needs to be explained. Why would it be bad to exceed expectations?

It is bad to exceed expectations because of the likelihood of wasting time, both your own and the supervisor's.  Keep in mind that this is an undergraduate, not a PhD student/postdoc.

Undergrads are perfectly capable of having ideas that  save time and improve the quality of the research (I have supervised several). If you think you have an idea, speak up - the worst that can happen is that your supervisor will explain why it isn't suitable (which is no big deal, wastes 2 minutes at most, and you'll learn something from it). The best that can happen is that it will be a really good idea that makes the research much better!

Look, I don't want to get in an extended debate here.  The supervisor sets the parameters -- be creative in the areas where creativity is encouraged.  Being creative "outside the box" is unlikely to lead to an outcome the OP wants, and in a lab science might even lead to someone getting hurt.

I think this may be very field-specific - I see that you're in mathematics, where the role of undergrads in research is quite different than many other fields. In any event, acting on a "creative" idea without consulting your supervisor first can be bad - but I am always pleased when a student I am working with (undergrad, grad, or other) makes a suggestion.

... particularly as it also shows very clearly that the student does put his mind on the problem. In any case, as a student (and also later on) you can always formulate it as a question: "What are the reasons for approaching the problem this way and not say, from that (=new idea) angle?". For an undergrad internship the answer is usually known ;-). The point where I draw a line is that depending on how sensitive the lab equipment is, I may not like the idea of students trying out ideas on their own without consulting me first. If it was not a good idea: I have to realign the instrument...

In my master's project (being completely new to the field) I have had several discussions with my supervisor about techniques and approaches. I would say half of the time he was right and the other half I was. He has the experience, but I have been working with my data set and thinking about it much more than he has, so we both have very different perspectives. The risks of not following their advice are wasting time (the summer is limited) in something leading nowhere and the risk for the instrument. Discussion and suggestions are free in both cases.


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MOOC's certificates on graduate admissions
Do departments look at MOOC's certificates favorably during the graduate admissions process? Will it give me any advantage over students who don't have them if I am trying to enter a PhD program?

You're free to mention the certificate in your application.  How much weight to give to it is presumably up to individual committee members.  I think unless the certificate pertains to a specific skill that's in demand for the program, you shouldn't expect to get much of a boost from having one.  At the moment, people don't have much experience with such certificates, and will be more inclined to look at indicators they know better, like grades and GREs.  It's possible this will change a bit in the future, but it will likely move pretty slowly.

What sort of advantage do you have in mind?  MOOCs could help a little in addressing weaknesses in your application: if there's a standard course you were unable to take, then it could be helpful to be able to say you learned the material by other means, and a MOOC certificate might carry a little more weight than completely independent reading.  However, on a scale from saying you read a book to getting a strong letter of recommendation, a MOOC certificate is much closer to saying you read a book.
Beyond that, it can't hurt to list MOOC certificates on your CV, but I doubt they'll make any difference.  If you're going to graduate school, you should have spent time on many different sorts of learning: lots of formal classes, extensive discussions with peers, independent reading, and ideally working with a faculty member on something (a senior thesis, undergraduate research, etc.).  Adding a few online classes is just not a big deal, especially if people are unsure of what the standards are.  Compared with things like letters of recommendation or research experience, MOOCs disappear in the noise.

If the MOOC certificate is in a closely related field, it will help. If it is in something like "Underwater Basket Weaving", it may not give you an advantage over anyone else, unless of course you are entering a program in Underwater Basket Weaving. Or something similar, such as Underwater Knitting.

If the MOOC certificate is in a closely related field, it will help. - [citation needed]

I see the trolls are out

What? I honestly don't think a certificate from any computer science MOOC would help in my department, or in any strong CS department. Graduate admissions is largely based on building a convincing case for future success as a researcher; a MOOC certificate doesn't provide evidence of research potential.  But if you have evidence that relevant MOOC certificates help in graduate admissions, say in the form of a citation, I'd love to see it.

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Preventing leaking exam papers/cheating using phone cameras?
I work at an educational institution where exam papers are considered protected. Leaking the exam question sheet and taking photocopies or camera shots is considered illegal and is strictly prohibited. I am not here to argue about this policy but to ask about the best ways to enforce it. Students have been taking pictures of exam papers during exam time, leaking them to subsequent sessions or posting them with solutions and often selling them to students of subsequent semesters. Though we don't use the same questions between semesters, they do exhibit some similarities at times for some courses.
Even with strict invigilation and requests not to bring cell phones to the exam room, there have been some incidents. Lockers are out of the question, as is collecting all cell phones before exam time. I would welcome any suggestions.

How about "if we see you handling a cell phone during the exam, you will be thrown out with a big F"? Of course, communicated clearly at the beginning of the course, the beginning of the exam and multiple times in between. If a phone starts ringing, the owner should just let it ring (and be pilloried by his classmates afterwards).

We have done that. I dare say some students do take risks and still do it. If a student knows he is failing for sure, he has nothing to lose. So he tries to make money out of it or get solutions in the hope the next exam will be similar.

Collect phones from every student before exam.

Why is collecting phones out of question?

If cell-phone collection is the answer, how will you know if you got all the cell-phones? For example, I've seen a case where student had four cell-phones. What if someone correctly claims not to have a cell-phone? It all comes down to honesty in the end.

@AndrejaKo Solution: exam proctors. If a proctor sees someone with a cell phone during the exam, take their exam, rip the exam up in front of the student, and kick them out.

@user11192 Indeed, but then there's no need to waste time by collecting the phones.

@AndrejaKo Yes, my mistake, I agree: collecting phones is a waste of time. Exam proctoring would be more effective in my opinion.

If we see you handling a cell phone during the exam, you will be thrown out with a big F, and we will keep your phone.  (ha ha only serious)

If people can manage to take pictures of exam sheets, you should really worry about them using smartphones and similar to cheat for their own sake (and not for future students’), e.g., by communicating with an external helper or using a CAS in math-heavy fields, since this is much easier to conceal. It’s for the latter reason and not because of leaking exams that students are usually required to switch off any electronic device and keep it in a bag or similar which they cannot reach without drawing attention and must not reach unsupervised during the exam.

You can confiscate my phone, but good luck finding where I keep my charcoal and parchment of tracing paper.

@coburne: or, you know, your memory. Maybe I'm unusual, but when I left an exam I could sometimes remember some of what I'd been doing for the past 3 hours...

Reading all this, I'm suddenly relieved that we just give our exams to the students council who organise the distribution of copies of old exams. Means a bit more work for us preparing the exams, but far less hassle otherwise.

Why are students even allowed to HAVE phones in an exam hall? Every exam I've ever done (in UK), I've had to leave all possessions except for a transparent bag of stationary at the door...

Even if none student has a phone, or any material to write the questions down, there is absolutely nothing you can ever hope to do to stop them discussing the questions and collectively recalling them after the exam.

@SimonW And how do they check? In most countries teachers are not public officials, which means that if you ask the student to empty his pockets and he says "No", the teacher can't do anything about it. And you can't even prohibit a student from taking the exam without proofs of their misconduct. The only way to do that would be to call the police for every exam and let them do the searches...

@Bakuriu hmm, I've always assumed that refusing to leave belongings at the door would lead to disqualification from the exam. I don't know the precise legal situation, though.

@SimonW What if the student states that he doesn't have any belongings with him? Since you cannot search them, you cannot prove anything. And you can't prevent them from taking the exam without clear proofs (if you don't want to go to trial...).

@Bakuriu well, they can't take anything but a clear pencil case to their desk. If they have a phone secreted on their person, then it is the job of the invigilator to make sure that they are not using it to cheat during the exam. That's the whole point of having the invigilator there... of course somebody might manage it, but you'll never eliminate all cheating. And IMHO if you're allowing students to have smartphones in exams, the cameras are the least of your worries...! I really don't think it's a different problem to any other items-not-allowed-in-exam-hall one.

There's no point to enforce something that is stupid. Keep yourself out of this as far as you can.

Lazy professor wants to use the same exam questions every year, but finds this work-avoiding is somehow not so very simple! I'm sorry, but my sympathy is very limited.

