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Can I submit an article just for the sake of useful feedback?
I have made some research about a topic in Computer Science. The issue was that I am a little bit dubious if the procedure that I followed was correct. The problem gets worse because the work is not in the field of expertise of my supervisor or of my colleagues.
For that reason, I am thinking to submit it to a conference for getting valuable feedback. Would that be reasonable to do that? Maybe somebody would argue that I will only waste valuable time from the reviewers, but I don't know what else to do in this situation.

@DSVA I have tried that also, but the answers I got was that it was not related to their field of expertise or no answer at all

My professor submitted my paper to a conference, we both knew the chance of acceptance was very slim,but we hoped to get some feed back on it. It did not get accepted, but I did get some feed back to make my paper strong.

You should consider posting a preprint to the arXiv and actively soliciting comments, both in the submission comment line and in the body of the paper. Depending on how much viewer traffic your arXiv section gets it may be a good place to get people's attention.

Submit your research to a workshop. Workshops are the kind of venue you are looking for: their purpose is to provide feedback on work-in-progress, with a fast review cycle and reviewers focused on a specific area of expertise.
Submitting your research to a conference may lead to valuable feedback, too, but there's a risk that submitting work-in-progress research can leave behind a poor impression to some of the reviewers. In consequence, these reviewers may be inclined to give rather terse/useless feedback.

While correct, there are two problems with that solution: (1) if travel budget is an issue, you now have to pay for two travels (to the workshop and to the conference where you ultimately publish your work), and (2) depending on community and workshop, the workshop may be considered "prior publication" and may reduce your chances of getting the paper accepted at a strong conference.

Can I submit an article just for the sake of useful feedback?

Yes and no. Of course nothing stops you from sending an article just to get feedback, and this is indeed a suggestion that I sometimes see given to young researchers when they are unsure about their paper.
However, there are a few issues that, in my opinion, makes this approach not overly effective.

You will get feedback, but you may not get useful feedback. Reviews fundamentally tend to assess the current state of a research project. It should not be like that, but many reviews focus on what's wrong with a paper, and not on how it could be fixed. Think of it as an evaluation more than a feedback procedure.
Additionally, there is little incentive for the PC to be overly constructive. My impression has always been that the anonymity of peer review leads people to be more dismissive than what they would ever be if they talked to you personally.
The turnaround time of good conferences is so long that you need to expect to wait a few months for your reviews. This is wasted time if you are already pretty sure that the paper won't be accepted.
As you say yourself, an argument can be made that submitting a paper that you yourself are not sure is ready for publication to be an unethical abuse of the peer review system. I would consider this a fairly mild problem myself, but it is obvious that the peer review system would break down (even more?) if many people started to adopt your approach.

More promising may be to find a collaborator who is aware of community standards of wherever you want to publish to take on board for finishing and publishing this work. Such a person can not only help you writing a paper using the conventions of the field, (s)he will also be able to point you and help you with any additional work that may make your work stronger in the eyes of your targeted community. Most importantly, this person has then skin in  the game and will strive to be constructive rather than just telling you that your work isn't going to cut it.
This of course leaves the question how to find such a person. I am sad to say that personal connections (of you, your supervisor, or other friends or fellow faculty) are by far the best approach, but failing that you can try to establish ties by attending workshops or working conferences, as proposed by lighthouse keeper in his answer.

Agreed. As a reviewer, when I read something that I think was sloppy and really shouldn't have been submitted, I feel like my time was wasted. I was once a coauthor of a paper that I was able to help with only to a limited extent. A reviewer said the ideas were good but the paper was so poorly done that the authors owed the program committee an apology. I was mortified. (We eventually improved it and it appeared later with very positive reviews.) /// Don't be that author.

"It should not be like that, but many reviews focus on what's wrong with a paper, and not on how it could be fixed." Why should it not be like that? A reviewer doesn't always know how to fix a shortcoming; even if she does, the author might know better; even if not, reviewers' suggestions will often be ignored, making it a likely waste of time...


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In Google Scholar, is it possible to view the list of papers cited by a specific paper?
For any paper on Google Scholar, you can click "Cited by ..." to see a list of subsequent papers that cite the original paper.
However, is it possible to see a list of papers that the original paper cites? I realize that one can simply view the paper itself for the list of references, but I would like a way to see it as a list of links in Google Scholar, similar to the "Cited by ..." list.

Maybe this could be a more general question: even beyond Google Scholar, is there a good source for this information that does not require you to have access to the paper?

In some cases, Google Scholar gives you a link to a website that has a list of the referenced papers: the journal's website or an online repository like IEEEexplore.

If I'm not mistaken, Scopus can do this. Unfortunately I don't have access to it at my university.

As you mentioned, unfortunately, Google Scholar only provides the list of publications that cite a given reference.
However, if you have access to Web of Science, to look up a list of references cited in a given publication, you can use the Cited References tool.
Note that some journals are not indexed by Web of Science, so having several tools to do the job may be the best way to approach this; e.g., in addition to Web of Science, you could also use Research Gate as mentioned in the other answer. For those journals that are indexed by Web of Science, I find the Cited References tool to be very useful.

No, Google Scholar does not do this.  If you want the content of the paper you are going to need to access the paper.  I would suggest you find the paper on Research Gate, where many of the references are active links.

UPDATE: Microsoft is no longer providing the Microsoft Academic (Ended in December of 2021).
Google Scholar might not give you this option but your problem might be solved by Microsoft Academic. In Microsoft Academic, there is a tab that shows the references in a very simple manner.

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Eventual Career Objective
I am a Front-End Developer with several years of experience as well as I have my B.S. in Computer Science. I am doing research and pursuing my MS in Computer Science. However, I am somewhat struggling to word my career objective correctly and in a fashion in which I could be considered for admittance into Grad School. How could this snippet be modified to accomplish the goal while remaining under 150 characters

I've been interested in computers from a young age. Xxxxxxx Xxxx offers a great program to further pursue my education and passion for computing.

I would drop all the background in favor of just "I have been interested in computers and how they operate since I was 10.". That will leave more words for your career objective.

The snippet doesn't state an objective. It's just a personal story about how you got into computers, but it doesn't say what you want to achieve (by pursuing an MS).
What you did when you were ten is unlikely to interest reviewers. Perhaps say "I've been interested in computers from a young age" but right now you're wasting a lot of characters on a lot of fluff. Perhaps you should leave this out entirely, unless how you got into computers from an early age is relevant to your current goals.
Also, try to narrow down your interests a bit. They're more likely to care about somebody who wants to passionately investigate a specific topic rather than someone who declares they're interested in just about everything. Again, consider leaving your interests out entirely unless they're relevant to your objective.

Ok, I can work on that. Thanks for the great advice! Also, I was basing this general idea from this article, where it was stated to make it very personal. http://www.uni.edu/~gotera/gradapp/stmtpurpose.htm I will definitely revise and focus more on future topics.

I have updated the snippet. Thank you for your help with this :)

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Is it unethical to accept extra time on exams when I still do well?
I have ADHD (real, diagnosed ADHD, not just "I-say-I-have-ADHD-because-it's-trendy" ADHD). I have never taken the extended time exams that are offered for ADHD students, because I have never needed to, and it was diagnosed just a year ago. However, exams do stress me out and I am certain I would do better on them with some more time - but this is true for almost anyone, not just ADHD students. Thus, would it be unethical to make use of the ADHD services offered to me?
(Edit: You might ask - why would you want to / feel it is justified? Well, hypothetically say ADHD students only achieve 75% of their "non-ADHD" potential in a standard-time setting. Maybe, even though I am doing well, I would be doing even better if I did have the extended time or didn't have ADHD, i.e. due to my exhaustive preparation, even with the disadvantage of my ADHD I am still managing to get a high score. But, with a "level playing field" [extended time for me], I would be at the top of the class. However, I still don't know if this is logical / ethical.)

I've had a student on the autistic spectrum whose policy I really respected: he would always try to prepare and give the best he could, and would ask for the extra time if he felt that his medical condition had prevented him to fully expressed his potential in spite of that. At any rate, the answer to your question is crystal clear: it is perfectly fine to accept extra time for a medical condition.

I would caution you against using extra time instead of really learning the material well.  You might get a better score but end up less informed.  (Hopefully you're taking classes that mostly cover things you really want to know or which are useful to know.)

@Olivier Why didn't the student just ask extra time each time? It seems that the student would have saved time and energy during the exam (no need to get up, walk up to professor, speak, go back to seat)

@JackBauer He didn't ask the extra time when he felt his condition had not impinged on his performance. I guess he did so because he didn't want his work (and himself, perhaps) to be systematically viewed in the context of his special needs. As for the direct material remark, in my university, students only have to keep woking at the end of the normal schedule and we go to them to check that they have a receipt (given to them at the beginning of the semester by an independent office) offering extra time, so no energy is wasted in not mentioning it to the teachers beforehand.

