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mikeisme77 
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Subject area: Social Sciences
Department: Sociology
Pursuing degree: Doctoral
School start date: 08/2006
Expected/Completed graduation date: 05/2011
Stage of research: Comprehensives & Qualifiers
Research topics/interests: I'm co-majoring in Sociology and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). HCI is actually my primary major, Sociology is my second major. My research interests are pretty diverse, as is my academic background. I did my undergraduate in computer science and English (creative writing), and my Masters was in Human-Computer Interaction. I'm part engineer, part humanist, and part social scientist (the last one I only recently added as an official academic pursuit, but it's been an area of interest for many years). My first research experience was in 2004 as an undergraduate researcher for a summer where I ended up with two conference presentations on implementing and evaluating gesture driven icons within a pen-based computing system. I have had a number of co-authors over the years on a lot of tangentially related interests, such as a book chapter on modifying computer games (co-authored with an English literature professor). My current research is primarily focused on exploring collaboration techniques on computer systems, particularly co-located collaboration within multitouch environments. A big part of this research is finding ways to manipulate the computer interface in order to promote different group behaviors (such as increasing social affinity). Through student leadership, I have also been exposed to a decent amount of the "inner workings" of the university system primarily through my role as student government vice president of academic affairs (where I was a voting member of the committee on academic policy and planning that made curriculum decisions, assigned faculty hiring slots to the departments, reviewed departmental performance, etc.) as well as serving as the graduate student member of the HCI program supervisory committee. The wide interests I have and the leadership roles I have taken as an undergraduate and graduate student have exposed me to many of the differences (and similarities) between different academic fields from both an administrative side and researching/publication side.
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I'm not sure which is preferred, but I use my University address because I receive mail faster there than my apartment address (that I rarely check) and my "permanent" address is a few hundred miles away. I haven't found any issues with it for either the academic positions I've applied for or the industry-based positions.
Does anyone know of good software, a website, or some other means of doing group work on projects?
You might try DropBox for file sharing.
Read an article or book by the person and think of questions you have about the research, send them an e-mail telling them that you enjoyed their work on [whatever] and that you have a few questions about the research. The more recent the work, the better. If you have ideas that you think you could contribute, then share them. Or ask if they'd be willing to chat via phone or Skype some time about the topic (it may or may not work). Draw parallels with your work (where appropriate) to hint at the idea of possible collaboration. It might be a slow build from there, but it's at least a start. Generally academics enjoy discussing their research.
Depending upon the field, books (and book chapters) are either the highest form of scholarship or do not count at all. The logic for them not counting at all is typically that books and book chapters are not peer reviewed, whereas academic journal articles are peer reviewed (and the 'quality' of the journal can easily be determined through impact factors and general reputation in the discipline). Part of this also depends upon the speed of new knowledge production (as teamandy alluded to). That said... if the article is good enough for a mid or low tier journal but not quite strong enough for a top tier journal, then submitting it as a book chapter may be the best option (especially if this is your first book chapter). If it's strong enough for a top tier journal in your field or area of specialization then you may want to consider that route (again, after discussing with your advisor--since in Biology, I'd assume s/he would be a coauthor anyway).
How often do you meet with your committee members?
As one of my advisors told me (paraphrased): Your dissertation is your work, your committee needs to understand that. If they aren't on board, then toss them overboard.
He included himself in the people I can axe if I felt they were in my way (I haven't axed anybody though, my committee is generally cohesive and onboard). My first year of the PhD I didn't meet with the full committee at all since I was still in the process of evaluating and recruiting members. This is my second year of the PhD and I held a pre-prelim meeting with them to make sure they were all generally onboard with my plan and all of them got along well enough (some very different personalities and most of them didn't know each other, but it all worked out), then this semester I'll meet with the full committee to defend my oral prelim and then there should be just 1-2 more meetings beyond that (one of which will be my defense).