I'm going to be a bit harsh and say that your cause is doomed to fail if you want to solve the problem just by policing students.
What happened is that some factors contributed to atmosphere where it is considered advantageous to have a copy of past exams and your students are motivated enough to risk getting a copy. The tradition of having a monetary incentive makes things even worse.
At my previous university, I had opportunity to witness the evolution of hi-tech copying systems. At first, nobody was checking for cell-phones because they had bad cameras and weren't as popular, then cell-phone copying became popular. Then cell-phone detectors of various levels of sophistication came into use. After that, cheaters moved on to other devices.
Today, spy devices are cheap and commonly available and they are next logical step from cell-phone cameras. Are you going to start checking your student's watches next? How about buttons, glasses or even pens? What about say calculators (OK, that one in particular isn't the best example, but if there's demand, supply will come), whose use might even be allowed in some examinations? Are you going to have a spy-equipment expert on your staff to check what your students are using? What if they home-brew some equipment?
What if someone actually steals a physical copy of questions? That actually happened at my previous school. Guy (not a student at the school) came to a lecture hall where an examination was being conducted, waited for TAs to hand out the questions and then proceeded towards the exit with a question sheet, running over anyone who tried to stop him. There was even a recording from video-surveillance of him doing the deed and a wanted poster was placed at the school entrance, but it didn't do any good. That particular problem was solved by asking for IDs before handing out questions, but it shows the trend of escalation that can happen.
Next, what if a group of students organizes with the idea of memorizing questions in detail without any technological aids? There's literally no way of preventing that.
The more you press the anti-technological/anti-cheating offensive without taking away the incentive to cheat, the greater is the risk that you'll instead form a core of semi-professional cheaters who will have connections to the sources of appropriate cheating equipment and serve as a cadre which will train future generations and make problem even worse. For example, in my hometown, a sure way to detect presence of a higher education institution is the high concentration of flyers advertising rent and sales of spy equipment.
The only sure way (that I at least can think of) to solve the problem is to cut it at its source and take away the incentive to have the pictures of past exams. Try to take time to analyze all factors that could lead to such behavior and see if you can actually affect any of them in a meaningful way. Although questions aren't repeated, it's obvious from the response of students that seeing past exams is beneficial in some way. It's normal for questions to be similar, since there are probably some underlying concepts that students should learn and that knowledge needs to be tested. If the students are already aware of what they're going to find at the exam, then there isn't much need to see how exactly the sheet with questions looks like. If the exams is supposed to be a surprise, then you should reconsider if you're actually preparing your students properly for the exam.
If going in-depth when solving a problem such as this isn't real motive, then it would be best to take advice from Moriarty's answer. You'll be doing something "direct" and you probably won't challenge existing policies too much.

+1, Eliminating the motivation is really the only true way to police the students. Even better, you can make seeing past exams negatively affect exam score by making the question seem nearly exactly like a past exam question but so that the solution is completely different. If you are a teacher I highly recommend addressing motivation, you can always say to administrators that you do the best you can watching out for cell phones.

How do you propose to minimize the incentive? The two ways I can think of is to (a) make the past examinations publicly available, or (b) if they don't already exist, write some special exemplar exams so that students have an idea of what they're in for.

@Moriarty At my current school, both (a) and (b) are practiced. Some teachers also like to provide exemplar exams instead of providing past exams. Another variation used in some classes for mid-term exams is homework. For example, homework assignments carry 5%-10% (so are low risk) of the total score and are similar to content of mid-term exam. Those who do HW correctly, get the points and those who don't, get feedback before the exam, so they know where to improve. Of course, such approach takes more resources of the faculty and can be hard for large classes.

I agree that there is something wrong with the way you're teaching and conducting exams if seeing previous exam papers gives so much of an advantage.  In my university previous exams could be downloaded from the course page.

@Moriarty: I have a handout where I've taken a handful of questions off of previous exams. These get posted on the LMS for all students to see. Because I use a lot of essay questions, I also include actual student answers (names removed, of course), along with detailed explanations on why Student A received full credit, and Student B did not. I've not gone so far as to distribute entire exams, but doing this representative sample seems to eliminate a lot of test anxiety for the students.

Apparently some people are looking out for the spy stuff during exams, too

My favorite fix of this is use the same base question, but alter the wording so the answer is switched. Instead of "A did B...this is an example of what?" you change it to "A did C...this is an example of what?" - with the same multi-choice answers listed. Someone naive to the question won't be effected, but someone who has studied the previous version will be more likely to recognize the question and rote-answer it...incorrectly. In this way you use the inherent cognition of cheaters against them, but minimize workload on test makers.

I once failed a course and was escorted to the dean's office by campus security because I forgot to remove my watch before entering the exam room. Forget about fancy spy watches, this was an analog wrist watch.

For starters, you could supply them with all the pens and pencils as per their choice. This way, one big source of bugs is eliminated. For the super stealthy bugs, how about fighting spy tech with spy tech, i.e counter surveillence and counter intel tools ? Camera dectors - http://www.brickhousesecurity.com/category/counter+surveillance/hidden+camera+detectors.do

You could also let each student pass through MRI-grade alternating electromagnet which at least has a relevant risk to fry electronic devices (not a serious suggestion).

"Next, what if a group of students organizes with the idea of memorizing questions in detail without any technological aids? There's literally no way of preventing that." Kudos for that one, I had to experience this myself and this was for a test that was published online 48h after the exam time.

This is not the answer you want but I have to get it out of my chest. (My background is engineering).
The best, most effective and easiest way to completely avoid students taking pictures of exams, selling them and making a profit out of that is:
Publish online all previous exams as an exercise book.
The questions in an exam and the exercises done before the exam should not be more different than an exam and a previous exam, actually old exams make for perfect exercises and practice.
The point is that studying the courses and making a few exams/exercises to practice should be easier and lead to greater success than checking the whole compilation of past exams, which should anyway lead to a good knowledge of the contents of the course (in a more tedious way than reading the theory and checking this with a few exams).
Personal story: When I was in high-school the homework would be much harder than the exams, anyone making the homework (optional) would get good qualifications and the qualifications would reflect actual good knowledge about the subject. In the university there were exercises, but they were explanatory and very basic, the questions in the exam were much harder. This made the exercises useless, students needed exams from previous years just to practice in answering the questions, and I hated that.

+100 if I could. This is the only sane solution.

It's a great solution to someone's problem, it just doesn't answer the question. It seems pretty unlikely that the questioner can either change university policy, or refuse to even try to enforce the policy in place. So this isn't far from a "quit your job and get a proper one" answer. If it was the person in charge of the policy asking, on the other hand, they'd deserve a piece of the minds of everyone who works at or just attended a proper university with proper exams.

I wonder if one can come up with an infinite supply of problems which vary significantly from each other. At some point you might run out and copy old problems from the supply. Now, if your supply is large and most problems differ from each other, then you are at an advantage. Students will have to either cram them all or learn how to solve all/most of them.

@BoratSagdiyev the supply of problems may (in an extreme case) be composed of one single problem (or one type of problem), but if that was the case then the students should only learn in that course to solve that (type of) problem. The point of lessons and exercises is helping students to learn and the point of exams is checking that they have learned, the overlap in the topics and questions in both things should be very significant. We could consider that an exam is similar to a unit test, the set of exams should provide a good coverage of the course materials. (see next comment)

@BoratSagdiyev One single exam may not cover everything, for example because the course is long and the time for the exam is limited. But the set of all exams should cover as much as possible from the course contents, and if some part is not covered (directly or indirectly) then maybe that part isn't that relevant and should be removed. For me, testing whether a student has acquired some knowledge is similar to testing whether some code works. The coverage of the exams is related with the coverage of unit tests.

+1 Publishing exams from previous semesters before class registration makes it easier for students to pick technical electives which are relevant to their future careers. I'm interesting is solving problem X, last semester's exam(s) from class Y has a similar problem. I bet I can learn to solve problems like X by taking class Y.

Make the punishment for being caught well-known. Make every effort possible to track down the perpetrators, and make the offence
  and punishment publicly known.

You could set up one or two cheap cameras to take high-resolution photographs at set intervals, say every 15 seconds (making sure it's all kosher legally, and warning the students). I know that Canon compact cameras "hacked" with the CHDK software can do this. Don't use an SLR, they have noisy shutters. If you find out an exam has been leaked, you should be able to comb the archive and catch the perpetrator. Yes, it's an extreme solution -- but also a scare tactic.
Cell phone detectors are another possibility to catch offenders in the act, though by no means foolproof. Turning on airplane mode would render them useless.

Make offending harder by confiscating cell phones at the start of the exam. This won't stop pre-meditated offending, though -- you can't do pat-downs!