@patterson  this was a noble question, and warming paragraphs after it! (after the title) of that!
Best wishes to you & to everyone else - hope nobody has corona.
//Will.

Absolutely not. If you meet the full requirements set up by your University, it is perfectly ethical to use all of the resources made available to you. ADHD is a real medical condition and medical experts and policy makers have decided that special test accommodations are the fairest solution. Accommodations like this are based on medical decisions, not whether you are doing well in the course. Take the extra time if you want it. There is no need to feel guilty about doing so.

I would say it is definitely not unethical. Those are the rules, there is nothing wrong with taking full advantage of them.
I am dyslexic and would never think of not taking my extra time (fortunately no more exams for me!). There have been some cases where I didn't need it (school level maths mainly) I either asked if I could leave with everyone else or sat for 15 mins and reread my answers/twiddled by thumbs.
It is important to remember most exams aim to test your understanding not reading/writing speed (or why ever else people need extra time).
I agree giving people extra time is a pretty blunt tool and not ideal in that pretty much everyone gets the same amount extra irrespective of their particular needs but I think that is a more logistical issue with how the system is setup and would be quite hard to fix and assess.

The purpose of an exam is to measure how well you understand the material. Giving you extra time should make this measurement more precise, so you should take it. Keep in mind that if you really didn't know the material, more time wouldn't help, anyway.
I say this as someone who got extra time throughout school because of a physical disability and now does curriculum development at the college level.

But following this logic, why not give everyone extra time?

At UCLA, final exams are three hours long for that reason (and to allow them to be comprehensive). But the idea is that someone with a disability is more disadvantaged by time pressure than other students, even if they're doing OK. By analogy, a really fit person may run a mile in a decent time carrying a 50-poind backpack, but it's a worse test of their running ability than running without the backpack.

I have dyspraxia sometimes known as developmental coordination disorder. Most of the problems I have extra time cannot make up for, but I do get extra time if I want it. The reason I get extra time is I write extremely slow it takes me much much longer to write things out and even then my handwriting is barely legible this is due to the small motor skill problems that are a part of my particular brand of dyspraxia. I believe that in cases where you would genuinely struggle or you might not do as well as you could have because of your condition that's when it's ethical to take your time.
  In my case this means on any exam that requires short answer questions or essay questions, but not for example a multiple choice exam. I actually did an experiment this term I tried to take my midterms without extra time in both of my classes, because of the nature of the first exam which did not require long answers I was barely able to finish. However, the second exam required longer answers and by half way through my hands were screaming from the pain of trying to write fast enough to finish. I did not do as well in this exam. I have decided for the second one to ask for extra time for the final exam mostly due to the pain from trying to write fast enough, but not ask for extra time on the final exam for the first class.
  Each class is different the decision of whether to take your extra time to compensate for having ADHD in order to be ethical should be made on a class by class basis taking into consideration how much you believe your ADHD will effect you on the exams for that particular class. No one can make these decisions for you they are personal judgement calls.

Old people or pregnant women should think about accepting reserved seats in trains or using priority lanes in shops on a case-to-case basis?

I have dyspraxia too, but I had the right to use a computer (aka typewriter) or a secretary for exams so that what I write is legible. and on top of that I had a 1/3 time bonus. You might want to ask for that if you still are in education.
I always asked for 1/3 time, but didn't always use it, as like you short answers were easy, but long ones tiresome. (the secretaries were for writing essays)

It depends on the subject matter. In math and physics, you are typically given way more time than you need. Most 3 hour exams can be completed in one hour or less, if you have mastered the subject perfectly. The reason why some exams are 3 hours is to minimize the failure rate due to trivial problems, like making a mistake somewhere, and then having to backtrack and start the exercise anew, causing you to not finish on time and possibly failing the exam. Only the students who don't study well will experience the time pressure during an exam.
This is why I would not ask for extra time, unless I had an handicap that causes me to to take way more time to read the problems and/or write up answers.

That very much depends on the time allocation policy, which varies widely among lecturers.

-1 This answer seems to imply that anyone who cannot finish the exam in one hour either “d[id]n't study well” or is “handicap[ped]”. This is insulting. Some people are simply faster at answering exam questions than others, just as some people are faster at any other task. This is true regardless of their medical conditions (or lack of).


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Is it okay if a professor friends a student on social media sites?
If a professor is teaching a student currently, is it okay if he/she friends the student on social media sites such as Facebook or Google Plus?

Pros: you will see when your student is slacking off. Cons: your student will see when you are slacking off.

I know a senior scientist who married their own PhD student.

@gerrit And they still cannot add each other on social media sites?

I put the following in every syllabus: "Social Networks: Please do not ask me to join your social network on Google+, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. until after you have graduated, and then only if you earned grades of B or better in each of my classes."

@BobBrown I disagree with the idea of tethering my valuation of a student as a human being, or my willingness to keep in touch with them, to something as silly as the grade they got in my course. That's not what grades measure.

@DavidWhite In general, people willing to do a certain amount of work earned grades of A in my classes, and grades of A were much more common than unsatisfactory grades.  I certainly do consider willingness to put effort into learning as part of my evaluation of students, and everyone else, as human beings.

It depends a little on the circumstances, but generally not.  If the student is your Ph.D. student, then it's probably OK to accept a friend request, but you shouldn't initiate it (and some people might not even approve of accepting it, depending on the sort of advising relationship you have).  If it's an undergraduate in one of your classes, then I don't think you should even accept a friend request, and sending one would be very improper.
There are three basic principles:

You shouldn't put your students in situations where they might feel awkward or uncomfortable.  For example, would turning down a friend request from one's professor come across as rude?
It's not healthy for class dynamics if there's a perception that you have a closer, friendlier relationship with some of the students than with others.
You need to be very careful not to do anything that could be misinterpreted (or, worse yet, correctly interpreted) as showing romantic interest.  Some people will interpret things that way if it's even vaguely plausible, and fair or not you've got to keep this in mind.

What if you are actually friends?

@Artem: Long-standing friendships (if the professor is a friend of the student's family, or if the professor and student became friends after a previous course) need to be handled as a special case.  The principles I've listed are still important, but there's no need to deny the existence of a harmless friendship.  On the other hand, developing a new friendship with a student from one's current class is tricky.  It's not necessarily bad in principle, but it could look bad or cause unexpected problems.  I'd defer it until after the class, and otherwise it needs great professional tact.

I think it's important to distinguish between "friend on Facebook" and "friend in real life".  The former is often a synonym for "I would like to follow your updates"; the latter is where the potential conflicts of interest really arise.

And what if you're friends before they take your class?  (Or even stickier: What if they take your class because you're friends?)

If students only want to follow their professor's professional updates, then everyone would be better off using the likes of http://academia.edu/ .

...unless their professor doesn't post to academia.edu.

-1 I agree that professors shouldn't initiate it. But I don't like your explanation of the reasons or principles. I think if a prof is consistent about reasons to accept friends, there's not a problem per se.

I would avoid it and refer them to linkedin as an alternative.

This is a good point.  Students sometimes send social media requests just because they would like some sort of connection, and redirecting it to a more professional venue can be valuable.

I prefer refering them to academia.edu

LinkedIn is worse - it has no relationship that descripts prof-student, as far as I know.

My initial reaction to LinkedIn many, many years ago was "this stinks" and I have yet to see anything which would change my impression.  I have never signed up, just been a victim of their incessant spam; if you find they offer some real, actual value, perhaps you could elaborate.

There are two simple important rules:

Never initiate a friend request with a student
If you accept a Facebook friend request from a student in a class that you are currently teaching then you must accept friend requests from all students in that class.

Beyond those rules things are more complicated.

When facebook was new some PhDs at my university asked everyone to join, so my first "friends" were other academics & PhD students.  Immediately that first year undergraduates tried to friend too, so I made a rule:  some people do not really want to know your internal state, so they should be put on "limited profile" and not allowed to see your wall.  All undergraduates are in this category until at least a year after they graduate.
Since then facebook security has gotten a lot freakier, and also I have gotten older, while grad students by and large haven't.  One thing to consider: do you really want to see your graduate students that are not writing their dissertations' stories about the on line gaming they do in your facebook feed?
I like to encourage my PhD students to think of themselves as peers, so I friend them like peers if they ask.   But if some do & some don't, is that discriminating against the ones who don't?  Even if it's their own choice?  I don't think so, but it is weird & I am rethinking my policy.  But then, I'm always rethinking facebook.

+1 for pointing out that profs can see grad students are goofing off; facebook security options are powerful but complicated.