I meet with individual members more frequently. My major professor I have bi-weekly meetings with (although I see him more often than that), my co-major professor I meet with about once every other month (although I'm doing a side project with him this summer, so I'll see him more often), one committee member is my teaching mentor so I meet with him every other week, and then I have two committee members I rarely see and are generally difficult to get ahold of but whom I know are onboard and have given me assistance (one was Co-PI on a grant and was helpful in those meetings, and the other is providing me with assistance on administering MBTI survey since he's paid for the certification and has the surveys and scoring sheets). That said, most people tend to have 2-3 token members with 1-3 members providing assistance in the theoretical framework, methods, and/or general direction.
Are grades still important for PhD students?
I know this question is fairly well answered, but I wanted to add a note that you should be cautious about this whole "competing" with fellow students. Your fellow students are your future network as well as possible current and future collaborators. If you're in a class with a faculty member that you want to work with or who you know could be helpful then strive to do things to show them you are on the ball, but don't turn it into a competition with your fellow students--you may win the battle but you may lose a valuable connection (competition may breed hostility). Also, an important lesson to learn in grad school is that while you may have been the "overall" best in high school and/or undergrad, there are going to be people better than you at one thing or another in grad school. It's easier to accept that than stress over it.
And to return to the topic, publishing > grades, the sooner you learn that the better you'll do.
Does anyone know how to develop an effective theoretical framework in research proposal?
Search the topic and read some papers on it, pay special attention to the references. Look up the people they reference on the topic and read those papers and look at the references. Eventually you'll be able to map out the important people in the area and the key ideas they brought to the topic. With that you should easily be able to create a theoretical framework.
Any suggestions for books on structural equation modeling or hierarchical linear modeling?
The seminal text on MLM/HLM is Raudenbush and Bryk 2001. HLM/MLM are briefly covered in _Using Multivariate Statistics_ by Tabchnick and Fidell (as is factor analysis--which is related to SEM). I'm taking a class that focuses exclusively on SEM next semester, but I don't have the book yet so I don't know if it's worth recommending.
If you meant writing the paper itself, then depends. The general rule of thumb though is that there are perfect dissertations and there are finished dissertations. You want a finished dissertation and at some point you need to tell your committee that it is your dissertation and you do not feel their changes are correct for your research--you should know your research better than any single committee member (if you don't then you aren't done).
How long is this supposed to take?
Masters 2 years (3 years if you slack). PhD another 2-6 years on top of that (sciences generally take less time than humanities). Typically a PhD takes 5 years after the bachelors degree (in the sciences) although it is relatively common for people to take as long as 7 years. Humanity students tend to average out around 9 years to finish.
Welcome to the world of academic politics. Generally, switching advisors is a task that needs to be handled delicately. Occasionally you'll find a faculty member who understands that students need an advisor/mentor that better matches the interests of the student. I'm wondering though (depending upon how you went about asking your questions) if you weren't labeled as a high maintenance student.
One of my friends, after passing her quals at an elite private university where she was studying biology, decided that her advisor was not a good fit for her (the fact that her advisor told her that she should have failed the quals added to a long list of complaints she had) so she left the lab and had trouble finding another faculty to support her. She did find one faculty member who understood the decision (and did explain the politics involved) and there were two faculty she could have switched to (one was in a different area of biology--meaning she would have had to take quals again). Ultimately, she decided to take a temporary leave of absence (she got a default Masters from passing quals) to explore other options.
As for what to do, find a faculty member in the program who you know will be honest and ask straight out what's up. The politics of each program/department/university vary and what triggers being blacklisted vary along with it. It's possible legal action may be a possible recourse, but then you run into the issue of further alienating people you need to depend upon for letters of recommendation. Generally it's the unfortunate reality that students have little recourse when things don't work out (one of my professors is fond of saying that universites are one of the last medieval systems left in existence--graduate students are essentially apprentices/serfs of their advisors). Like most of life, there's a game you need to play and (even if you don't know the rules) breaking the "rules" often have permanent conseuqences. I wish I could be more uplifting about it... Maybe somebody has a more positive view to share?
How many hours a week should a grad student devote to graduation requirements?
That's an ambiguous question and the answer is pretty much "it depends". Masters students don't need to produce original research (incremental research is perfectly acceptable) so the amount of time necessary for that isn't a big deal. You also have class requirements (that are part of graduation requirements).