Yes, you claim this is out of the question. But I am truly surprised that this is not an institutional policy to collect all cell phones before an exam. Put this back into the question. My undergraduate institution also had a substantial fine (NZD $70, IIRC) for the owner of a cell phone that rang during the exam. It should go without saying that phones must be turned off.

Place a subtle random symbol somewhere on each exam paper, that is unique to each individual.

Your average none-too-bright cheater might not take much notice of a "⎋" symbol  in the corner of a page. But, it would be a pain to implement for a large class and will only work until someone catches on.

There are more subtle watermarking techniques, e.g. some that work with a faint dot pattern across the whole page. One would have to experiment what kind survives mobile cameras. Of course such measures won't work indefinitely, but it stands to reason that one (occasional) very public case of a student being kicked out for misconduct lowers motivation to cheat (in this way) considerably. (FWIW, I personally don't think this policy is worth enforcing.)

For starters, you could supply them with all the pens and pencils as per their choice. This way, one big source of bugs is eliminated. For the super stealthy bugs, how about fighting spy tech with spy tech, i.e counter surveillence and counter intel tools ? Camera dectors - http://www.brickhousesecurity.com/category/counter+surveillance/hidden+camera+detectors.do

When designing the exam paper, place fewer items per page. To reduce paper waste, this can be achieved by using A5-size exam papers, created by putting two exam papers on a single sheet, then cutting the pages in half. This will not prevent students from taking photographs, but it will mean that each photo they take will be obtaining less information about your exam. The student will need to take their camera out more often to get the whole exam, increasing the chances that your proctors, who should be watching the room carefully, will catch them.

or print double sided but only have one question per page. If there are many questions you could have very small exam packets (note card sized) with one question per page.

I had a professor that solved this problem nicely when I was in college.  This is all based on what he did.

Before the Final, tell the all the periods that everyone is getting the same test.  And that all the grades will be scaled across all periods.  If the second period class does better than the first period class, it will suck to be in the first period when the mean will be substantially higher.
Repeat this warning on the day of the test.
Hand out a substantially different test to the 2nd period students.

Yes, he lied to all the students, but he had watched the 2nd period Antennas class consistently score higher than the 1st period.
I've met people that had that second class, they studied our test exclusively and more than one of them lost 2 letter grades in their final class grade over it.  Studying the other test exclusively wasn't a problem for this teacher after that.
His tests were deep in theory and derivation of where the equations come from, and Antennas is a very complicated subject.  Might not work with all classes, but when word of this kind of apocalypse gets out, it will live in the history of the folklore for many years.

While I don't doubt this works, why is lying necessary? Wouldn't just giving the different test to the second period work the same?

The prevailing idea when I was in school is that the professors were lazy.  There was a filing cabinet full of old tests in the basement run by the student IEEE association.  Lots of people passed classes because the profs didn't even bother to change the test from year to year.  This was a well publicized resource for students.  Would you believe that the prof was going to make a new test in that case, or would you see it as an empty threat.  If any other prof at the school had said he was making a different test, I wouldn't have believed it.

but that doesn't matter if he actually did change the test. Who cares what the students believed, it's the same result either way.

@MHH: I'd assume the purpose (or at least the effect) of lying about the tests being the same would've been to amplify the difference between the two groups of 2nd-period students: those who'd take it as an invitation to cheat and only study the first test (and therefore fail) and those who'd consider doing so unethical, even if they had an opportunity to do so (see the comment about the filing cabinet full of old tests), and would thus study properly and pass.

It seems this would result in drop/add from the 1st section to the others, until all sections are full but the 1st.

@MMH - Why the lie? Human nature, perhaps? There's a feeling of betrayal when students connive and cheat like that; I imagine it was especially satisfying for the professor to outwit them at their own game.

I know it made a lot of us in the first section feel better to know something had been done to level the playing field!

A straight-up lie about examination procedure like this may open you to legal action (in some countries).

To prevent questions being copied from one test period to another is relatively "simple"—just make sure that classes taking the same test take it at the same time. (This requires some central planning of course, but should be something the university would in principle approve of.)
As for the use of cell phones, we take care of that by making sure that students can't access them during the exam. Because our protocols require a "gap row" between students taking the exam, that gives us an extra row of desks. We ask the students to put their extra materials in the gap rows. That way it's immediately obvious if students start reaching for the materials, because they have to stand up or visibly get out of their seat to access them.
In addition, it is announced that cell phones are not allowed material, and that any violation of the exam regulations results in an automatic failing grade. (Thus, any use of a cell phone gets you in trouble.)

Exam questions can be shuffled, or reparameterized (being careful to make both versions equally difficult) to obtain at least 2 versions of the same exam.
But don't mark them version A/B.  Let the cheater try to figure that out.
Start playing this game early.  Do it on quizzes and midterms.
This doesn't eliminate cheating, but may make it not worth the trouble.
If you think there might be spies within your department who are leaking the exams, give one version of the exam to the assistants to photocopy, and say nothing about an alternate version.  Photocopy the alternate exam version yourself, and substitute at time of test.  You won't be questioned about wasting trees, but if you are, say you thought there was an error in the test or that it didn't cover things with the correct weight, and you wanted to correct that.
It is a bit of work, but it is not 2x or 3x the work and if it seems like it is, rethink what to change.  A side benefit is a larger pool of example questions is generated as time goes by.
Alternative: Make the exam open book, no time limit (i.e. this should take about 3 hours but you have all weekend if you need it), and the questions impossible, like what you would expect at Caltech or MIT.
Contraindications: Requires working honor system; honor.

I've played the A/B game in the opposite direction, conspicuously marking the exams as "version A" and "version B" even though they were otherwise identical.

It's amazing what open book exams can do to students. I had some midterm exams in two parts, a 24 hr preliminary computing part (open book, open notes, do-it-yourself, browse help files, do not talk to others, all numerical questions are unique for each student), sufficient for a grade of "C", and an in-class theory part necessary for a grade of "A" (the subject was statistics). I found that students would spend anywhere between 2 and 8 hours on the take-home part alone, and noted that they ended up working more on the exam that they would if they crammed in a "regular" way the night before.

About not marking them A/B: Do mark them A/B, just don't make it correlate with anything.

@JeffE: Another fun game is printing the same exam on two or more different colors of paper.  Of course, this falls through if you post solutions or go over the answers in class, and have to admit that the same solutions apply to all "versions".

Do you have the option of conducting the exams centrally?  At my institution, all final exams and major mid-semester exams were conducted at the same time for all students, under the supervision of external monitors.
Any person who was seen using a phone or unauthorised notes would be guilty of serious misconduct, and likely get zero for the exam at the very least.  Similarly, no person was permitted to leave the room until all papers had been collected, so it wasn't possible for the question sheets to go walkabout.

Unfortunately, that will be difficult if there's not institutional support for it.  (Although I'm constantly amazed to find out that it's not the norm elsewhere.)
What I have seen work in the past, though, is to use subtly different question sheets for different students.  On numerical exams it's easy enough to change a few numbers, but people who intend to copy answers out probably won't notice the difference.
Of course, that won't help if there's later sessions of the same exam, but honestly that's not something that should be happening at university level anyway.  No technical solution is going to be able to stop students from talking.

even if the OP did, this does not address the between years issue.

although I agree, one central exam for the course is the most efficient. No need for spending money on external proctors. Just make all teachers/TAs proctor the large room at once.

@MHH - I'm a little puzzled by the between years issue, to be honest.  Isn't it the norm to release past papers?  All the universities around here do it as a matter of policy.

I am not here to argue about this policy but to ask about the best ways to enforce it.

Like some of the other excellent answers, I am going to argue about this policy as I do not see a good way to enforce it.
Like many other institutions (entertainment industry, telegraph ) you are clinging to an old model in the face of overwhelming technology and a client base (students) that simply don't care about your rules (copying exams is not illegal: your institution is not the government and cannot enact laws).
Focusing on cellphones will accomplish nothing. I have a high-res camera in my laptop that is smaller than a shirt button. While I personally cannot hide it under my hairline, many 20 year olds can. See other answers (or amazon.com) for more places to hide a camera.
Your end goal seems to be to reduce cheating, meaning knowing the answer to question 17 before going into the test. You reduce cheating by making the contents of question 17 irrelevant because everyone gets a different question 17.
Any decent-size institution will have a large question bank built up over the years. Digitize it if you haven't done so already, and get the IT department to make a system that prints out 200 different tests with questions drawn at random from the database. Randomize the order. If you want to be really fancy, have the system randomize values if that is appropriate. This is not a complex process, I would probably quote you delivery within a week excluding the questions themselves.
Administration will probably whine about running costs, but there are none. Printing used to cost more than copying but today it's exactly the same machine.
So, 200 students each getting a different set of 50 questions drawn from 1000 in a random order with random values -> copying any particular test is of no value to others and the problem largely goes away.