I follow 4 rules

I never initiate contact with students or post-docs
I do not accept requests from undergraduates until they graduate
I always accept requests from post-grad students and post-docs
I attempt to never post anything that could cause me problems

People use Facebook in different ways*). Some are actually spreading links, thoughts and comments related to their professional work.
However: most of the time people are using it for things related to their personal life.
I know examples of TAs, who are FB-friending their students. But most aren't.
So the main question are:

do you want them to see your all FB stuff,
do you want to see all their stuff,
do you call them your friends,
and do you want them to call you a friend?

If not, why adding them?
Most likely, it depends highly on:

your personal approach to such social networks,
your natural contact with your students (if it is formal or even semi-formal, perhaps FB is not the right tool).

Depending on both, it may be either natural, acceptable, improper or really creepy.
*) And also there are different philosophies when it comes to adding friends.

You're right that it depends on your personal approach to social networks and the sort of contact you have with your students, but it's also important to keep in mind how it might be perceived by others.  (Even if you know it is harmless, and the students involved know it is harmless, it could cause difficulties if administrators or other students or faculty disapprove.)

"it could cause difficulties if administrators or other students or faculty disapprove": that's true for almost any choices that we are making concerning our way of living, so why bother?

It clearly depends on how you use Facebook, as it says in an earlier comment friend on facebook are not real life friends. I think that is is clear for everyone, so if you have a policy of accepting anyone as facebook friend, and if you have nothing personal on your facebook account, I don't see any problem in having students as facebook friends.
For me, facebook friends are no different than linkedin connections or google+ circles members, and I have the same policy for all social networks: I accept almost everybody.
edit: and for really personal matters, I have an additional account, totally anonymous, except for the family and real friends.

+1 for professors having a consistent policy (to keep it a professional "friend" relationship). Social networking is here to stay.

To second & enlarge upon what Md. Golam Rashed said in a comment: Academia.edu is designed as a networking site for academics (rather than, say, originating in a site where users picked which of two students' photos was "hotter"). So referring any students who approach you on facebook, to Academia.edu instead, would be contextually appropriate, and give you a defensible position that you were linked to them via a site that exists to allow academics to network.
(disclaimer: I have no commercial connection to Academia.edu : I'm simply registered there)

One should also bear in mind local government rules and/or school policies. For example, recently it was clarified by the New York City Education Department that that public school teachers (so not quite University professors as I think the original question intends) may not contact students through FaceBook (link to New York Times article). It is not inconceivable that similar rules may be put in place by other local governing bodies and/or university regulations.

It was my understanding that the question targeted only virtual friendship with students aged 18 (or 21) at least.

The nyt article indicates that there are exceptions, acknowledging potentially beneficial uses of social media in education

Is it okay... ?

Sure, but it's not without risks (to BOTH sides).
Whether you're a student or a professor, there are a couple of things to help minimize the risk:

Use lists to organize your friends and make sure you put your professors/students on the list you want to restrict information to. Scenario A: a grad student is 3 weeks late on a draft, yet the professor can see he's been updating his photo albums of football games for the past three weekends. Scenario B: professor is late at returning grades on the midterm, yet the students can see he's been posting about how fun his weekend bicycle workouts have been. Using lists properly can prevent these awkward situations (but so can not procrastinating!). However, even if you put your professors/students on the restricted list, replies you make to posts with Public visibility will be seen by everyone. So, you still have to take a lot of care with this approach at what you say.
A less risky (but more distant) approach for professors is to create a Public Figure (Teacher) page. Then, students need only "like" that page to be associated with it. In this case, the relationship is not really bi-directional, which is why the risk is reduced both ways. As a professor, I've tied my Google Blog to a Facebook Teacher page, so that blog updates automatically feed to Facebook. Another advantage is that my "nerdy" posts don't get seen by all the people I'm friends with.

Finally, LinkedIn doesn't have the relationship of student-professor, which I find annoying when I get requests. They're not "classmates" even though a lot of students request a link to me using that relationship. In the beginning, I would refuse connections, unless the relationship involved some kind of professional contract (e.g., a TA or lab assistant, funded research student). It makes sense when a student asks you for a review on LinkedIn if that student "worked" for you in some degree.
However, part of the goal of LinkedIn is to build connections, and coop programs are important for undergrads at my school. Saying I know students (even if they're just in my undergrad courses) might help them somehow.

There is a difference between being "connected" to someone and being a "friend" on social media tools.
Facebook and the likes connect people together but uses the word "friend" to make this connection look nice and appealing to users. LinkedIn "connects" users on a professional|business level.
I do not believe that a Facebook "connection" should be interpreted as real "friendship" unless you make it happen as such. I have the impression that many of us have lost the true sense of friendship.

Maybe you can suggest using a science site for this? You could be "friends" on researchgate with them instead of using a generic social network.
This would allow your students to follow your research and ask community questions that you are able to see and still separate your academic life from your personal life.
When you have profiles on such sites, you can put them on the first (or last) slide and students and students can follow you there. This also allows you to deflect "Can I add you on facebook" questions with "I add people from my academic work on researchgate, you'll find my profile linked on the institute website".
(I do not want to endorse researchgate in particular, it's just one example for more serious networking sites)

? The question asks about a prof who wants to befriend students. Is this answet the other way round?

I think befriending is a two-way thing. Following someone (like on Twitter) is another question. In most cases the students will easily find the prof, but the prof doesn't know the students before they send a friend request, so I understood the question as the students initiating the friend request.


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Finding appropriate journal for submitting a modest paper in mathematics
I've finished master studies in mathematics. Now I'm working on some papers, but I'm not so familiar with journals. I've submitted papers in some journals with impact factor, but it was rejected, while some other journals accept them (I doubt they accept anything for money).
My question is: how can I find an appropriate journal for a modest paper?

The Australian Mathematical Society journal rankings might be useful.  You could try submitting to a journal with a rating of 'B', for instance.

While ranking might tell you how selective a journal is, it is far less useful in identifying a journal that closeness of topic match.

Beware of predatory journals. Here's the famous Beall's list:
http://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/
http://scholarlyoa.com/individual-journals/
Also read about this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCIgen
It's very funny and will show you how far these journals go just to get your money.

I would not try to do this without reading the paper.  Consider the journals that you cite frequently in the paper.  I recommend picking the journal before you start writing to ensure the paper is written to fit the journal.

That is the main reason I posted this question @Formagella.

I see some of you are miss-understanding the question. I'm not asking about finding a journal to fit my subject. I'm asking how to be aware of fake journals as well as finding journals compatible to some basic standards for publishing a paper (not so qualitative journal, but also not one which accepts anything for money).

@Emin: The question in your last post makes sense. I think it has been answered already here: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/32394/how-can-i-tell-whether-a-mathematics-journal-seems-reputable/32403#32403


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Attending lectures for a course I already passed?
Two years ago I took an upper undergraduate/graduate course which I passed with a good grade. Sadly I missed many of the lectures, did few of the suggested exercises and managed mostly by cramming a few days before the exam.
To little surprise but to my great regret, I have now forgotten quite a lot of the material. I cannot formally retake the course, but I have considered attending the lectures and work through the exercises, while not handing in any work. Would the professor, who taught the course the last time I took it, frown upon this? Would he question the grade he gave me and or consider me to be a poor student for forgetting so quickly.

What's your school's policy on auditing classes? Usually, if there's space it isn't a problem; check with the lecturer to be sure.

@keshlam: Most lectures are open even to the public, but registered students have, of course, priority if there shouldn't be enough space.

I did exactly that a while back. I talked to the professor, explicitly said that I didn't remember the stuff from the course, but I wanted to. He laughed, mocked me a bit and agreed. Honestly, he was glad someone wanted to know... Of course, he is a great guy, I can't guarantee it is going to be the same for your, but that was my experience...

You might also check to see if your university offers supplementary instruction lectures or tutoring for the course you want a refresher on.

This depends entirely on your university's policies so we can't answer it here.

Why are you asking us? No matter what we say, your professor has his or her opinion - which is the only one that counts. Ask him or her.

At least I would not discourage anyone from sitting through a course again. The notion that one has permanent and total recall of almost anything is untenable: one must review and rethink (or use) periodically, or things fade away from disuse. For that matter, there are usually several layers of understanding/appreciation, and getting to the subtler ones takes time and (re-)thought.
Perhaps you'll be better off than others who got their grades and don't even realize that they'd benefit from re-thinking the material.

Asking to sit on on lectures when you already have a pass grade is likely to stoke the ego a bit so go ahead and ask, the professor can st the worst  say no

@Stevetech, heh, or else the instructor will be happy that the student finally started catching-on to realities! :)

Win win either way

If nothing else, I've wanted to sit through some intro classes with the benefit of hindsight and other classes to see how my experience of it would change.