The geeral rule of thumb though is 20 hours/week for classes (until you've finished them up), 20 hours/week for research, and 20 hours/week for whatever is paying you (ideally you have an RA that ties into your research and then you can kill two birds with one stone and prevent creating an unhappy professor--most professors expect more than 20 hours/week from their RAs).
Once classes are done then all your time that isn't required by family and other obligations should, of course, be going toward research and graduating so you can get out ASAP (while some people want to be in school forever, I recommend getting out as fast as possible--while still getting pubs as you go).
A formal letter is typically expected. I was given an example one by one of my co-authors (a full professor) that I edited for the particular journal we were submitting to (if you don't have a faculty co-author--just ask your major professor). No CV is required unless they specifically requested one and you should not submit materials that they do not specifically request.
This is politically a very, very bad idea. Depending upon the political situation in the department (and especially the position the faculty member in question holds within the department), changing advisors can be near impossible or otherwise leave a black mark on the student (the original advisor may be resentful and this would cause friction between them and the new advisor). Emberson provides solid advice that your friend should go through his/her other committee members to diffuse the situation.
It's very uncommon for the advisor to sabotage the dissertation though since one of the things that most promotion & tenure boards look at (primarily just for promotion from associate to full) is how many PhD students a faculty member has turned out and how successful those students have been. If your friend is an RA then it is admittedly not at all uncommon for faculty members to "delay" the graduation of a student in order to retain a trained student longer (that's why one thing a new student should ask before choosing an advisor is how long the students usually take to finish).
I suppose this all begs the question of how his/her advisor is trying to sabotage the dissertation... Is the advisor simply pointing out potential holes (e.g. making sure your friend has considered as many angles as possible and can properly defend his/her work)? Or is the advisor literally sabotaging the work (deleting important files, losing data your friend needs, etc.) Or is the advisor just constantly contradicting what s/he told your friend before? Or some other case.
If it's the first, then your friend just needs to read more and become more confident in his/her ability to defend the dissertation (there is nothing wrong with that--your friend will need to be able to handle all of that either at the defense or during the academic interviews, either way it's better to be prepared sooner). If it's the second case then that is a real problem and then the chair of the department should be notified (or the dean if the advisor is the chair). If the advisor simply keeps providing contradicting advise then your friend just needs to decide what s/he wants to do and take that course of action through hell and highwater (and be prepared to defend it).
For both my Masters and PhD, I started work researching and conducting studies immediately (I was funded by a research assistantship though). Even without an assistantship though, I think it's still best to hit the ground running. Your first study may not produce good results so you'll need to allow yourself time for a second round of data collection if needed. If it's a more theoretical paper then you'll have a huge stack of papers you'll need to read and find links between. It also helps to set goals for each semester to stay motivated and focused.
Read as much as you can, front load courses as much as possible, and find conferences and journals that you can target research submissions to. Also, as much as you can try to create a plan for your current semester along with a wider (work-in-progress) plan plotting our your course from where you are now to your graduation (when will you do your prelim, when will you have work ready for conference X, journal Y? Put all of of those things on there).
By front loading courses you can ensure that when you dive into research later that you have fewer distractions. By having a plan, with goals, you will help ensure that you stay motivated and don't fall into the usual graduate student "black hole" where motivation leaves you--but be aware that some of the goals you set early on may end up not being realistic as sometimes research may take longer than originally planned.
Calendars and To-Do Lists: Electronic or good old-fashioned paper?
Not sure if you're all aware but Google (a few months ago) licensed Microsoft's Exchange technology and using that smart phones (BlackBerries, iPhones, Windows Mobile, etc.) should be able to do two-way synchronization with Google Calendar without the need for a third-party solution. This has worked fantastically on the iPhone. Information on setting up your device to sync with Google Calendar can be found here: http://www.google.com/support/calendar/bin/topic.py?topic=15305
Calendars and To-Do Lists: Electronic or good old-fashioned paper?