This would open you up to accusations of unfair testing practices, though - some students would get a more difficult test than others.

You can still randomize elements of the problems if you are in a field that permits this.

@David-Z Question in the system should be graded for difficulty, the system can easily grab 5xA, 20xB, 20xC level questions. Randomizing numbers shouldn't make the math any harder, and any professor who cannot create 20 questions of equivalent difficulty should be shown the door.

If you also record the overall mark of the students that passed each question, and put some new questions into each exam that are ignored by the grading system (don't tell the student witch questions these are).   Then using basic stats skill, you can auto generates lots of exams that are about as hard as each other.

I love the possibility this opens up to get some good meta data on test problems - which questions consistently stump students, which ones have a strong correlation of correct/incorrect answers to a particular teacher, etc. Data is beautiful.

In many jurisdictions student's answers are his/her intellectual property and he/she is legally entitled to copy and reproduce them. You need to consult with local lawyer ASAP, because your institution may actually be asking you to prevent students from exercising their rights.
(I do understand that students transfers some of their rights to the institution. But depending on local laws, some rights cannot be transferred nor relinquished, like the right to make a copy for personal use. There is also a possibility that university might have no rights at all to student's work - until he/she submits it.)

This isn't about ownership of student answers, it's about conduct during an exam, which the school is certainly allowed to regulate. Besides, the OP says the problem is about exam question sheets.

@ff524 That's my point - some aspects of the conduct might not be in school legal powers to regulate.

Just as you can tell students "I won't accept your exam if you walk out in middle of the exam to make a photocopy of your paper," you can tell students "I won't accept your exam if you take out your phone in middle of the exam to take a photo". These in no way infringe on students' intellectual property rights.

@ff524 I think this is already done, OP said "taking photocopies or camera shots is considered illegal and is strictly prohibited" so I assume some form of punishment is involved. The question is about what other steps to take, and IMHO some of them are illegal.

If a student submits the same essay for two courses they get into big trouble.
Therefore why are you allowing your staff to cheat the system and not do the work they are paid to do by using the same exam for more than one presentation of the course?
The solution is to remove any member of your staff that are too lazy to do the job they are paid to do.
And then publish all past exams, as is done for every exam I have taken in the UK, for some reason the UK does not allow the same lazy and cheating by it’s university staff.

While there is something true about the essential thought of this answer, classifying it as cheating is out of scale in my opinion.

Why do u assume it is an essay exam. It could be engineering, physics, maths etc

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


text:
How to respond to someone plagiarizing my work?
I have recently come across a paper that copy-pasted entire paragraphs of one of my papers which is already published in an international journal.  This paper appeared in a journal which is not very popular, and I did not get a courtesy citation.
How should I proceed with this?  I was thinking of reporting the issue to the editor of the journal where the paper appeared but then I thought that it may not even worth the effort. On the other hand, I still have this in my mind since this is clearly unethical behaviour.
What would you suggest?

what a disgraceful behaviour. email him fire it in his face and let him know the rules!

I would definitely contact the chief editor of the journal and place the evidence before him/her/them. Plagiarism should not be taken lightly. There is a tendency to be lenient when it comes to self-plagiarism of non-critical parts of the text, for example, parts of methods sections (in experimental work). Regardless where one draws the line, copying sections of text verbatim from others is a clear breach to me.
Anyway, it will be the editor's job to pursue the matter after you made the point. If the journal belongs to a publishing house they may receive legal help to deal with the author. If the editor does not react and there is a clear publisher behind the journal it may be relevant to bring it up a level. If you have someone in your university working on copyright issues, perhaps at the library, then you could also talk to them. They may be able to provide further assistance and help evaluate the case.

Many thanks for pointing out different directions and different levels to proceed with this. I have a co-author in this publication, then I guess it is also sensible to let my co-author know about this before proceeding.

I don't think you should let it slide.

Contact the editor-in-chief of the journal where the offending paper appeared, and explain the situation (with the citation of your paper).  If they do not respond, or do not adequately address the matter, "name and shame": spread the word that this is not a journal to be taken seriously.  You could also contact the publisher, as Peter Jansson suggests.
Contact the editor-in-chief of the journal where your paper appeared.  They have an interest in protecting the work of their author, and may have more leverage in dealing with the offending journal.  If, as is common, you transferred your copyright to them upon publication, they may have a legal interest as well.
Consider contacting the author of the offending paper, and/or their department chair or dean.

Thank you for your answer. Point 2 is interesting indeed.

Point 3 is also a smart strategy.. Contacting the institution is also very important. Good departments will treat such charges very seriously as well.

From a general "dealing with offenses" perspective, it seems to me that first contacting the author of the offending paper would be the best way to avoid complicating things. I might be wrong about academia, though.

@user7748: you may want to go back and read the copyright transfer form or any other documents you've agreed to when you submitted your paper for publication. I remember at least one publisher who listed, as one of the things that they do, in return for your assigning them the copyright, to defend the article against copyright infringements and plagiarism.

I think that you should send an email to the following persons:
1) To the person in charge or program committee of the journal in which your work has been plagiarized. Be prepared that you can stump upon some frisky person who would like to deny any responsibility about this actions, but at least you state your point that what is that person doing is completely wrong.
2) To the author who make the plagiarism action
You mentioned that the journal in which they plagiarized your work is not well known. Well that is one strong reason why you should communicate with them. For the following reasons:

Sometimes those small conferences and journals want to start to build a reputation, so consider that you will be helping them in that task.
Also they can get a grasp about the quality of reviewers that they actually have in their staff. In some occasions the reviewers only pass thru the article very quickly, but actually do not check if there has been some plagiarize on it. Do not get me wrong, but a lot of reviewers do that, and most of the discovered cases of plagiarism in journals or conferences has been discovered by external persons to that environment; like in this case.

So in both cases, you will end up teaching some research ethics to both: the cheaty researcher and the careless journal.


text:
Does work experience help in (US) graduate admissions?
I have around 8 years of work experience. At this stage, the possible step is to go along management track. But, I am neither interested nor does it appeal to me. Thinking more on this, I have decided to go back to school, preferably for a PhD or, in the worst case, a master's degree.
My GRE and GPA are not so strong: 1100 GRE with 770 in math and 3.0 GPA (out of 4.0).
My experience includes companies like Amazon and Zynga, but I have no research experience whatsoever.
Am I a good candidate for PhD or master's with research? My primary interests are in computer graphics or applied mathematics in simulation/visualization. What do you  suggest I do? I am aiming for top 20 schools, but not sure if it will be right thing to do.

Welcome to AC.SE. I am struggling to see what your question is. It might help if you take a look at some of the related questions about graduate-admissions.

Thank you. In simple, I want to know if work experience in industry will add to grad admissions of top universities in USA. I mentioned my GRE and GPA.

That would be a good, and I think new, question. I would suggest you look at previous questions and answers and then edit your question to get at what value admissions committees place on previous industry work experience.

I would strongly recommend sitting in on, or somehow actually enrolling in, some upper level class at a local university. Treat it as if you were actually enrolled, and ask (beg) the professor to grade your homework and exams. And be sure to sign up for something brutally hard.
This will let you test your chops, and if you excel, then you can ask the professor to write a letter of recommendation.
Please keep in mind that top 20 programs are extremely competitive, and reject very many good people. Your competitors will have letters of recommendation from professors specifically familiar with the requirements of Top 20 programs, confidently saying that they are prepared to handle it.
An alternative would be to try to get into a master's program at a lower-tier university. If you prove yourself to be head and shoulders above everyone else, you can ask your professors to support transfer applications to better programs.
Your work experience is likely to count for very little, or perhaps even against you, since you have been out of school for so long. Sorry -- that's just how it is.
This is a hard road, I have at least sort of walked it myself. Good luck to you!