@Stevetech: At my university, pretty much anyone (student or not) is welcome to attend any lecture. I'm not sure whether or not any law actually requires that, but I wouldn't be surprised if some did (at least for public universities). In any event, I don't see any reasonable cause for a professor to mind extra listeners at the lecture, as long as they don't disturb the actual students (or leave them without seats! though in that case, he'd better look for a bigger room to lecture in).

I don't think the professor would frown upon this (although certainly ask) or question the grade he gave you earlier.
One question I think is relevant is whether it's worth your time to attend the lectures again. Since you already took the course, I would imagine that you already have the exercises, the syllabus, etc. As such, perhaps you could simply work on the exercises yourself and refer to reading material (prior lecture notes, textbook chapters, etc) whenever you get stuck. If the class meets 3 hours a week, you can then apply this time to solving problems and focusing on what you really didn't understand the first time rather than listening to things with which you may be more comfortable. This method of targeted "relearning" of material that I have forgotten from past courses has served me well in the past, and it's a nice skill to develop for whenever you need to learn a new topic without taking a formal course.
Of course, this comes down to personal preference. If you have the time and motivation to sit through a course again, then by all means do it.

Thank you for your answer! I think I'll have the time, but I might still consider following your suggestion.

I would say it is generally up to the instructor.  If the class involves things like "labs" being done, where you use up materials or there is some sort of preparation needed, your likelihood of approval may be reduced.  However, for just sitting through lectures, I wouldn't mind (as a college instructor).
When I was an instructor, my job was to share knowledge, and help students to become skilled.  If some previous student wanted exposure to my lectures again, I would have no objection as long as it isn't causing any problem, such as depriving any of my currently-enrolled students (who currently have higher priority to my resources) by imposing a reduction in their experience.  The more common alternative is that a previous student would rather spend time playing video games than re-visiting a class when such visits are not required.  If a student chooses to invest in improving their skill, that is only likely to be a good thing (for me, for the university, for the student, for the students' employers).
One thing I would be cautious about doing is to be very wary about asking questions mid-class if you are out-of-the-loop and not a formal student.  However, I remember visiting my mother during a Pre-calculus class, and noticing an error made by the instructor.  I raised my hand (as a non-student) and asked a question which helped the instructor to recognize the error, and the instructor thanked me.  It was an entirely positive experience, but it was a bit of a gamble because some instructors would not like that.
I would probably try to not interact with the instructor, unless the instructor initiates the interaction (by calling my name, specifically).  For instance, I would not try to to help the instructor move the class along, by having me ask a bunch of questions when I have an idea of how the instructor will respond.  As a visitor, I have a different role, which is often to be rather invisible.
Whether the instructor questions, to himself/herself, about the grade given, is not likely a concern of yours, if the instructor only teaches beginner-level classes and you're unlikely to have the instructor again.  Changing a grade may be a significant bureaucratic headache, even if it is just a few days later (and maybe even if it is done before the grades are due, once the instructor submitted the first time).  An instructor is unlikely to change a grade over a minor reason, like changing an opinion of how much you deserved.  (Although, if there is a clear actionable reason, such as responding to fraud, the instructors may be more inclined, perhaps in part because there may be a clear policy that is less painful to the instructor.)  So long as you were honest, you probably don't need to worry about your prior grade.
The reason why Fábio Dias's instructor laughed was probably the admission of not remembering stuff.  There might be classier ways of saying "I'm interested in being exposed to the material again", especially something like being a TA.  Of course, a lot of the precise details will vary between different instructors, and differences in institution (university) policies/cultures might also have some influence.

I think "chuckled" is a more appropriate description. And yes, I think that was the reason too...

Recommendation: be honest with the professor and admit that you didn't take the course seriously last time.  If you do that here is what I would expect to be the answers to your questions.
Would he question the grade he gave me?  Possibly.  But it's very unlikely that he would be so bothered that he would want to change your grade; and even if he did want to, he probably can't at this stage.
[Would he] consider me to be a poor student for forgetting so quickly?  Maybe.  But he would also, most likely, consider you to be a good student for taking an interest in the subject, recognising the problem, and trying to get it fixed.


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Why do most science classrooms use similar black-covered desks?
Why is it that most science classroom desks seem to be built out of wood, but have the desk area covered in some black material? I'm talking about desks like this:
http://st.hzcdn.com/simgs/ab3174c201c9cc49_4-9532/midcentury-desks-and-hutches.jpg
To "prove" its pervasiveness, I Googled "science classroom desk", and the image results have quite a few of these types of desks:

Without knowing an answer to the basic question, it's hard to flesh out my other questions, but here's a basic list:

Is that black material inert in some way, so as to not react to any of the chemicals a student might use in class? Is it just easy to clean?
Why the standardization? I've seen these desks in public and private schools in a number of different states in the US
Is this US-specific? Do other countries have their own standard desks?

(Note: I'm not sure that this is the correct StackExchange website to post this on, so I'm open to suggestions. It seemed to be the closest fit to education/school. There are some sites for specific scientific disciplines, but I thought someone in academia in general might know an answer)

I have never seen this.

I have never seen these desks either. Most of the science classrooms, and university labs, that I have been in have white surfaces somewhat similar to kitchen countertops (only differently sized/laid out).

I wasn't actually sure how prevalent they are, which is why I did the Google search to see if it was just a local trend - and yet, I had seen it in a number of different states

As the question suggests, these benches are virtually universal in biology labs in the US and Canada; I have seen probably hundreds of labs in dozens of different universities and government institutes, and every one had identical bench tops.  The resin is unbelievably tough and resistant to chemical spills, fires, physical damage. Once I requested that our physical facilities people drill a small hole through the countertop so that I could run a computer connector to a specific spot, and it took the guy probably an hour to get through it, destroying multiple drill bits in the process.

When you answer "I haven't seen" you should say where you are.

I found an article that explains the reason quite clearly: the black top is a resin laminate that is chemical and stain resistant.
Not all bench-tops are black: there are alternate materials that are white or metallic. Presumably those substances have different resistances for different purposes; for example, some of the white benches I saw while searching were anti-static materials for electronics work.  For anything with biological and chemical substances, however, it seems that the black resin laminates are often the preferred material.

Maybe the materials that modern bench tops are made from, but they are likely designed this way to replicate the historical laboratory bench tops  which were made of slate. Slate is chemically inert, doesn't conduct electricity, and is nonflammable.

Really interesting article - I didn't find that in my searches, thanks! Quote of the day - “Somebody probably thought of the design,” she said, “And was like ‘OK.'

EDIT
Interesting video talking about State of the Art Labs of the 1930's and State of the Art Teaching Labs of 2014
https://youtu.be/hgS0UOP4zUc

Scientific bench tops were originally made of slate, and in many schools and labs you will see that they still use slate tops (or the school happens to be have really old labs and they have never updated them). The main advantages were:

They are chemically inert and will not react to chemicals
They did not conduct electricity
They did not catch fire
They were for all intents and purposes nonporous. You don't want your reactive reagents seeping into the bench tops, where they can stay and react with other materials later on or contaminate your experiments.
The same reason slate is used for billiards tables. It is very sturdy, it does not flex or deform, so it can hold up heavy equipment, and you can grind it to be very level, which is important as you do not want your vessels or burners tipping over.

The reason that the modern materials that @jakebeal mentions are likely black is because traditions are hard to break. You make it look like what people were familiar with, so they will associate it with having the properties of the original material.
If you look at old photographs from labs in Europe, it appears that the material the bench tops are made of are a thick slate slab. I guess choice of material depends on how new the facilities are and what the individual institution's internal safety standards and local building codes call for.

I am putting this here as this is more speculation on my part, but I would have to guess that slate was used as it is more economical than marble, which would have been another option.

Marble isn't such a great thing if you're working with acids.

@SimonB I mentioned it as there are some old photos where you see marble work surfaces in lab. There were also plenty of pictures of heavy wooden bench tops as well, but there are plenty of reasons by you wouldn't want to use wood.

Simply put: it's easier to see things - paper, objects, clear scientific equipment, and so on - against a black tabletop.
Furthermore - and perhaps more importantly - a black tabletop makes it easy to see spills and other potential hazards.  This makes cleaning easier and more effective.
And finally: black tends to hide wear and tear better than other colors (especially in the presence of scientific experiments).  So schools can hold off on replacing their equipment longer and still look nice in the press photos :)


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Is it okay to record audio for a lecture?
Sometimes the Professor will say things quickly, or say things before I can write them down. It would be of great benefit if I could record audio for the course, but I am not sure the legal guidelines around doing so.

When I was a student and smartphones had not yet populated the Earth, it was not uncommon, at least in my country, to see a professor's desk covered with cassette recorders. Students had just to politely ask the professor consent to record the lectures.