Number 1 advantage to using an electronic calendar (at least an online based one): easy to share it. Easy sharing means easy for students in a class you teach/TA to know when your office hours are. It also means it's easy for you to communicate your availablity to your adviser, lab mates, classmates, etc. It works even better if you evangelize it so that the people you work with also have an online calendar to make scheduling easier on everybody (my entire lab shares our calendars with one another so we can plan lab meetings and can invite one another to a calendar event--which is very handy). I even created a separate Google Calendar for a class I taught this summer so everybody could know when the deadlines were--this also allowed me to embed the schedule in the course web site.
Also, you may have missed this but Google Calendar now has a ToDo list feature, which is accessible through GMail and smart phones as well (that way there's no need for a separate application unless it has additional features you like).
I checked it out after your post, which (incidentally) is written more like an ad then a question or feedback (had never heard of it before). It maybe has potential, but right now I find it kind of annoying to use (for instance to do a job search you are required to enter the title of the position you are looking for--but my guess would be 80% of the time you know the type of work you want to do but because companies often give similar positions different titles you probably don't know the title). The profile process was also not the best either.
Generally, I like the idea (bit nicer then following several listservs) but currently the idea seems poorly executed with indegree. If somebody is looking for a good listserv, that wrk4us that's on the right-hand side (under databases) is interesting to follow if you have an nterest in work outside of academia (but I've only been following it for about a week and a half).
I agree with Kalyn about making sure you get some way to organize your literature (and your notes on what you've read). Mbapat makes a great suggestion about just setting aside time to work on it. I would also add that I often find if I'm working on a big writing project that I'm incapable of focusing in my "usual" work place or home so I do a change in venue (I recommend a coffee shop or a library) and then be consistent with that location for writing--that way the location ends up putting you in the "frame of mind" to write. My preference, personally, is coffee shops on such projects simply because eating, drinking, and/or chewing gum seem to be effective in helping me concentrate (but you may have a different strategy that helps you concentrate--some people listen to music, but that distracts me).
You may also want to consider picking up a copy of Writing Successful Science Proposals by Andrew J. Friedland and Carol L. Folt. It's a quick read and should give you some good tips to make sure you don't miss anything critical.
EndNote definitely seems to be the easiest to insert into papers you're writing, at least if you use Microsoft Word. If you use LaTex then BibDesk works fairly well. For organizing papers, on the Mac I use Papers (http://mekentosj.com/papers/).
The link attached to this has a list of resources on writing, none specifically on productivity though, but some are witty (like how NOT to write a research paper). You may want to check out _Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day: A Guide to Starting, Revising, and Finishing Your Doctoral Thesis_ by Joan Boaker (only ~$11.50 on Amazon) as that book lays out a method very familiar to creative writers and applies it to the work of writing research. Hope that helps at least a little. Good luck!
Is taking too long on ph.d. dissertation writing, will it hinder the future job hunting?
Unless you are publishing more, then generally yes. Having sat on some hiring committees, they do look at the amount of time you took to complete your degree and the number of publications you wrote during that time. It might not matter as much for a more teaching-centric college where there it is about how well you teach (obviously) and there the extra time might not be as frowned upon (none of the time-based discussions came up when I was on similar committees at a small liberal arts college, for example).
If you want a free solution you might try Mendeley (it stores the references online--for easy sharing) and can keep your PDFs organized on your desktop (cross-platform). EndNote (for Mac and Windows) is probably the most popular option--primarily because it does the best at handling citations when writing the paper. BibDesk is a decently popular free alternative to EndNote but with a higher learning curve and less compatibility with Word. I, personally, have found Papers (Mac-only) to be the best for my purposes--I mostly use it to keep track of what to read, find new papers (built in search that will automatically download papers and add the citation information to your library), keep notes (you can read in full screen mode and have a semi-transparent note pad up or add notes while reading it outside of full-screen or after you've read the paper). It marks papers you've read as well as papers you've printed (sometimes if I read the printed version--usually just longer papers--I will scan my highlighted/commented copy and replace the original, unmarked copy). Papers, however, is not as good when it comes to integration for citing in papers you are writing. I know a few other systems if you want to hear about them, but I've found that the system you use is mostly based on your personal working habits/needs (there's no single solution that does everything you want, so you always have to trade off some features for another or some features for a cheaper price). Your solution of all of the different tools probably works well for you, but it would bother me as I don't like having to skim through all sorts of locations for one task (but that's because of my own working practices--paper organization is also one of the few tasks that I've found I prefer a local based solution as opposed to a web solution--writing academic papers is the other one where I still prefer it to be a native application).