Thanks a lot for your reply. I will follow your suggestions.


text:
Biological data being used by an unpublished research paper is considered proprietary
This question may be too specialist to be on topic here. If it is off topic, please feel free to transfer it to another SE site, or close it, as
appropriate.
I am planning to publish an applied statistics paper. This paper
develops an algorithm and then applies this algorithm to some data. I
obtained most of this data from the site http://www.imgt.org. The data I am
using are immunoglobulin and T cell receptor nucleotide sequences, in
the form of FASTA files. I'm using around 200 of these.
Here is an random example of the data I am using (click on [6 Sequence (FASTA format)] to get the FASTA file).
Now, I have a problem. In Warranty Disclaimer and Copyright Notice, is written

The IMGT® software and data are provided as a service to the
scientific community to be used only for research and educational
purposes. Individuals may print or save portions of IMGT® for their
own personal use. Any other use of IMGT® material need prior written
permission of the IMGT director and of the legal institutions (CNRS
and Université Montpellier 2).

I just heard from Prof. Marie-Paule Lefranc and she replied:

I have no objection that the data you retrieved for your work from
IMGT/LIGM-DB be made available to the reviewers, but unfortunately we
cannot authorize a script or a distribution of the IMGT/LIGM-DB files
with your code to the users.
You can provide the users with the list of the IMGT/LIGM-DB accession
numbers you used, with the source of the data clearly identified:
(IMGT/LIGM-DB version number) and reference to NAR 2006.

Well, this just made my life more difficult. To start with, I'm
puzzled by this. Isn't biological data like this public domain? Is it
really possible to treat immunoglobulin and T cell receptor nucleotide
sequence data as proprietary information?
I just wrote back and asked Prof. Lefranc what license the data was
published under, which I had not done earlier.
Additionally, how does one make data available to reviewers and not to
users? That is awkward, to say the least.
Also, the data is inconvenient to download. As you can see
from the example above, the FASTA file is displayed in a web page, and
is not downloaded by that button. One needs to clean the web page to
get the FASTA file, which is a pain. As you can see Prof. Lefranc also
disallowed the use of a script for doing this. What this most likely
means in practice is that no user will ever actually test the code,
because obtaining the data is too difficult.
I realise that the users of this site may not be comfortable offering
what is essentially a legal opinion, and if so, can anyone suggest a
more authoritative source to ask about the legalities of this? Thanks.

I guess I do not understand why you chose data that had restrictions for your paper (will the algorithm not work with other data?). It seems you tripped yourself up by assuming everything is free.

It seems like the problem is offering the users the scripts to download the data. But if you keep the algorithm that you used to download the data off your paper, there doesn't seem to be a problem with presenting your results on the imgt sequences (as one of the answers proposed). But since this is an old thread, you could tell us how it went.

Hi @BioGeo. It has indeed been a while, but I remember I used the approach suggested by Peter Rice. As you can see, I accepted his answer. SE helpfully tells me that I did so on September 18th 2013. How time flies.

The copyright is probably on the full database release flatfile and the formatted entries ... you will find similar conditions for UniProt/SwissProt so it is not so unusual.
The restrictions on scripts are common to prevent server performance hits from a large number of requests.
You can simply invite reviewers to download the data from some other server, for example from the EBI SRS server. The URL for entry A00673 would be
"http://srs.ebi.ac.uk/srsbin/cgi-bin/wgetz?[IMGTLIGM-ID:a00673]+-view+FastaSeqs+-ascii"
You can also use a list of accessions, for example A00673 or A01650
"http://srs.ebi.ac.uk/srsbin/cgi-bin/wgetz?[IMGTLIGM-ID:a00673|a01650]+-view+FastaSeqs+-ascii"
If downloading many entries you should pause between requests, but putting lists into the URLs may reduce it to few enough not to cause a problem. I doubts EBI would be upset by 200 requests - they would be concerned about thousands.
There are various fasta formats available for IMGT data, you need to find a server that produces fasta files compatible with your input requirements.
Alternatively of course your reviewers could download the whole database from IMGT or any of the other servers (including ftp://ftp.ebi.ac.uk/pub/databases/imgt/) and generate their own fasta subset from the list of accessions/ids
Hope that helps!

Thanks for the super helpful answer, Peter. I'm replying in more detail on the Debian lists.

+1 for suggesting to download the entire database. imgt.fasta.Z is only 46 MB, and it's already in a clean machine-readable format, so @FaheemMitha could easily write a script to parse it (or just use an existing tool written for the purpose).

Yes, it is making your life a little harder, but it doesn't mean publication of your work is impossible, nor does it make IMGT's action unethical. I cannot comment on the legality of IMGT's copyright claim on the data, but contesting their claim doesn't sound like a great idea in the first place. In any case, talk it through with a lawyer from your university's legal department, before you do anything that deviates from what IMGT asks for.
Now, how can you move forward? Well, separate your existing code (which does the scraping and the analysis) into two separate parts:

The IMGT website scrapper/parser, which will download data and write it to files named after each query (M38103.txt for query “M38103”).
Do not publish that part (but keep it around, it would be a shame to throw away code that you have already written, and that works: you never know, IMGT's policy may change in the future).

The bulk of your analysis code, which takes these query results as text input files.

You now publish #2, and give the referees access to the files (journal submission websites have an option for “supporting information for reviewers only”, although it may be called differently). In the paper, you indicate clearly (but not aggressively) that “because licensing restrictions do not allow us to redistribute IMGT data, we provide a script that requires query results as text input files”.
You're not the first person to publish valid research results that come from analysis of a proprietary data source. There is no ethical issue here, because the reviewers have enough information to accurately review the validity of your work. Moreover, even the readers will be able to reproduce your work, though it will require a separate download step (and definitely depends on IMGT keeping its database online and freely accessible).
So yeah, it makes your code is little harder to use for others, but it doesn't diminish the values of the results you have obtained with it!

Thanks for the helpful response, F'x. If you look at my question, you can see that Prof. Lefranc says "unfortunately we cannot authorize a script..." I find the treatment of biological data as proprietary surprising. I find this prohibition doubling surprising. Is the owner of a web site really in a position to dictate that e.g. curl in my case not be used to download the files?

If even a script is not allowed, then the difficulty level for
obtaining this data is prohibitive. Nobody, except a fanatic is going to manually download 200 web pages and manually clean them. Of course, I suppose they could write their own script and not tell Prof. Lefranc about it. :-)

Focus on your results! Do not put so much the focus on the code, but on the algorithm/method and the results… that's what research is about. It's nice to publish the exact code you used, so that others can use it (and also verify your results). But that's an added benefit, the methodology and results are your main contribution to the field. (Anyone can write the code, but fewer people can have the idea behind it.)

Sure, the ideas/algorithm/method is important, but making sure people can reproduce the results without excessive difficulty is also important. Apart from anything else working code is important if one wants to understand how the method works in all its details.    The paper discussion may not include all necessary details, but working code by definition does. Obviously, working code which does not include necessary input data is not very useful working code. :-)

@FaheemMitha the ideas behind reproducible research come at a cost. You cannot use data sets which are not open.

The OP says IMGT objects to the posting of a scraper. Presumably writing the scrapper requires access to the data and the license for accessing the data has a clause saying you cannot publish a scrapper. I would not attempt to publish the scrapper unless it was key to the finding (and not to the reproduction).

@DanielE.Shub sorry if I was unclear, I'm definitely not suggesting to write the scrapper, and even less publish it. Since the OP already has a scrapper as part of his code, I advise him to factor it out, in order to publish the rest of the code (I have edited my answer to make that clearer).

@FaheemMitha: but code that works only for that one data set isn't that useful, neither!?

As F'x already said, from a scientific perspective there is no problem.
The data is available, just not automatically and from you, but from the original source (via the ID numbers). So editor, reviewers and readers can get the data, given they are not too lazy to download it from the original web site. That is much more than is common in many fields of physical/experimental science.
Considering that you are talking about biological data, not having an automated download is so much more convenient than trying to reproduce experimental data  (although I have to say that it is a sensible and under-used mid-way checkpoint) ...
However, here are a few more thoughts:

Isn't biological data like this public domain? Is it really possible to treat immunoglobulin and T cell receptor nucleotide sequence data as proprietary information?