Related: Under what circumstances would a professor be offended at students taping or recording his or her lecture?

If the lectures are open to the general public, I don't see how any (reasonable) law could prevent you from recording them (as long as you don't publish the recording). You are, after all, able to record with your own ears. Of course, there is a matter of courtesy.

@MassimoOrtolano True. And it always reminds me of the tape-recorder  scenes from Real Genius: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gt4vXaoPzF8

Making the polite request via email has the advantage that you can include a written commitment to use the recordings for personal use only.  If you were asking me for permission to record, that commitment would be important to me.

FYI: Is consent required by law to take a picture or to record audio / video of a conference talk?

The legal issues involved will, of course, depend on what legal jurisdiction you are asking about. However, there are some common factors that can be considered.
In the UK many institutions take the interpretation of the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) that teaching staff cannot prevent students making private recordings (Audio or Video) of any teaching activity. The reasoning is that students are entitled to keep their condition confidential (as it may be a private medical matter) but also must be permitted to receive the appropriate adjustment for their condition. It would be expected, as a courtesy, that the student would inform the staff concerned that recording was taking place, but that this could not be enforced. (*)
Conversely, the Intellectual Property (IP) of the class and the material contained therein would be held by the University and the individual teacher to varying degrees. The recording could not be published or used for any means other than private study as this would then violate the rights of the owner of the IP.
Many aspects of disability discrimination, privacy and intellectual property legislation is common across many EU states, but there are variations in practice. I can imagine how these different statutes might interact in (say) the US, but I suspect it might vary from state to state and not always be a federal matter, and so I decline to speculate.
(*) I have responsibilities for assisting academic staff understand these issues in my department...

Thank you for the informative answer. Legality is probably the primary concern, followed by university policy, and in turn followed by the ethical concern with publishing such information.

The first step should be to ask your professor. This is not just a common courtesy. If s/he is OK with it, great. If not, then you can probably gauge from the answer what the concerns are. That will show you how you might go forward. Often professors make available powerpoint presentations or other such visual aids. Perhaps it is a matter of the professor not speaking clearly or loudly enough, and sometimes they are not even aware of the problem. Etc.
What you should not do: just turn on your recording device without fair warning. This may set you up for all sorts of misunderstandings and repercussions. Don't go there.

But it's very complementary, I think. I voted them both up.

This is the correct approach. You should ask before doing anything.

@djechlin I don't think it contradicts my answer as it is good advice, and may be quite correct in different legal jurisdictions. If students don't know they should ask. My advice was more slanted towards the teacher's perspective.

Interesting. I have never considered this to be a problem since it would be only me who would listens to it, which is not different from listening in person. Is a person with an exceptional memory inherently rude? It is, of course, something different if one shares the recording.

In the US, allowing such recordings would probably be in the realm of "reasonable accomodation" as required under ADA. To claim such an accomodation, you would have to follow the procedure and have the Disability coordinator intervene, and you would have to have a disability (so the inconvenience of having to ask for a repetition would not be sufficient).
When it comes to copyright, you can't copyright an idea, only the expression of one, so it could depend on whether the professor had put the lecture in writing or other fixed form. If the professor has written his lectures down, they have fixed form and are protected by copyright law. If he lectures extemporaneously, the copyright is held jointly between the professor and the person who first fixes that form of expression. (I recognize that that has ludicrous implications, but I didn't write the law. It would be unwise to test the copyrightable status of unwritten lectures). In addition, contract law may supercede copyright considerations, the relevant question being whether the university has a policy allowing or prohibiting such recordings. Universities might make money from recording and selling access to lectures, so they might have an economic interest in forbidding recording.
Unilateral recording potentially conflicts with the privacy rights of students and the professor in the course. The major concern is that recording lectures can have a chilling effect on students' willingness to speak in class (hence the need to obtain permission from all of the students in the class, in Missouri). In some states (two-party consent states) you would have to obtain consent from all parties in a conversation: you could legally test whether a lecture with or without questions from the audience constitutes a "conversation". The problem is that if you're not in a two-party consent state, then you're in a one-party consent state, which means that you need consent from one of the parties -- and if it's just the professor talking, he may be the only "party" (it is not clear whether just showing up makes you a "party" to a conversation). Also, bear in mind that wiretap laws are potentially applicable because they don't exclusively refer to speech over wires. I would suggest getting the expert opinions of a panel of lawyers.

Doesn't copyright only comes into play if the recording is distributed, which is note necessarily the case for the OP?

"Copyright" is the right to make copies, any copy, and is not just about "copy and distribute". As a tort act, it could be the predicate for prosecution under wiretapping statutes.

It doesn't have to be "okay" if no one knows it is being done.  Record discreetly and don't publish the recording.

It is rude, to say the least, to record somebody without asking.


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Is it okay to publish my personal notes from a lecture?
Would it be considered ethical to publish my own personal notes from class? In addition, is there a change when the class transitions from in session to being complete (at the end of the semester)?
For example when this may be relevant, there are courses where the Professor publishes his slides onto a class portal, but excludes certain material that is only covered in class. This is to incentivize students to show up, rather than only study from the from published slides.

We can't really answer questions about whether it is legal; that would depend on the laws of your jurisdiction, and legal questions are off topic for this site.  We also have no way of knowing whether it's allowed by your institution's rules.  We could try to address the question of whether, in general, it's ethical to do so.

Do you mean "publish" as in "distribute them to my classmates", or as in "turn them into a book and sell them for profit"?

The ethical thing to do, in my opinion, would be to ask the professor's permission.

but why would a professor disagree with that?

@Ooker, a professor would never disagree with asking his permission.

Depending on the contents and the manner of the notes, I don't think it would be unethical to publish them without permission.
If it is a word for word transcription, I would lean towards ask for permission. If it is the students own synthesis, I would learn towards publish at will.

No, it is not okay and not ethical to do so.
In most cases, a significant portion of your notes will be of copy of what the professor wrote on the board, said orally, or showed via a projector or similar. That means the professor has at least partial authorship to your notes, because he generated the content, even when it is you who wrote the notes down. To illustrate this, it's good to recall that when you want to refer to notes from one of your lectures in a thesis or homework text, you'd usually give the professor's name as author, not your name.
When publishing anything where joint authorship exists, it's a general rule to require permission of all authors. That would include the professor in your case. This is for both ethical and legal reasons. The lecture material is either copyrighted by your professor or by whomever he has it from. What you have is either a copy or a derivative work, and you require the original authors permission to publish that.


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When should I release deadlines for assignments?
Some students have been asking that I release all the assignments and their due dates at the beginning of the course. I suppose that I could create some estimates, but I suspect that we will end up moving slower that I would hope (this seems to always be the case) and may even have to drop an assignment or two. I'd prefer to release the deadlines and assignments as we approach them, but the students allege that knowing this information ahead of time will help them manage their schedule.

@gnometorule Can you please turn this comment into an answer so that I can vote you points?

What kind of assignments? As a student I always appreciated a regular schedule for problem sets - it gave a rhythm to the week, and I didn't have to scramble when several fell due at once all of a sudden. Research papers tended to clump near midterm and finals (usually in lieu of). The weekly assignments can always be tweaked as the pace of the class varies.

I find the premise of this question really odd.  Where I studied, it was a university requirement that all assessment dates be locked in by about a week into semester.  I can't imagine how students could be expected to juggle four or five courses if things could be sprung on them at the last minute...

I can't imagine how students who haven't learned to juggle unexpected demands on their time could be effective working outside of academia - but whether learning useful life-skills is part of the purpose of an academic education is another question, of course.

You should make every assignment due on the first day of school, then grant extensions as time goes on. :-)

you want to be understanding of the type of student you're dealing with. For instance, if your students are evening MBA students with jobs and families, it would be 'nice' (but not necessarily a requirement nor a 'rule') to release the dates early. That doesn't mean releasing the assignments themselves (the questions). But you could announce: "By 1 of January the assignment questions will be distributed, on 15 January by 6pm, they are due, on 21 January the grades and model answers will be available, and by 30 January no grade 'complaints' will be entertained anymore". Something like that.

I see no problem in releasing your estimate of related dates "as you've been asked to help some students schedule," with the same caveats you give here (which I would highlight). It's always good to be responsive to fairly easy requests by students, but it would be unreasonable for students to expect a schedule to be set in stone.

It might be useful to say that assignment about X will be given out once you finish the lectures on X and due one week after that (or whatever your standard time for assignments is). If you can also say that you expect X to take 1 week to cover, then that will probably ease people's nerves. You can also say that you reserve the right to go slower or faster depending on how you think things are going, but that the assignment will definitely be given out when you finish your lectures on the topic.

the students allege that knowing this information ahead of time will help them manage their schedule.

