Questions tagged [policy]
On the formulation and application of formal rules and regulations by a university, instructor, or publisher.
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How can I address a student systematically boosting their grades by filing frivolous complaints?
I was recently accused of unfair grading by a student. The accusation is meritless, and it didn't take long to prove that I didn't do anything wrong. No damage, but a lot of time wasted.
Later, I ...
user39093
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Examples of successful push-backs against DEI (diversity, etc.) initiatives in academia?
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives became an almost overnight transformational success in academia beginning one or two years ago (in the US and several other countries such as Canada ...
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My university requires that I take attendance. How should I treat students who arrive late to class?
I might soon teach at a university which requires that I record attendance of students, as follows:
Attendance is a requirement for the course. A person with at least 75% of attendance is eligible to ...
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What should I do when my students use their phones in class?
On the first day of class, I told my students that they are not allowed to use their phones in class. However, a lot of them use their cell phones and don't pay attention in class. How should I deal ...
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What is a "Safe Space"?
My organisation has recently started advertising certain meetings as being "Safe Spaces" without describing what is meant by such a thing.
Merriam-Webster describes it as:
a place (as on a ...
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Are relationships allowed between students and faculty?
What sorts of restrictions do universities place on romantic or sexual relationships between faculty and graduate students, and what are the underlying issues that motivate these restrictions?
For ...
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Are there universities that consider it academic misconduct for students to publish material created by faculty?
Please read the bold text before answering.
A colleague has shown me that one of his students has posted exam questions with answers , and prior assignments with answers to a commercial web site ...
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Do journals in general have any kind of policy regarding papers submitted by someone without a research affiliation?
Assuming that there are no ethical or legal concerns involved, in general, how would academic journals handle research submitted from the general public (e.g., if a carpenter were to perform a study ...
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How to deal with cheating when university policy is ineffective?
I am co-teaching a relatively large class with two other colleagues in a big university. Each semester, most students are amazing, trustworthy, and well-behaved and it is a pleasure to work with my ...
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Why not offer credit by exam to students who have failed a course?
Summary: Students who have never taken a particular course often can get "credit by exam". However, it's extremely common for credit by exam to be disallowed to students who have previously ...
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Is there deliberate gender preferential treatment in hiring or admission in STEM fields?
By "gender preferential treatment" I mean: Person A is selected ahead of Person B partly because of gender. In other words, Person B would have been selected ahead of Person A had gender not been ...
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How should a university deal with outsourced essay writing?
My campus is full of flyers, typically attached to lightposts and so, advertising to write essays for money. There's plenty of such services offered on the internet as well. Presumably, many ...
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Is listing annexed territory listed in author details a valid reason to decline to review?
I recently accepted a paper review based on an abstract.
On seeing the paper, at least one of the authors has listed their address as being within an unrecognized annexed territory, like this:
...
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What is the appropriate response to students who peek at the exam questions before the exam starts?
I have been an invigilator for several exams for large classes. I am not formally affiliated with the classes.
One thing I routinely notice is that, despite warnings, there will always be some ...
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Why should (or should not) a university have a policy of not hiring its own PhDs?
My university (in France) is having a debate about the relevance of taking rules for preventing too many of its PhDs to be recruited here, or asking them to have some postdoc outside the region before....
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Am I allowed to show properly redacted exams to a colleague to determine if cheating occurred?
On an exam I recently administered, I discovered that several students had turned in essentially the same solutions for multiple questions. Before launching an academic dishonesty investigation, ...
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Is it ethical for students to be required to consent to their final course projects being publicly shared?
In a course, students were required to sign a consent form to share their final course project. There were two options that they could choose from: either anonymous sharing or sharing with attribution/...
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Data used for analysis is not free. What should I do as a reviewer?
I'm doing a review of a paper (very well written, I think) for a journal with a fairly good reputation.
This is my first review, and I have a question regarding data availability which is, according ...
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Research on practices in addressing faculty bullying/harassment in academia
Recently, the chair of the faculty senate at my institution began an effort to systematically address issues of faculty bullying/harassment. In particular (but not exclusively), we are worried about ...
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Is it common and a good idea to give PhD candidates access to examiners’ assessments prior to their defense?
At my university (in Germany), a discussion is going on for some months. The issue is that some (professors and PhD students) want to establish a policy that, prior to the oral defense of their PhD ...
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Can a professor tell you that you can’t use your phone before or after their class?
So, I have this one professor who refuses to let anyone use their phone. I understand this during class hours but now he’s saying he will give a demerit to anyone using their phone even if it’s before ...
user119555
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Are politicians attempting to destroy tenure?
Apparently, Iowa's politicians intend to enrich the tenure experience by annual gladiatorial games at state schools, regardless of tenure:
those being evaluated below some threshold shall be ...
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A female professor was found responsible for sexual harassment – what can happen to the signatories of a letter in support of her?
The New York Times article reported a female professor at New York University was found to be responsible for sexual harassment of a male student.
There's a letter of support for this professor, sent ...
user93132
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Is it fair to punish absent students with a one-question exam?
I recently came across a post (that I won't disclose because it contains the professor's last name):
Attendance in this course was regularly low, so the professor used a one-question exam to punish ...
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Why do some universities not allow dissertations to be publicly available?
After reading a comment (now deleted) saying
My university's policies does not allow me to share my thesis PDF file completely.