Facts cannot be copyrighted. But the measured data is subject to copyright. If I go through the effort of doing these measurements, I'm the owner of that data. Just as you are the author of the program code you wrote and the paper you wrote.
But, as you cannot forbid that someone else to write another program doing the same, or another paper on the same subject, just because I have the rights to my measurements, I cannot forbid you to make your own measurements.
Of course I could donate my data base to the public domain, just as you can put your program under a FOSS license.
Copyright varies considerably depending on jusdiction. So IMHO this question cannot really be answered without taking into account where the database comes from (EU) and where you are located.
Now, in the EU we have a database copyright given you put enough effort in making the data base (it is not enough to grab an old encyclopedia and scan pages from that. But carefully curating a nucleotide sequence database is clearly enough). Again, this copyright is for the database, not for the facts stored in the database.
For your nucleotide sequences that means: if you choose to use their nucleotide database, you have to stick to their rules. But again, you are free to measure the nucleotide sequence yourself and use that data set instead.

how does one make data available to reviewers and not to users

You can use the letter to the editor to tell the editor that you'd be happy to supply the reviewers with the curated data set you acutally used for the analysis.

the data is inconvenient to download. [...]
  I realise that the users of this site may not be comfortable offering what is essentially a legal opinion

While it is certainly a good idea to learn about copyright, I cannot recommend going for legal loopholes against the database owner's expressed wishes. They do allow enough for you and other scientists to do science. Why would you want to upset them?
I think it would be better to talk to them. What about this instead of asking them to allow scripts, you could offer to produce for them a second version of the data base that is suitable as machine-readable input, and kindly ask them whether they would be willing to make that version available via their server.
In addition to learning about copyright, maybe you could ask them for their reasons for their download policy. There may be a whole lot for you to learn in that answers as well.
I come from one of the physical sciences where good measurements take lots of effort. Here are some reasons why a data base ownder may say that people should download the data base from the original source:

The name of "owner"/author of the database is associated with it. As author  you may not want to run the risk of getting associated with derivatives that do not follow your strict high-quality policy.
One very simple way to ensure that people actually get your data base when they think they do is to tell them always to download the original
(there are alternatives, such as signing a version for distribution etc.).
In addition, the owner may want/need to have at least a rough overview of how many people use the data base. Such information is at the very least extremely helpful when you need to show that you are not doing useless stuff for your wages.


text:
Applied to two MS programs, but one wants a decision before the other has made a decision
I applied to two graduate schools (both for an MS).  "University A" gave me an admissions decision already.  Upon reading their admissions letter, I have to make a decision within one week (it's currently mid-June).  Unfortunately, I still have not heard back from "University B".  They will be making their decision by July 31st.
I'm not entirely sure what to do here.  My preference would be to go to University B, but if I don't get in there, then obviously I'd like to go to University A.
Would it be wrong to accept the offer to University A, and then withdraw later?  Or, would it reflect poorly on me if I asked for an extension to make a decision?  I find it strange that University A wants a decision so quickly, seeing as how you can apply for admission for the fall quarter up through mid-August.

Probably useful: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/9985/how-to-ask-an-university-for-application-selection-result-before-accepting-an-of?rq=1

possible duplicate of Opinion on accepting a grad school offer after having already accepted another offer

I suggest contacting University B and letting them know your circumstances. If they have flexible policies and your are a particularly strong student, it may be the case that they make an earlier decision.  However, many of the admission decisions are made at a committee level, so you may be in a position of having to make an immediate decision. I strongly advise against accepting admission at University A and then deciding not to attend if University B accepts you.  If you choose to accept University A before a decision from University B, I think you should inform University B.

Would it be wrong to accept the offer to University A, and then
  withdraw later?

Ethically, I think this would be wrong unless you expressly told University A of your consideration when you make the decision.  When you accept an admission offer you are taking up limited resources and potentially depriving someone else of admission to the university.

Or, would it reflect poorly on me if I asked for an
  extension to make a decision?

Not at all - just tell them that you are very interested in A but also have other possibilities and would like to make a fully informed decision.  The worst thing that will happen is that A says "no".

I find it strange that University A
  wants a decision so quickly, seeing as how you can apply for admission
  for the fall quarter up through mid-August.

Presumably, University A has a limited number of slots that they can fill, and, if you say "no", they would like to extend the slot to someone else before decisions are made.  I'm a bit surprised that these universities are making fall MS decisions in June - these decisions are typically done by mid-April.


text:
Is it OK to write recommendation letters for two students for the same institution and how to avoid the competition?
I am a teacher in a high school for gifted students and a student (let's call him A) asks me for a recommendation letter some time ago to apply to a top-level university (say AU: Awesome University) in our country. His level is below the average but he is very motivated and worked very hard. He is also a very nice, dedicated student with a good sense of ethics. His rather low score is explained by the high standards of my school: it is highly considered at the national level and in some countries around, and senior students can validate in advance some university courses. So I am sure that A will do well at university and I really want him to enter in AU.
Recently, after I accepted writing a recommendation letter for A, a second student, B, asked me for a recommendation letter for the same university AU. B is a great student with excellent grades. She always works with passion and could be considered as a dream student. I of course would be very happy to write her a recommandation letter and I have no worries about the outcome of the application of her application to AU. But I am worried on how my recommandation letter for A will be compared to the letter for B and whether writing for B would lower A's chances to enter university.
The shorter, the better, here are my questions:

Is there any (maybe unofficial) policy about writing recommendation letters for two students for the same institution?
Do my worries about one of the two recommendation letters disregarded by comparison with the other one make any sense?
If my worries are founded, how can I avoid the competition between the two letters?

I am sorry to say that I don't see how the question -- which concerns high school and prospective undergraduate students -- could be made suitable for this site. If one tried to modify the question so as to include graduate study, the answers would probably change: in particular, it often is appropriate to make comparisons in the latter situation.  With apologies, I have voted to close.

This question appears to be off-topic because it is about high school students.

@PeteL.Clark I think the question could apply just as well to multiple college seniors applying to the same graduate school, or multiple grad students applying to the same postdoc position, with only minimal modification. I don't see how the answers would be that different. So even though this particular situation concerns high school students, I think it's general enough to be on topic here, perhaps after a small amount of editing.

@DavidZ: "I don't see how the answers would be that different." Most unis admit thousands of students per year. Most grad programs admit less than a hundred. 2) Most letters written for hs students are written by hs teachers or guidance counselors and read by admissions officers. Most letters for grad school are written by and read by profs in the same field, who know each other at least by reputation. 3) The letters of recommendation are not a very important part of most university applications (at least in the US); they are the most important part of grad school applications. And so forth...

I asked a similar question before for grad students. I think the answers are just as relevant. The link is above.


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Will my job have a negative impact on my profile as a graduate student applicant?
I am a senior undergraduate in Electrical and Electronics Engineering, and I ultimately want to pursue a Master's degree in the field of Embedded Systems. However, my current financial situation prohibits me from paying for this, so I have decided to take a couple years off in order to save money and to apply for loans and scholarships. To that end, I have recently accepted a job in the IT department of a respected bank (I was unable to find a job in the field of Embedded Systems). Since I am not able to work in my target domain, will this time off negatively affect my prospects at top graduate programs?

Your question is very localized, but there's a useful nugget in the form of "will an industry job hinder/help my future plans for graduate school". Maybe you'd consider an edit to focus on the general question ?

Unfortunately, probably yes. How much so will depend on graduate programs' perception of how difficult it is for undergraduates to find industry jobs. (If is common for very good students to fail to find jobs in your specialty and region of the world, then professors are likely to know about it and not hold this much against you.) However, this is certainly not fatal to your chances. Best of luck to you!

my current financial situation prohibits me from paying for this — I assume you mean "but my current financial situation makes it impossible to live on a graduate student stipend."

@JeffE I am sorry but I don't know of any graduate student stipend. I am an Indian student aiming for graduate schools in the US

If a graduate school in the US is not willing to offer you an assistantship that pays you a stipend, Do. Not. Go.

@JeffE as an applicant for next season, I thought this applied more to phd programs than ms programs?

@JeffE Why do say that? I have come to know that assistantships are hard to come by. Some of my friends joining this fall don't have TA or RA offers.

PhD programs always offer stipends to the students they value.  Contrarily, Masters programs (even at the same schools) usually don't, assistantships give priority to PhD students, and Masters tuition can be pretty pricey on top of that.  Especially for foreign students, the exchange rate can make tuition and living in the US quite difficult financially.

Masters degrees are often funded not by the university but by an employer.  Generally with the requirement that you continue working during your program, which constrains choice of school geographically (has to be close to the employer), the rate at which you complete a program (part-time, not full load), and only works for the degree most closely associated with the job you do -- companies don't fund you to move on to bigger and better things elsewhere, they invest in making their employees provide more value back to them.
Your job history shouldn't have a lot of impact other than whether it enables you to be employer-funded, and in the case described of working in your field but outside your desired specialization, it pretty much rules out receiving that benefit.
On the other hand, most Masters (MS, MSE, or MEng) in Engineering programs even at highly ranked schools don't have extremely competitive admissions.  So you might focus on trying to find employment (and the necessary visas) compatible with the program you want to enter.