Getting your PhD with the same advisor as your Masters is generally the norm. It's getting the BS, MS, & PhD all at the same place you want to avoid (unless it's an Ivy or equivalent). So it more comes down to your personal preference.
Can you please be more specific? Are you looking for a style guide (e.g. APA for psychology) or what do you mean? Most psychology academic writing uses the APA style guide (most psychology majors buy the style guide for ~$20 in book form although there are some limited online resources, they are incomplete).
To get things started, I'll answer my own question. I always carry business cards. I create them myself (I have my own, personal logo). I create them myself (usually I have one batch professionally printed on the cheap and some I print on my own--those usually have slight style tweaks) because it is much cheaper to do so, my name goes first (not my university), I get to use my own personal logo, and it helps me stand out from the crowd. The big con is that by doing this, I don't sell the university as much/as well. However, I see the networking I do at a conference me growing my own personal network and the benefit the university gets out of it is that I can (and have) used my personal network to help out other students and recruit guest lecturers to enrich the learning experience of students (and with both of these, it helps gain the university additional connections).
I agree and disagree with tnagai. Your current question is too broad, as stated, to be answerable within the scope of a PhD (but it's good to keep in mind for a higher level question to carry beyond your PhD). However, tnagai, offered excellent questions and advice for focusing your research which should, as a side effect, lead to a narrowed down question that is answerable within the scope of your PhD. I should note that if you are only seeking a Masters (with no plans for a PhD) then you may want to pair the project down even further as two years of work is usually not long enough to provide anything broad reaching (e.g. instead of answering the question for a specific minority in a specific field you may need to narrow it even further by looking only at a certain area of the country or a certain company).
My advice is talk to your major professor and your committee and find out what their expectations are for your thesis. Ultimately, they're the ones who decide what to accept.
I completely agree that we should be able to make it faster. With my own research, I'm using computers that log a lot of the data (but the current version couldn't differentiate between participants--one of my collaborators is programming in that ability) and that should help. I was also debating writing/have somebody else write some code to parse the video for behavioral cues so they can at least be flagged for my review. I currently manually tag each 5-second chunk of video. I also think for those interested in studying "society in a sandbox" that virtual worlds would make a great experimental platform. Anyway, I hope it doesn't take me 9 months, I was hoping to get the second study running in the Fall. Good to know about the average time though.
How can online career networking programs such as LinkedIn prove useful in landing a job?
When it's time to look for a job, you go through your list of LinkedIn contacts, see what companies people are at, and if you've seen openings at their company that you're interested in then ping them to let them know you're interested and ask if they can refer you to the position through the internal referral system (most companies have some type of internal referral system--particularly engineering companies--where the employee making the referral actually gets a cash bonus if their referral is hired). You may also use it in the case where no listing is currently open in a company of interest but you have a friend/former colleague at that company and you can ping them to find out if there are any unlisted openings (companies don't always make all of their job openings public and you need an inside contact to find out about such openings and refer you to them).
It's an "unofficial contract" and as such they are perfectly in line to require additional changes when you actually do your formal defense (particularly if you don't have a written record of the suggested changes and proof you made them from the initial meeting). The final defense is, partially, politics--as long as you've stayed in touch with your committee the whole time and made the changes they wanted throughout the process (and made sure not to step on any toes) then it's (usually, although not always) a rubber stamp (although you may still need to make copy edit changes to your final document--clear up confusing statements and that sort of thing). There is some degree of variance about the process depending upon your program, institution, and the individual personalities of your committee (some members might not even read your dissertation, some will pick it apart with a fine tooth comb, etc.) If one member of your committee, who isn't your committee chair, is causing issues then you have to deal with them (or replace them--if it isn't too late). It may also help to have your major professor talk to that committee member--this is the other place that politics come into play (alway, ALWAYS make sure that politics between your committee members are good, remove anybody that you know constantly locks horns with your committee chair since your chair often serves as the last line of defense in getting the other members to sign off).