I was wondering why some universities do not allow dissertations to ...
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All out of PhD extensions - what now?
I've received several one-year extensions on my graduation deadline, granted by the PhD progress committee. I've used them all up and am running into the hard deadlines set by the university. I ...
anon
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How to deal with dramatic drop in grade due to strict attendance policy [closed]
I'm currently taking a required class where attendance is counted at 15% of the grade. The policy is that if a student misses more than 2 lectures, they lose all 15% of those points. The class ...
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Why do some universities require use of approved suppliers?
Some universities in the UK require that all purchases from budget available to researchers happen through one or more authorized suppliers. They tend to be strict in this regard, even though some ...
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Attending university-sponsored club events as a faculty member?
I'm a new (and hence young) faculty member, in a city where I don't really know anyone. I also really enjoy swing dancing.
The university has a swing dance club. I don't think there really is an ...
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What are the reasons for journals to have a policy against publishing material available as a preprint?
As it can be appreciated from this list of journals with varying preprint policies, certain journals consider a preprint to be "prior publication". In other fields like Chemistry, there is a strong ...
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Variation in drop dates, and effect on student outcomes
(This question may be specific to US university systems. Also, sorry it is long.)
US universities usually have some provision for students to drop a course. Within the first N weeks of the term, if ...
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Is it unethical of me and can I get in trouble if a professor passes me based on an oral exam without attending class?
I have been experiencing anxiety based on some recent events. During my last semester of college I enrolled in a language course in a language in which I was already fluent. I did this to enable ...
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Grounds for complaint? Professor skipping class, inaccurate grading criteria
I am taking a graduate-level summer course and have observed several problems. I would like outside opinion on whether these observations are valid grounds for an official complaint, or whether I am ...
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College policy change after grant awarded
What recourse is there to a faculty member if the university changes its policy after a grant has been awarded?
I am a tenured professor and recently won a prestigious research grant. For years, my ...
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How can US faculty verify medical absences?
I recently received a memo stating that I am not allowed to ask for doctor's notes when students are absent from class, as this is allegedly a violation of privacy rights.
If this is the case, then ...
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Destructive bureaucracy and how to oppose it
In my country researchers are overburdened with paperwork and are struggling with increasingly overwhelming bureaucracy while being underpaid. This all leaves them not much time for actual research ...
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Grant "pre-approval" issue
Background:
I work in a public university as a staff member, and also a part-time lecturer, allowed to teach only 1 class (per Union).
Last year, I applied and received multiple grants/awards for my ...
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Assignment extensions for no apparent reasons (USA)
I recently started teaching activities in an American institution.
I have had a couple of students asking for extensions for problem sets / project deadlines for medical or family reasons, which is ...
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Last Course needed to graduate suddenly not being offered [closed]
I’m a master's student with soon to be 32 credit hours of the 36 needed to graduate.
My university is suddenly not offering one of the last two courses I need to graduate. It was supposed to offered ...
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Missing final exam due to exhaustion?
A student is asking for an alternative exam because he was "completely exhausted" due to overwork the last month or so of the semester, including the exam day.
He provided a doctor's notice ...
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Where do we draw the line between suspicion, and evidence, of cheating on an exam?
Where do we draw the line between suspicion and evidence of cheating on an exam?
For example, on an online timed essay exam, in a student's essay, 99% of the sentences are identical to sentences found ...
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Designing a credit-by-examination exam
I have been tasked with writing an exam for a student who wishes to receive credit-by-examination for an upper-level course in my department.1 While the department head suggested just using the final ...
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Why do some universities refuse to issue duplicate diplomas?
Many universities have a policy of not issuing a duplicate diploma for a degree, unless your original copy is incorrect, damaged, or lost.
One example:
University Policy forbids the issuance of ...
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What is the best policy to deal with students using their cellphones inside the class?
Is it OK to prevent students from using their cellphones during the lecture by stating that in the syllabus?
and how to deal with students who insist on using their cellphones during the lecture?
(...
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Why does Switzerland prevent foreign students from studying medicine?
I have been browsing for information on language requirements for universities in Switzerland, and on a page studyineurope.eu I accidentally read a quite interesting note about studying medicine in ...
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Is staring into the cover sheet of the exam paper and looking at the second page considered cheating?
Whenever I receive an exam paper, I usually stare at the cover page. I use the word "stare" instead of just "see" because the cover page is translucent and I could faintly see the page behind if my ...
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Are there examples of journals with an explicit policy on GPT-3 and equivalent language models?
In the question Is it OK to use GPT-3+ to rewrite your own paper to have better English? @gerrit mentions that:
Check the rules of the journal. Chances are they allow automated spelling, grammar, and ...
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Journals that require IRB approval as a matter of policy [closed]
In a number of questions raised here, it has been implied / asserted that research involving human subjects which has not received IRB approval cannot be published. In my own area of research (which ...
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How does your institution credit a department's support of, and participation in, interdisciplinary programs?
In these lean economic times, traditional majors are in danger of being cut if they cannot keep up their numbers (at least in many small liberal arts colleges). Simultaneously, interdisciplinary ...
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Are there tools to implement an institutional open access policy?
Many universities have adopted open access policies, giving their employees an incentive to make their scholarly articles freely available online.
To enforce this policy, universities should ideally ...
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