Actually I am aiming at the MS program not the M.Eng program. I am not quite sure about the MEng progam. I believe the MS program has a more rigorous curriculum. It is more technical and less managerial.
Also as far as I know, visa is not granted fro people looking jobs abroad but only for education.

@user191156: I didn't mean that the curriculum isn't rigorous, or is less technical.  But when there's no money being given out along with admission, admissions aren't as selective.  Work visas are definitely harder to get than academic visas.  Which is why I said focus on obtaining a work visa and job, if you pull that off you won't have to worry about whether you will be allowed to enroll.


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Research Design Help: Measuring the effects of plagiarism intervention
(Background: I am a full-time EFL instructor at a university in S. Korea. I want to do independent research, as most faculty would not be interested to collaborate with someone who only has an MA.)
Korea is known as the plagiarism capital of the world. Since I work with student writers there, I am very interested in the subject. I am trying to devise a research project which can measure the efficacy of plagiarism intervention strategies, namely teaching paraphrasing, summarization, and citation skills. I have done a small literature review and have ideas for getting student perspectives on plagiarism using already validated surveys. However, since I want to focus on effect, I was wondering if anyone had suggestion on how to actually measure this?
I was thinking some kind of pre-test/post-test, but would really love some more ideas.
Edit: to expand on the pre-test/post-test idea, I had thought about giving them a number of short paragraphs which they would need to paraphrase and cite correctly (assuming paraphrasing is a vital referencing skill) pre-intervention and then post.

MA is short for 'MAsters' or 'Master of Arts'? I am surprised that no one is interested in working with you on that problem, since a positive result could make your university stand out in a positive way?

Unfortunately, the foreign faculty and the Korean faculty don't have much interaction.

I've voted as not a real question for being overly broad. I don't see how designing a research project for you is in within reasonable scope of the forum. Please attempt to edit and ask a much more specific question.

My specific question was how to measure the effect of plagiarism intervention.

"Teaching paraphrasing???" I am always bewildered by the notion that taking somebody else's ideas, reformulating them in different words, and passing them as your own is supposed to be more honorable than plagiarism. A notion that is very widely held in academia. (Note that I am a university professor as well, albeit my field is in molecular neuroscience - where deeds possibly count more than words).

I am just improvising on the fly here but does Korea have software like TurnItIn which measures (in a few different ways) the level of plagiarism in a particular paper or a set of papers usually from online sources.
If you do, then you could think about devising an experiment where, in a class, you inform the students that you will be trying to reduce their "plagiarism tendencies" and take a pre-test perceptions survey. Next, you set a particular class paper as an assignment and note the different measurements on TurnItIn (or equivalent). Then, you make your intervention (in whatever form you choose) and finally set another class paper as an assignment and note the different measurements on TurnItIn this time. Finally, you set a post-test debriefing and follow up survey.
I think this would make for a very nice repeated measures model (from the TurnItIn or equivalent data) and some nice latent variable analysis from your surveys.
I hope this helps you in some meaningful way.

So you recommend setting a small research paper, and checking for instances of accidental and deliberate plagiarism? I had also thought about this but was trying to find something a little more controlled. This will be their first time ever writing research papers (in English, maybe even Korean) so they may not use outside sources at all (plagiarized or cited).

As I said, I was improvising. :). This kind of a repeated measures study involving one controllable unit is quite common among the psych or comm scholars that I find myself collaborating with. As you pointed out, there will obviously be issues (like the language choice) that one must address while designing the study. However, if you are interested in this topic (and its a great topic), you must start somewhere, even in an exploratory way. :)

I will have them write short essays at the beginning of the semester as a diagnostic anyway. I suppose if I find a high incidence of plagiarism, I can start there.  What free alternatives to TurnItIn are as reliable? Also, What did you think of my edited idea above? Also

Sorry for the late reply. I checked your edited answer. It could work. Basically, we are talking about how you operationalize your theoretical construct. This can be done in multiple ways. I would need to know more about the specific literature in that idea to go deeper. Unfortunately, I do not have that expertise. :(


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If you make a substantial contribution should you be given the opportunity to satisfy the other requirements for authorship?
The ICMJE has developed a set of guidelines to help determine who authors should be. They say

The following recommendations are intended to ensure that contributors who have made substantive intellectual contributions to a paper are given credit as authors

The requirements to be an author are:

The ICMJE recommends that authorship be based on the following 4 criteria:

Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND
Final approval of the version to be published; AND
Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

I think that it is reasonable that authors should meet all 4 of the criteria. What seems surprising to me is that someone could use the guidelines to justify not including someone as an author that did the work, drafted the manuscript, and agreed to be accountable, by simply not allowing them the chance to provide final approval of the version to be published.
Shouldn't the guidelines include a condition that if you meet the first criteria, that you then be given the option to meet the other criteria?
Am I missing something?
Has this apparent shortcoming been addressed anywhere?

Further down the ICMJE remarks:

The criteria are not intended for use as a means to disqualify colleagues from authorship who otherwise meet authorship criteria by denying them the opportunity to meet criterion #s 2 or 3. Therefore, all individuals who meet the first criterion should have the opportunity to participate in the review, drafting, and final approval of the manuscript.

The guidelines do include such a criterion.

Well I missed that rather obvious statement.

I guessed so. :) It is remarkable that the statement answers your question that precisely, by the way... You had the "shortcoming" cornered pretty well!

Shouldn't the guidelines include a condition that if you meet the
  first criteria, that you then be given the option to meet the other
  criteria?

This does indeed sound like a no-brainer.
However, it is really a question of etiquette within a collaboration. A journal can't really enforce this, can it? Would a tick box in the online submission system really be useful?

By ticking this box, I declare that everyone who has done work AND
  revised the manuscript AND agreed to be accountable has also had a
  chance to provide final approval of the submitted version.

I'd find seeing something like this... strange. What should a journal then do in the case that someone did get the chance to provide approval, but didn't answer within a reasonable time frame?
Bottom line: I'd say this is a borderline case. Journals can't possibly control every single aspect of authorship, and they need to draw the line somewhere. This seems like a good point where we don't need yet another tick box.

Finally, it seems like problems like these may be self-correcting. Once word gets around that someone treats their collaborators like this, they likely will see their possibilities for collaboration disappear.


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Can I teach in the nude?
In this comment it was suggested that teaching in your underwear is a bad thing. While in general, I think academics are accepting of a wide range of dress (there are people in my department who teach in suits and others in ripped jeans), I am not sure a nudist or teaching in your boxers would be acceptable.
Part of me thinks there is the issue of sexual harassment, but I think if it is your style, it is not harassment. Can an academic really wear, or not wear, what they want? Let's assume that it is a state university and therefore not public nudity or that you are in a state/country that allows public nudity.
I am interested in the ethical/professional side of teaching in the nude. I am assuming that someone who wants to teach in the nude would understand the legal implications and how it affects their productivity.

Are you asking about legality? Ethics? Professionalism? Impact on your effectiveness as a teacher?

If we're considering male teachers in cold areas I can imagine there will be a certain amount of ridicule that may prohibit proper teaching.

Why would one want to do that? I have a hard enough time to remember shaving my face. All this additional manscaping will just make life so much more daunting.

@ff524 does that help?

As an ethical question, I don't think it's any different than being nude at any other workplace. I move to close as a "boat programming" question.

@Penguin_Knight I am not sure why someone would want to, but teaching nude seems to be taking you can wear what you want (excluding offensive clothes) to the extreme.

Also, per the [help/dont-ask]: "You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face." This does not seem to qualify.

@ff524 most workplaces have some sort of dress code (written or unwritten). Most academics, at least the way I view it , feel we do not have a dress code.

@ff524 I think understanding the unwritten  rules of academic dress is practical and answerable. Nudity is just the edge condition.

@ff524 I thought this was a terrible question too, and then I started writing an answer and thinking outside of the STEM curriculum, to art classes and other areas where one might actually legitimately encounter nudity.  As such, I think it's surprisingly not boat-programming, as academia is one of the few places where this type of boundary-pushing might be legitimate.

@jakebeal I don't think it would be a bad question if it was given in the context of a specific scenario, like this one. As a general question, I still think it's terrible.

@ff524 The scenario you link is a very good example of a boundary case!  I think that I will add it to my answer.