Sorry about this not being a question, but I thought it would be of interest to the community. One of my friends that used it had her major professor rave about how great it was (I just thought it was convenient when I threw it together), so I thought I'd distribute it more widely in case others find it useful. No need to give me credit when giving it to your faculty members, but please do give me credit when sharing with other students. More importantly, please contribute back any suggestions on improving the document form.
Having been a voting member of a hiring committee (at a research university), the weight of the university name does play *some* role, but what's more important is the number of publications (in high quality/highly respected journals--and also whether you're first author; although a new graduate isn't expected to have a huge number of these publications--taking a post-doc can usually help you fill in more publications after you finish) and how well you match the departmental needs/desires in terms of what you're researching is significantly more important. Going to a research university definitely helps put the fire under you to publish more, although a lot of that depends on the faculty member you are working with. The big thing to look at is are they doing research you're interested in at the university and are there faculty members you would like to work with. The focus in your choice should be where you will best be able to work on what you want to do based on the expertise of the faculty/department and your own personal research interests (not all graduate students have an area of research interest and flop around for the first year or two finding one, but I always recommend finding at least an area within your field you have an interest in).
Any idea where I can find published research regarding the causes of teen pregnancy in the U.S.
So I apologize for this answer, but I couldn't resist... The cause of teenage pregnancy is sex, clearly. I think you may be better off looking for articles on reasons for teenage sexual activity. Although, you may be looking at something along the lines of unprotected sex vs. improper use of contraceptives. I had recently seen an article researching improper use of contraceptives (and reasons for that), but it was a non-academic article (although based on academic research). So I guess my primary suggestion in looking for it is be more specific when searching the paper database of your choice (most of the research you'll want on this is likely within the last 20 years so most of it should be digitized).
I know University of Illinois - Urbana-Champagne is leading a summer institute on parallel computing. I don't remember/have a link to that session, but I've included a link to UIUC's parallel computing lab.
Students can use the new WolframAlpha search engine to solve complex mathematical equations. If you're teaching a math course for undergrads, would you encourage them to use it? Here's an article from The Chronicle discussing the topic: http://chronicle.com/free/2009/06/19910n.htm
I wouldn't allow them to use it on a test in courses where they are first being introduced to concepts where it would be particularly useful, but I would let them know about it and encourage them to use it to check their answers. They need to have the conceptual understanding of the math though in order to use it well (in my opinion).
What is the most important research activity I can do immediately after I get my degree?
Create a seven year research plan, if you don't have one already, the focus of it should be on what you think will be publishable during that time and less so on what you are most interested in (although you should have an interest in what you're working on, otherwise you'll burn out). After you have tenure than you can work on the longer research problems that might not have immediate publications coming out of them.
What are the best open access journals for the business disciplines?
If you're looking for one that will be recognized by potential hiring committees or promotion boards as a quality publication venue than you are probably out of luck, unfortunately. The academic publication game is about perceived quality of the publication venue more often than it is about quality of the papers you've written (sometimes you'll find departments that do bother to read the papers and screen on quality of the research conducted, but more often than not they just look to see how many 'top tier' publications you have and, at the moment, none of the open access journals really stack up against the top tier old/current regime journals). Since you're in MIS though, you may publish some things through ACM and most of those allow the author to maintain the copyright (so you're free to republish them on your web site or Arxiv.org).
How much should I expect / ask my adviser to be involved in my job-search process?