The students will have to cope with knowing that there will be an assignment every x days/weeks. Even if you can, most courses probably cannot provide any more precise information, even if they wanted to:

Assignments often get defined only a short time before they are needed. Partly, this is to match them with current progress in class, but also because there is always something to change, refine, or downright replace in the assignments from last year and no-one has the time to do that en bloc for all assignments before the semester.
Assignments might be incremental (one assignment using solutions by all students from the previous assignment).

Sure, you might decide to skip one of x assignments, but I doubt that temporary lack of an assignment will ruin anyone's planning. No-one plans that precisely a semester in advance.
With that said, it might not be desirable to hand out assignments so early:

Having only one or two weeks to solve a task can be by design.
You don't want students to prematurely try and solve something with a complicated method just because they do not realize the easier method will still be taught later.

Re: your last point - Prematurely trying to solve using a more difficult method can be resolved easily by specifying the method to use in the assignment.

@CoatedMoose: Often enough, methods have no clearly-defined name. At least none that isn't used differently by different authors, so searching on the web will bring up all kinds of different methods. As a result, it is often "the method discussed in the lecture", which is of little use to the student before the lecture has taken place. Also, choosing an appropriate method can easily be a part of the task, in which case indicating a particular method would be counterproductive.

Specifying a method does not need a clearly defined name. In such cases you can say things like "Using method discussed in lecture _" or "Using the [index] method discussed chapter _". I concede that, where choosing the most appropriate method is part of the task, you are more limited in releasing ahead of time. (In those cases, you still may be able to list all the methods, but I can see that still not being good enough.)

@CoatedMoose: When we use something like "method discussed in the lecture", we're back at the issue that knowing the task won't be of any help before the lecture has taken place, right? But maybe that's just my impression, as I've come to expect all lectures to be in a constant state of flux, with lecture notes being revised, reordered, and optimized each year, always during the semester, and always in a way that final lecture notes are only available shortly before the lecture (and sometimes intentionally not made available before that, lest overconfident students skip the lecture).

I expect there are cases where it is no help, however having the assignment available before the lecture means that when the lecture occurs, the assignment can make the purpose of the lecture/method/etc more apparent. While this doesn't necessarily help with planning, it may help with understanding, and is still worthwhile IMO.

Of course, care must be taken in either case. If an industrious student works ahead of the lectures and does something the harder way, only to find out the easier way the next lecture, the lesson learned is "Don't complete assignments early." This is among the worst scenarios.

It is extremely helpful for students to have a decent idea of when projects are due, especially major projects. They may be balancing multiple classes, jobs, have family situations that require them to travel, etc.
Given that, I'd try to release anticipated due dates as soon as possible, with the caveat that they may slide. Realistically, that's the best you can do, and it at least helps with some planning.
If you decide not to do this, I'd probably have a somewhat more flexible policy regarding extensions and the like.

This is the humane approach.  I would add, re the separate question of whether to release the assignments themselves -- in general this would not be such a good idea.


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Finding/giving an appropriate thank you gift to university faculty
I'm a student at a large university, and recently had an especially hard semester due to a family emergency. I withdrew from two classes, and the only reason I didn't have to withdraw altogether was because of some very understanding faculty members in my department.
My department adviser, after realizing that I probably wouldn't be able to go to all of my professors explaining this issue and begging for extended deadlines without breaking down, emailed all of them herself and basically bought me a couple of weeks to pull myself together. One of my professors went above and beyond and gave me "indefinite deadlines" (i.e. whenever I feel like turning it in) for all of his class assignments. My grade for his class is made up of three essays, and, even though there's only a month left in the semester, I've turned in none of them; every attempt I've made to approach him and apologize for all of the trouble I've caused him has been casually waved away.
So, my question is: what's an appropriate thank you for everything they've done for me? I've tried to end every meeting I've had each of with them by thanking them, but they always seem a bit embarrassed and wave me off (they're both pretty reserved people). Knowing that they're embarrassed by even my little attempts to thank them, I'm not sure if they'd like me getting them a thank you card or a gift card. Also, scheduling an appointment with my adviser (that's the only way I'm able to see her) just to give her a thank you gift feels a bit weird. Any tips? Are my in-person "thank you's" enough, or should I try to get them something more? And, if a gift would be appropriate, is there any etiquette regarding how I get the gift to them?


text:
Is it inappropriate to give one faculty member a larger thank you gift than another?
I'm a student at a large university, and, after a recent family emergency, received a lot of help from two faculty members in my department. My department adviser, after hearing about my family emergency, offered to contact all of my professors and request assignment extensions for me (because asking for extensions myself would require me explaining my situation to multiple people, and would probably result in some embarrassing crying jags). One of my professors went above and beyond, and gave me an "indefinite extension" on all of my assignments for his class; my entire class grade is made up of three essays, and I've turned in none of them so far, which I realize is probably a big inconvenience for him. He's also helped me personally, as he's been the only person comfortable asking me straightforward questions about my situation at home (which is a topic that most people are very uncomfortable talking about).
I'd like to get both of these faculty members thank you cards, but I'm also considering getting the professor, who's really gone out of his way to make things easier for me, and who I've spoken more extensively with about my situation, a small additional gift (a travel mug from the campus coffee shop that he frequents, a paperweight, etc.). I'd also like to get the professor a gift because I might not see him or take any of his classes again, but I speak with my adviser pretty frequently and have more opportunities to thank her.
Knowing all of this, would it be inappropriate to give the professor this kind of extra gift while my adviser is only getting a thank you card? The two faculty members' offices are fairly close to one another, and I assume that they speak regularly. I don't want my adviser to find out and feel that I somehow didn't appreciate her efforts as much, especially since I rely on her for recommendation letters and the like. Any advice?

In theses situations, it might be best to stick with cards to avoid any suggestion of reciprocity

I would suggest sticking with a card, but writing your appreciation as extensively as you wish.  There's no reason for the contents of the cards to be similar.
Even ignoring the question of differences between faculty members, gifts can be tricky for professors to deal with, ethically, particularly when it's regarding a favor in a class.
Finally, I guarantee that a heartfelt explanation of how much the help mattered to you will mean a lot more to the professor than a $10 mug.


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Is it a good idea to use Octave to teach an Intro to Matlab course?
I just discovered GNU Octave, a free open-source alternative to Matlab.
I was wondering if it would be wise to teach an "Intro to Matlab" course using Octave instead of Matlab. My motivations are both idealistic (i.e. I want to support open source software) and financial (I want to save my university some money on licensing fees).
My concerns are that if Octave is too different from Matlab, it would be difficult to find textbooks and other teaching resources, and that when my students make it out into the real world they will most likely have to use Matlab and so they may be disadvantaged if they learned Octave instead.
Does anyone familiar with Octave have any insight?
EDIT: Since a few of the initial comments and answers are focusing on the name of the course, I want to clarify that there is no issue changing the name (and I probably will if I use Octave). Nevertheless, I want my students to have the skills to be able to use Matlab after passing my course, and my question is about whether they will possess those skills if I teach the course using Octave.

Personally, I found it weird to do so. If possible, it's better to change the course's name to "Intro to scientific computing", for ex and then use any language you want.

@SixUlm But the goal of the course is that students would know how to use Matlab specifically at the end. If I taught them using Octave, would they have the skills necessary to work with Matlab?

The syntax of Octave code is identical to that of Matlab, and most functions are the same as well (certainly those that you would use in an introductory course). So, aside from the UI differences, if your students know how to use Octave they know how to use Matlab (and vice versa).
Naturally it is much easier and cheaper for a student to obtain a (legal) copy of Octave than of Matlab.

Good students have no trouble adjusting to UI differences, but you also need to take care of your average and below average (but still passing) students. Would you do them a disservice by doing so? Personally, if I could not change the aim of the course, and I had to teach how to use Matlab, then I would use Matlab to teach Matlab. Anything else would just add confusion. Alternatively I would try (maybe not for this year, but for next years course) to change the aim of the course.

Teach it as the course description states and offer Octave as an alternative option for use. For the most part Octave and Matlab are pretty interchangeable.

I make heavy use of p-code when teaching MATLAB. It allows me to distribute a function and tell students to recreate the behavior.

Andrew Ng used both Matlab and Octave in his famous machine learning course at Stanford, both at the school and on the machine learning course on Coursera. You might check those out for examples. But neither of them represent a class that says it will teach Matlab but then only uses Octave, so it would seem to me you'd need a different name or support both, as variously suggested in the current answers

Just as a side note: most probably your school buys the license anyway, so you don't save them money.

While I was a student I strongly preferred Matlab over Octave. Coming from a non-engineering background it was Matlab's great documentation, and ability to access it from its GUI, that taught me to program (in parallel to pursuing a PhD outside of computer science, and after having visited a short intro course). Moreover I didn't want to worry about the special cases, where octave behaves different from Matlab, or a lock-in due to Octave's extended syntax.