Please edit your question to include university and country in your question.The university policies on teaching in the nude will vary from place to place.

This site gets better every day. No wonder some people think that academia is "ivory towers".

@StrongBad You call it "edge conditions", I call it reductio ad absurdum.

@Calchas This is one of the sanest stack exchange sites in the network. Have you checked out Parenting SE (http://parenting.stackexchange.com/questions/20604/i-think-my-11-month-old-is-afraid-of-his-dad), or Travel SE (http://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/51070/can-i-pass-through-the-airport-security-with-a-de-activated-bazooka) lately?

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because boat-programming.

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it's too hypothetical.

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it's not specific to academia as opposed to any other profession where work is carried out in public.

No, No, No, and also No!
Setting aside all aspects of legality, I see no way around the ethical problem of consent and harassment.  Simply put: the teacher is in a position of significant power with respect to the students.  A teacher choosing to be nude may place students in a position where they are compelled to either remain in a situation where they are uncomfortable or else may face significant penalties.  There's no way to spin that where it's not an abuse of power, compounded further by the sexual and gender implications that nudity would have on most university campuses.
Maybe it could be made consensual if the class was optional and had instructor nudity as a clear expectation as part of the curriculum (so people would know what they were signing up for---like in this example), but we're getting pretty far out of the mainstream of university instruction with such a case.  Even figure drawing classes in art school generally use neutral third parties for their nude models, rather than the instructor.

Let us be a bit rational here.
A) Is being in the nude helpful to students' understanding of the subject matter in any way? I have no preconceptions on this, but still fail to find a great many subject matters in which nudity may be pertinent. Art history, perhaps? Or a philosophical discussion on the perception of nudity through the ages? But not the vast majority of subjects taught in universities, by any means. For the situations that can objectively require a perception of the nude human body, perhaps substituting teaching materials for the corpus delicti would be sufficient.
B) Is being in the nude an interference to students' learning process? This seems likely, due to most cultures' taboos on public nudity. There are not many places in the world (except, perhaps, nudist beaches and one small island in France) where you can cross the street with your attributes on display and not attract people's attention.
Balancing A against B, I would tend to think nudism in the class is not constructive to an atmosphere of concentration on the subject in hand, in the vast majority of teaching situations.

This is probably the most interesting question I've seen so far and I can't completely tell if you're serious about the question but I'll give an honest and serious answer anyway.
A goal we would all like to see achieved is equality for all no matter your race, lifestyle, etc. But there are lines where things cross into the inappropriate.
Do you remember, a couple months ago, that med school which had students preform vaginal examinations on OTHER Students? Messed up, I think so. Illegal, no.
I mention the med school because while you should not teach a class naked for an immense amount of ethical and liability reasons @jakebeal mentioned consent but I don't think that works in practice. If you make it clear that you will be nude and that students must be okay with it:
1). A vast majority will think it's a joke.
2). Students may feel forced to consent if your class is required and they can't change their schedule to have full-time status.
Though the topic can get touchy when you talk about an art class. Are the students drawing you naked? Is being nude part of the curriculum? While models would be better for everyone I can see where there would be an argument in the context of art.


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How can we change things so more researchers are willing to share their source code?
This is a followup to  Why are CS researchers reluctant to share code and what techniques can I use to encourage sharing?. That question specifically asked how one can succeed in obtaining researcher's source code.
As discussed in the answers to that question, the reasons largely boil down to competitive advantage and people thinking their code is not good enough. The former issue is difficult to address. However, one could try to address the latter issue, making the reasonable assumption that this behavior stems from the surrounding academic culture. There may be additional aspects of the academic culture that discourage code sharing, and which do not relate to competitive advantage.
So, one could instead ask the general questions what concrete actions one can take to change this culture? Or, to put it a little differently, how can I help change the academic world so that more researchers are willing to share their source code?

An interesting read on this topic from SIAM news: http://www.siam.org/news/news.php?id=2064

The easiest thing to do, as an individual, is to release all of your own code as open source software on public repositories, then write it as a footnote or reference in your paper.

http://matt.might.net/articles/crapl/ comes to mind

In the long term, this will only happen if you change the culture (just as you say).  How do you change the culture of a field?  Very slowly, and only with enormous effort.  You talk to other researchers.  You articulate your values, and seek allies who share your values.  You patiently make the case to your fellow colleagues, perhaps by writing opinion pieces.  You don't harangue or attack them; instead, you gently lay out the reasons why it is good for science and good for them to share their code.  Remember, in all likelihood you all share the same common values: the love and dedication of science and the pursuit of truth.
You lead, by acting as a model for how you would like others to behave.  You do what you think is right, and set a good example.
You try to persuade referees and program committees to value and reward researchers who do share their source code.  Recognize the amount of extra effort this takes, and (if you believe it is valuable) reward it accordingly: bump up your rating of their paper correspondingly, and make the case why others to do so.  When you write letters of reference or evaluation for another researcher, if they share their source code, give them kudos and explain why the hiring or promotion committee should view this positively.
Ultimately, this is not something that a single individual can change.  Only the entire community, acting as a whole, can make this kind of change.  Individuals can catalyze and facilitate that change, but like any other kind of reform, it takes extraordinary patience and effort, as well as buy-in from your colleagues.  It's not unusual for this kind of change to take a generation or two.  But keep your chin up: remember, you're doing this because you believe it is good for science and good for your field!

"Only the entire community, acting as a whole, can make this kind of change." I'm not sure how this would work. I just had in mind concrete actions an individual could take.

@FaheemMitha, indeed, it's a daunting task, if looked at from a broad perspective.  For concrete actions, see the earlier part of my answer (talking to fellow researchers, setting an example, rewarding other researchers who do share their source code, etc.).

Researchers are unwilling to share their code because it's a lot of extra work -- for which there is little or no recompense. When I write some to simulate an experiment or an algorithm to verify numerically the result of a calculation, it is not production-ready code that can be  easily run in another environment: at the very least another researcher needs Matlab or Mathematica, they need whatever special toolboxes or auxiliary code I am using, they need the data files in the right place on the hard drive, they need to understand how to program themselves so that when some small glitch arises, they can deal with it. When I try to run my own code from a year ago, it almost needs some massaging: perhaps a needed file has been moved from one directory to another, perhaps a toolbox has had its code base "updated" and no longer works exactly the same way.
So -- here's what usually happens. Someone contacts me and wants to try out my code. I warn them of all the above issues, but they insist that they know what they are doing and will get back to me with any problems. I spend 2 or 3 hours preparing things, checking stuff out so that they will have an easier time, explaining to them how to put things together so that it will all work. I mail it to them. And I never hear back. It happened again last month. So -- how likely am I to "share" code in the future? Just a little bit less likely than last month.
Now to the question: how can you get researchers to share their code? First, when you ask, follow through - don't "take the code and disappear." Second, try to get the researcher interested in why you want the code, what you might do with it. Third, the burden is on you to take research-style code (poorly commented, bad error checking, disorganized structure) and to make it do something. Fourth, return something: when you do make some progress, let the researcher know. Fifth, don't ask for impossible things: can I compile the code for your machine (that's different from mine)? (Hint: no).

Thanks for the feedback, bill. While I meant the question to be what one can do to change the culture towards a more sharing culture in a general way, you make good points. One comment - if you are sharing your code with one individual by email, why not make it generally available via hosting sites like github or bitbucket? I think one issue that is not clear is - is it reasonable to publish ones code as is (meaning, put it on github etc.), even if one does not consider its quality suitable for third parties? If so, this would presumably come with an explicit disavowal of any support burden.

And I never hear back. — Why should you?  I mean sure, maybe it would be nice if people told you whenever they found your work useful, but expecting people to tell you when they find your work useful is unreasonable.

IMO talk about "cultural" impediments are overstated. Academics are as rational agents as any, and currently the academic system (mainly publish/get grants or perish) provides little incentive to publishing the code or making analysis entirely reproducible. Some fields have started intiatives to encourage this by making either analysis and publicly releasing data mandatory or strongly recommended for publication (e.g. The Journal of Applied Economics) or for funding (e.g. NIJ grants frequently have stipulations to post the data to ICPSR).
Greater awareness of technical computing skills necessary for reproducible analysis will help (see Koeneker & Zeileis, 2009), but on its own won't spurn greater compliance, even if the already discussed negatives are largely mitigated. It still will be more work to publish the code than to not publish the code. When it helps your tenure case, then it will become more commonplace.