You should expect (and your adviser should offer) advice, at the very least, as kostiuk has said. If they aren't willing to do that then it may just be a comfort level thing with them or they may not be confident in your work and may not want to go out on a limb for you (hopefully not that second one). But that's part of why you have other committee members as well--not just to help guide your research but also to leverage their networks and advice so you can secure a position after you graduate. It is not at all uncommon for faculty members to use their networks of colleagues, former students, friends, etc. to help their students find a job in academia or industry (this is why one of the questions prospective graduate students are told to ask is where, e.g. R1 schools, small schools, industry; the students of their potential adviser end up--that reveals where their connections are located as well as what that adviser is good at training students to go off and do). I know in my own choice of adviser and committee members part of my criteria for selection was the size and area of their networks (never, ever underestimate the powers of networking and politics in academia...) This, by the way, is part of why you should go out of your way to impress and stay in touch with your committee members throughout your whole degree process (not just the defense). And, also, don't forget to build your own network of fellow grad students, people at conferences, etc. since you never know when they may be useful to you (or your own students) in the future.
You just give the full citation and (generally) bold your name so it is easy for people to know if you were first, second, third, ... author. You should do that for all papers on your CV though otherwise it looks weird if you are only listing the author names for one or two papers. Congratulations on your article :)
How can I get teaching experience when my department only has TA's function as graders?
The "special course" option (combined with PFF) is your best bet. Nothing says experience like jumping head first into it, and PFF will help give you a grounding so you aren't going in blind. I am teaching such a course this summer (although not doing PFF until the Fall--I did go in blind, but I am working in conjunction with my major professor, so not completely blind). It's great experience doing everything from scratch but be warned that it is far from easy...
Is it appropriate to use, or borrow from, another professor's syllabus?
Absolutely, but as others state--get permission from the instructor/inform them, don't copy things exactly (always personalize--their style is almost assuredly different than your own), and always give credit where credit is due. When creating a brand new course that I'm teaching this summer I pulled from a wide range of syllabi from several campuses but mostly to make sure I was hitting the most important topics (one of the texts I'm using I was already aware was fairly standard, another is only about a year old so wasn't really on any syllabi, and the last one is becoming an emerging standard). Plus, this way I can say it's not just me it's all of these other people (so they know it has to be important, right?)
I am relatively new to teaching online courses (one semester TAing and this summer serving as the main lecturer). I have found that designing the course to provide means for the students to interact not just with you but with other students is generally very appreciated by the off-campus students as it gives them a greater feeling of connection. Group projects are one way (tools they can use to manage this are things like Google Sites for organization/basic project management, DimDim.com for discussions and white boarding as a group, etc.) If you have a way for them to discuss with you via text or voice chat while you're teaching even better--often they can provide insight into how the material you're teaching has real world applications (if you have a mixed on-campus and off-campus class this is mutually beneficial to all involved, usually). Requiring blog posts (and comments on the blog posts--and reading and commenting on the blog posts yourself) is another means of helping build that community of students.
Depends on the class and how much the professor cares about the online class (is it just for them to make extra money or do they genuinely care about the students?) In an ideal world they aren't doing it just for the money but the world is not ideal. I am teaching an online course this summer and I designed it to try to involve online students as much as possible with both the on-campus students and myself--I am a huge proponent that what you get out of graduate courses isn't the material but the connections and the exchange of ideas with other intelligent people. So I have a way for students to participant live online (and set it in the evening--for those in the US across all coasts, so they are, usually able to sign on live). I also have a blog component as an additional place for students to voice their thoughts and for myself (and their peers) to provide feedback.
Usually from faculty, other students, or the major conferences/journals web sites for most fields. Somebody in Communications might have a better idea but generally if you know which conferences or journals (think about where the lit you're using for your lit review is coming from) are relevant to your research find their web sites and look at their call for papers. Also signing up for mailing lists from professional societies tend to also include announcements of calls for papers.
My advisor just left our program to teach at another school. What are my options?
Follow your adviser or find a new one. Depends if you're more interested in the program or in the work you were doing with your adviser. Either way this probably adds at least a year (or more) to the time it'll take you to graduate, unfortunately. Ideally, you can stay where you are and continue the work you were doing with another major professor but that tends to be rare.
If you have the funds, hire a transcriptionist. It'll save you time so you can go out and do more interviews and work on more research questions. However, there is the (significant) downside in that you won't know your data nearly as well if you had transcribed it yourself. It depends on how rapidly you want to turn the data into publishable reports.