As suggested also by SiXUlm in a comment, if you want to avoid being committed to a specific software, rename the course, e.g.,

Introduction to scientific computing

or

Introduction to scientific computing with Octave/Matlab

During the course, outline possible syntax and library differences.

when my students make it out into the real world they will most likely have to use Matlab

Most of your students will likely not use Matlab at all in the real world. A few of them will, but they would be able to fill the gaps by themselves.

Thanks for the answer, but changing the name isn't a problem (sorry for not making that clear in the initial version of the question). And regardless of whether the students end up using Matlab in the real world, my goal is that for students who pass this course are able to use it.

@DarrenOng As I said, yes, but describe the differences between the two softwares during the class.


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Are PhD programmes reluctant to admit multiple students from the same university in the same application cycle?
The senior undergraduates at my (mathematics) department have this impression that postgraduate programmes don't want to admit multiple applicants from the same university in the same application cycle. So they are coordinating so that no two people apply to the same programme (i.e. if one student applies to the University of X, the others make sure not to apply to the university of X).
Is this true? If a postgraduate PhD programme accepts a candidate from one university, will this doom the chances of other candidates applying from that same university in that application cycle?
I am primarily interested in answers from Math PhD programmes, but also would be interested in answers from other fields.

Even assuming that the premise were true, this scheme makes no sense to me whatsoever. What is the advantage of a situation where N students from your university apply to the same university and only one of them is selected as opposed to a situation where only one student applies? Surely this decreases everyone's chances quite substantially: per each university, the chances of N-1 people decrease to zero, while the chance of this one person does not rise substantially. They don't know who the one hypothetical student who would have gotten admitted out of the N candidates might be.

The only way this might make sense (again, assuming that the premise is true) is if there are some truly outstanding students who they are afraid would ruin other people's chances at admission. But in that case, what on Earth would be the motivation for these outstanding students to willingly accede to this hare-brained scheme? Tbh this feels like (academic) natural selection in action.

@AdamPřenosil we have to take into account that each student is only applying to finitely many institutions (because each application takes time and money) so it is not that the remaining N-1 students are choosing  not to apply to any university at all, it is that they are instead choosing to use their quota of applications to apply for a different university.

Is this what happens when you make undergraduates study Game Theory?

@DarrenOng No, I understand that. As a simple model, consider two students applying to two universities. In Scenario 1, they apply to both universities, each of them has a probability of 1/6 of getting accepted, and if both were to be accepted, then the university decides randomly between the two students and accepts only one of them. In Scenario 2, the students make a pact and each student applies only to one university and gets accepted with a probability of 1/6. Scenario 2 is of course much worse for both of them, since they only get to roll the die once.

I also understand that this pact might not affect the number of schools the students are applying to, but assuming an overlap between their top choices (without such an overlap, the pact would make no sense in the first place) it does mean that each student will be applying to fewer of their top choice schools and consequently everyone hurts their chances of getting into their top choice school. By trying to avoid the minor effect of "if more of us get accepted, only one of us will get in", they fall victim to the much larger effect of "the fewer schools you apply to, the lower your chances".

Schools also understand that two-body problems exist at this stage of career as well and aren't going to arbitrarily make cut offs based solely on quotas. Particularly because It sounds like you're in Europe where it's less like they're trying to craft a "cohort" experience than in the US too (where they may want to be more careful about not picking 3-4 of 8-10 from potentially the same friend group), this sounds like a non-issue based on worries developed from glancing at incoming student lists.

Whenever you hear something from fellow students that goes beyond their level of expertise, ask them "how do you know?" This applies to both undergraduate and graduate students.

@MoisheKohan: +1 And it also applies to postdocs, to professors at any stage of seniority, and in fact to simply everyone who says something which is apparently not within their expertise. ;-)

@JochenGlueck Of course.

I have never heard of a graduate program not wanting to hire multiple students from the same university. Graduate programs want to hire the best students. Where they come from does not matter very much. I can not see a reason why graduate programs would care about diversity of academic origin to a degree that would trump the quality of candidates.

No. Never been an issue in all my years of supervising admissions.

It's been a long time since I handled grad admissions, but I think this is really unlikely to happen.  I can only imagine one circumstance where I might have considered doing this:
Suppose undergrad institution A has a history of unusually bad grade inflation.  In the past, we've admitted students from A who came with great transcripts and great references, but who turned out to be terrible students.  So now we are very wary of admitting anyone from A.  However, good students can come from bad places, and bad places can improve, so maybe we'll consider admitting just the best one this year.

I cannot comment in general for all the universities in the world, but I can comment for the UK/US english-speaking world and for the german speaking world.
From the spoiled, arrogant attitude of many western people (for a small but western-representative sample just check questions and answers given on this site), the concerns of your colleague are fundamentally true (yes, I am arrogant and spoiled,   too, simply "against" instead of "together with" these people).
Especially if you are coming from an Indian/Indonesian/Chinese University.
This however can be partially mitigated by the fact that in your cover letter you may mention something along the line "since our group at university xyz perfomrs research on the topic, your opening of position is an interesting opportunity for me to further my research on the topic I worked with fellow colleagues and students in the past" ...

It is not entirely clear to me, how this is addressing the question the OP asked. The question is about admitting multiple people to a PhD program, the example sentence you give seemingly applies only when applying to a specific opening (in which case it is unlikely that multiple people are accepted, let alone form the same university).

@TimRias "Are PhD programmes reluctant to admit multiple students from the same university in the same application cycle?" Yes.

And how does including a line like "since our group at university xyz perfomrs research on the topic, your opening of position is an interesting opportunity for me to further my research on the topic I worked with fellow colleagues and students in the past" mitigate that?

I also fail to understand the logic at play here. If some decision maker has a racist attitude against your university, they will probably hire zero people from your university. If their racism is in favour of your university, they may even be more likely to hire multiple people from your university. I am not claiming that racist hirers don’t exist, but how does this interact with the problem at hand?

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


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What to expect from an HR interview for a postdoc position?
I had a successful technical round of interview for a PostDoc position offered by an NGO. Now I am told that I will be interviewed by the HR manager for the same.
I was told that I am technically highly suitable for the role. My question is what would the HR team might be interested to know further. Would they want to know more about personality etc.
Could anyone please suggest what to expect in an HR interview for a postdoc position?

If your technical interviews went well, I would bet the HR meeting will focus on a combination of the following:

Verifying that you meet formal job requirements. They need to make sure they can actually employ you; you are authorized to work in the country (e.g., are a citizen or have/can apply for an appropriate work permit). They may ask you to confirm that you have a PhD, a common requirement for a postdoc position. Depending on how it is funded, there may be more specific requirements, like having a degree in a certain field or conferred within a certain time period. If you will need some sort of background check, they will go over that process too.
Selling you on the job. If they offer you a job, they want you to take it! They may use this meeting to describe your (potential) position and how you would fit into the organization. There might be a specific discussion of the offer you'd be receiving (e.g., salary, vacation, benefits) or just a more general pitch about how this is a great place to work, etc. Some organizations do this even before the final candidate is actually selected.
Checking for fit/compatibility/etc. Pretty self-explanatory. The impressions of the people you with whom you would work should carry more weight, but nevertheless....

In any case, I would take it as a promising sign that you've been asked back. Good luck!


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My professor keeps opening my office door without knocking at the door
Is it polite when my professor keep opening my office door without knocking at the door whenever he wants to ask anything?
Since the door closed, I am supposed to hear knock before breaking into, or rather, busting into the room. Is it polite?

Have you asked your professor to nock?  I think it is not a question of ethics.  Maybe it is a question of politeness.

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it is a question about general behaviour which is only "about academia" insofar as the person that inspired it is a professor.

It could be a passive aggressive way of implying you should keep the door open. The door open/closed mentality is an issue in academia.

Can you lock the door?

@StrongBad So maybe the question should be "is it polite to keep the office door closed in academia? " :)

This varies from department to department.  I've seen it go both ways.  But the important thing is that the student's tolerance for feeling barged in on depends on the sensory profile of the student.  If you find that the knockless entering is making you feel like a scared rabbit, then just explain that, with an I-message, to your professor, and either lock your door or put a note "Please knock before entering" on your door.  Make sure to give him positive feedback when he starts knocking.

Just add a sign that says 'Please knock'.  Hopefully the prof will get the message.

It's not polite, but unless he's willing and able to change his behaviour on request there's probably not much you can do about it

@Prof.SantaClaus There is a decent chance he won't get the message :)

@StudentT Who locks their office door? I don't think locking their office door on a regular basis is good workplace behaviour.

@ian_itor Disagreed. It's her office, she has the rights to lock it.

@StudentT It is her right, but is it right? As an unwitting co-worker I'd regard it as odd, maybe even suspicious. Anyway, locking the door does not solve the problem, it rather creates a new one.

@Krebto Please avoid vandalizing your posts.

@MassimoOrtolano Posts?? and since it is closed and off-topic, why it stay posted?

@Krebto Because that's how SE works. Most of closed questions get eventually deleted when there is a sufficient number of delete votes.

To the OP, if you want to delete it, the best way is to flag the moderators. I already hit the delete button, hopefully others will follow so we won't have this edit war again.

Ethical yes. Polite no, it is not. I do not see what ethics (resolving human morality) have to do with opening the door.
On a philosophical level, ethics and manners are kind of incompatible since they deal with a different nature of question.

Thanks for saying polite, i just edited the main question

So you're saying that there is nothing unethical about being impolite?

It can be impolite -- from mild to severe --, but it really depends on the group culture.
For instance, my closer colleagues and I usually don't knock to each other's doors before entering -- the rare times the doors are closed --, and we've been doing this for more than 20 years: we used to have a common office space at the beginning of our careers and we simply grew up without any expectation of privacy at the workplace, and really we don't feel the need for it. I still share space with other colleagues or students.
I usually invite my PhD students not to knock when they have to visit me, and I usually don't knock on their doors.
In other groups, however, the above behaviour would be considered extremely impolite: if you are a newcomer, you should try to understand the prevailing group habits, but if you really find a certain habit annoying, try to approach the professor explaining -- in a non-confrontational way -- your concerns.

As others have said, this depends at least partially on the prevailing custom in the country or insitution you are in. Another factor which has not been mentioned so far is the number of people who use your office. It seems to me that the acceptability of entering an office (other than your own) without knocking increases with the number of people who occupy the office. If you are the sole occupant of the office, an unannounced visitor is more liable to threaten your sense of space than if your office is shared by several others, particularly if these other occupants also receive their share of visitors.
Indeed, if the office is shared by a large number of people, it may be preferred if visitors don't wait to be invited to 'come in!' as the duty of calling out such an invitation is liable to fall to the unfortunate person based closest to the door.
(As a footnote, I once shared an office with someone who was very senior and very respected in the department and who had just retired. I think I was his first office mate in over 30 years. Being a gentleman to his fingertips, he adopted the habit of knocking before entering our own office, a habit I then felt bound to adopt myself.)

This is correct. Whenever I enter a larger office space in my building, I tend not to knock (or at least I am less inclined to), however, when it is a small room, I always knock. I should also add that the larger rooms have transparent sliding doors, so for me that makes it clear if there are many individuals present, the smaller rooms are wooden, and I can't see if somebody is asleep or doing whatever else.

I believe it is never polite to just walk into an office without making sure the occupants of the office are aware that they do not have an expectation of privacy. Many departments expect faculty to keep their doors open and in turn many PIs expect students to keep their doors open. Even where the department/lab culture accepts doors being shut, PIs often think of all space as "theirs" and expect unfettered access to their students. This does not make it right. A PI should discuss the policies with their students and hopefully come to a mutual agreement about privacy.
I was going to argue it depends since in my old department, graduate students used to be in a shared office that was the "gate keeper" to the laboratories. As it was on a noisy hallway, and there was valuable equipment in the office, the door was always kept shut, but not locked. No one knocked when opening the door. The reason that just walking in was not polite, is the PIs never discussed with my students that there was no expectation of privacy. While I think the students would have been hard pressed to change the minds of the PIs, the PIs should have explained the policies.


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Master's at Undergrad University Then Pursue PhD Elsewhere
My university has a 5 year BS/MS degree for mathematical sciences and I am graduating a year early, so I can do the BS/MS in only 4 years. I am considering applying to PhD programs at other universities after I complete my MS. Do PhD programs want students right out of undergrad? Or will I be at an advantage showing that I can take grad courses (assuming I do well)

What country is this in context for?

Based on another one of OP's questions, I'm going to assume that this is based in the US; I'll tag it as such.

My answer reflects the situation in the US and Canada.  In the US, most Ph.D. programs accept people directly from undergrad; at a few US and most Canadian schools you'll be expected to start in a master's program, but it is generally relatively easy to move up to the Ph.D. program (not significantly harder than avoiding getting kicked out of most US Ph.D. programs).  Whether it says "MS" on your degree will matter less than what courses you have taken.  Having another year of coursework will probably strengthen your application (or at least gives you a chance to), but if you have to pay a significant amount of tuition, then I have serious concerns about whether it will be worth it. If you can get into a funded master's or Ph.D. program, then that will save you a LOT of money, and you can get roughly the same boost to your future applications spending a year there that you would by being in the BS/MS program.
EDIT:  Since the OP has clarified that the extra year would be funded with a stipend, my comments above aren't really applicable.  In that case, it probably is the best plan to stay at the current university and get the BS/MS.
Maybe I'll just make a general comment here which seems relevant: its generally pretty advantageous to stay longer at the current stage of career where you already are, as opposed to moving on in a rush.  Our culture makes a powerful mystique around completing things quickly, but all other things being equal, it is to your benefit to be a little ahead in actual accomplishments of where you are in your career (which extra time is one way of accomplishing).  You get "clock resets" at various points of your career (when starting or finishing a Ph.D., for example), if you can get more done before those, all the better.  Of course, often financial or personal considerations have to be weighed against this.

My master's would be fully funded w/ a stipend and since I do not have to go any extra time then a normal BS, having the extra grad courses seemed like a win-win situation.

Some of my friends went to a U.S. university that had many students do BA/MA and BS/MS programs ("coterms"), and for the most part it seemed like a good chance to spend a little more time to do more graduate-level coursework. I hadn't asked what their funding looks like, but (especially if you'd be graduating in 4 years) there might be a way to make any financial aid or scholarships help cover the coterm.
I'll emphasize two potentially related benefits to this:

If you have classmates and roommates you like, this is a way to spend a "senior year" with them, which could be personally very meaningful.
Let's say you got into an equivalent 1 year MA program somewhere else. It would require you to relocate, create a new support structure, learn new systems, change your email address, etc. You will have to do that sometime, but for many people that would be important to take into account if you plan to be there for only one year and then move on.

Those "touchy-feely" considerations mean you may be more likely to succeed at your graduate coursework (e.g. through fewer life disruptions, unless everyone around you starts partying heavily). You can also continue to build relationships with professors, which will help you in applying to schools and in calling on them as mentors over time.
TL;DR: If this school is working well for you for your BS, then you have strong priors that you can succeed there for your MS.


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Asking professor about certainty of a new opportunity
Recently I had an interview for a PhD position in Germany. After couple of days, I received a congrats email stating that I'm ranked 3rd candidate. Originally there was only single opening in the advert. So I am confused - actually I'm not selected - then why am I being congratulated? Is it something like if first two candidates do not accept the offer then I'll stand a chance? Should I ask this question directly? How to ask this with politeness?
Also, in the mail, it is mentioned that the group will have new opportunities and I should contact the respective person in a particular month. This sounds like a very promising statement, also from the internet research of the group, it is evident that they have few plans for near future.
I want to ask the question: How certain is this? I would want to listen a direct answer for e.g. 0.7% probability. Also, even though opportunity arises, will I be considered directly? Or will there be a formal evaluation process again? Because if yes, it is too time consuming and I might consider few other options rather than waiting for something in which prob of getting through is low.
This is a very good group and if I get an opportunity I would definitely work with them. So at any cost, I do not want to sound rude and/or idiot. So are these valid questions to ask? If yes, how to phrase them politely?

What country is this? In the US it might be considered rude to tell them their "rank."

This is for Germany

I might consider a few other options rather than waiting for something.
That sounds like a good idea to me in any case! Probably nobody can give you a quantitative information concerning the probability to get the position (how would anyone know the probability that two other candidates decline an offer?). Moreover this information may not be very useful or verifiable (what do you do if they tell you "it's about 30%"?). If a tangible offer is presented to you; like a contract that is ready to sign, then you may have a reason to be congratulated. Until then I wouldn't give any importance to that email.
I suspect that this group wants to be sure to obtain a student within a certain time (else the funding may expire), but you're apparently not their first choice; so they might be trying to put you 'on hold' as they may fear that their preferred candidates take other offers, and that in the meantime you could have found another good opportunity, too, leaving them empty-handed. That does not sound very fair to me; even though it is understandable from their perspective. I think that the email should have contained information on a deadline, stating that the final decision will be made before a specific date.
Just my two cents: since I don't think that you will obtain any useful answer, I would probably not ask anything and look for other opportunities instead. Maybe in a few weeks they make you an offer; then you can still decide. But I wouldn't recommend to wait and hope.

makes sense.. thx