text:
Can I force my professor to give me a copy of his powerpoint presentation?
In a class, students asked the professor to give us a copy of his powerpoint presentations, but he refused and claimed this is personal property.
Students need the presentations to review the topics presented throughout the semester.
Is the course presentation personal property of the professor or part of the educational materials which must be delivered to the students?

Edit:  Related question, but from the perspective of the faculty member:
  Is it common to provide digital notes (slides or handwritten) for students?

I believe expectations of what material the professor provides may depend on the country/school.  What country is this?  And is there a text with the same material?

Generally, in the US if the PowerPoint is the professor's own making then they technically own the copyright to it. However it seems to me that you could make a case under the Fair-Use clause as long as the notes were not being distributed for more than studying (and not for sale). US law protects (to an extent) education uses as fair use, although I don't believe it requires the professor to necessarily hand over a copy.

Ask if you can start bringing a video camera to class. If denied, ask if an ordinary camera and a microphone are alright. If that's denied, ask if a wax cylinder with a needle attached to a membrane with a directed opening accompanied by a pinhole camera are okay. If unsuccessful, ask if you're allowed pencil and paper. If allowed the last option with no sign of enlightenment, leave and take another module—this one's a lost case.

@Anko There are plenty of valid, privacy related reasons why students aren't allowed to bring video cameras, take photos or record a lecture.

@Johanna: I was talking about security theatre to my information security class and described the air raid drill us old folks learned as children:  You get under your desk, put your head between your knees, and kiss you [posterior] good-bye.  Imagine me, on YouTube, wholly out of context, telling a class of students, "Kiss your ass good-bye."  Holy smoke!

@BobBrown Exactly. Or say there is a student in the class living under threat, and someone sees them in a Youtube video, or the professor has an abusive ex. Then you add that some students may be inclined to participate less in class if they know they are being recorded and you have one student making a huge impact on people's lives because they can't be bothered to take notes...

I edited the title to make it more accurate and direct. Rollbacks welcome. In the interest of full disclosure, I should note that I do not provide my students with copies of my PP for the reasons noted in my answer.

Related and possible duplicate of: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/27347/is-it-common-to-provide-digital-notes-slides-or-handwritten-for-students?rq=1 -- i edited the question to note this.

@Ramrod Fair use can protect making a copy, but can't force the professor to give you a copy, nor can it prevent the school from taking disciplinary action if you record a lecture against school rules.

@Johanna My comment was not an actual suggestion, but a thought experiment, intended to make the reader realise that the only essential difference between these devices targeted at the whiteboard and projector is how quickly they capture visual and auditory information. Is it in your students' best interests to be forced to use an extremely inefficient information-capturing tool? (Releasing the notes means they won't even need one.)

@Anko many people would argue (and some do in the answers) that yes, it is in the students' best interest to be forced to use an inefficient information-capturing tool. Or at least to be prohibited from using an efficient information-capturing tool.

@Anko "(Releasing the notes means they won't even need [another information capture tool].)" If everything in my lecture is on the slides, then why am I talking? For that matter, why don't we just say "read this book, the exam is in December"? They're still going to need to do something if I'm doing my job at all right.

@dmckee My point is that some of your lecture is on the slides. Why make it hard to get to that part when it could be made easy? For classes that provide slides beforehand, I print them out and take notes on them, which I find very helpful.

Maybe the professor had an experience similar to mine.  A faculty colleague bought a Chegg subscription to look behind their paywall and found, among other things, a complete set of the (old) slides for one of my classes.  It chaps my buns to see students suckered into paying Chegg for something I'm going to give them, with updates, as part of the class.

I think the key information capture tool that should be needed and used during a lecture is the student's brain. A good lecturer can help me understand things I would have had trouble understanding by just reading.

The fact that you ask how to force your prof says a lot about your attitude towards your education. Forcing applies to donkeys and obtuse people. Maybe you should ask yourself how you can convince your prof. Be aware he might try to convince you otherwise.

Am I correct in guessing you didn't attend the class? If so, for what reason?

@dmckee I had a teacher once who actually did that - they just handed us copies of some powerpoint slides and had us read them. Worst class I ever attended. (Plus, they were embezzling shop fees, but that is a different story. Public school is the worst.)

Rereading the question indicates that you want all (most?) of the presentations for the entire course term. I can't think of any good reason for this. If those materials are truly necessary, either the material is too advanced for the students or... well... I guess that's about all. Consider taking a less advanced course. The course lectures are surely not the sole source of the info.

Generally speaking, if the question is "can I force [person] to do [something]?" the answer is no.

Please take extended discussion to [chat].

@A.G. (and others): While that's a fair point, it's worth noting that the part about "forcing" the professor was edited in by someone else and wasn't originally in the question. So let's be nice to the OP who originally asked something much more benign.

You wrote:

Students need the presentations to review

Back when I was your age (of course I have no idea of your age but I am guessing you are a traditional undergraduate student), we had to take notes using these two antique tools called pen and paper.
I don't think even one of my professors gave me anything, other than pausing so I had time to write down the important points.
You have to take some responsibility for your education - don't just blame the professor for not handing you what you want.
There is teaching research showing that students who take notes retain much more information than those who do not. It could very well be that the professor is trying to take advantage of this knowledge to force you to learn more.
dmckee's answer is also great. The prof might be using this as leverage but in the end, you did not create the slides, they are not yours to demand. While many profs do freely give out their slides, it is actually unreasonable for you to demand them.

+1 for 'taking notes using these two antique tools called pen and paper' and many other great points in your answer.

If you're not fast enough with pen&paper, ask your professor if you'd be allowed to take pictures of the slides with your phone, or if you can bring your laptop and type along.

@Sumyrda Phones and laptops have their own disadvantages: http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/04/22/0956797614524581.abstract

Or ask your professor to slow down so that you can copy the text / equations or ask for clarification. That is part of the reason why the lectures are delivered live and not prerecorded.

We also had to keep our own notes, but then our professors presented the material using these two antique tools called chalk and blackboard. This kept their speed at a level we could match.

@ChrisC I agree that pen&paper is great and helps you internalize the concepts, but I do think I missed a lot of the interesting stuff in my first year at university because I had to concentrate so much on writing everything down that I usually lagged behind and missed all of the profs explanations that weren't on the board/slides. My best learning experiences were in classes were I had the backup of a script and could just take the notes that seemed important. Since I'm a writing-learner, I always prepared handwritten summaries, but I did it after the lecture and finally had time to listen.

@Davor If your teacher's pace is too brisk, you should mention it to him/her. In my experience, those students who are unable to take notes are unfamiliar with proper note-taking techniques. For example, some try to copy down every spoken word (which is just a silly way to try to take notes). Yes, some teachers do put paragraphs of text on their slides (and that is terrible) but still students should be able to copy down the key points and citations within 30 seconds. For reference, my typical slide is up for 10 minutes.

While note-taking is right in apparently popular opinion, the question at hand would be whether the professor's slides are "his" property. I'd dare to challenge that if the professor created the slides as part of his university activities. In such a case, wouldn't the slides be owned by that university, and by extension, possibly by the people for a (mainly) tax-funded university? He'd then have no rights to legally withhold them, except on behalf of the rightful owner. Also, note-taking helps remember, but listening helps understand. The former does slightly impede the latter, though.

I find this unconvincing. Do you have a reference for "There is teaching research showing that students who take notes retain much more information than those who do not"? Have such studies considered students who take notes on printed-out lecture slides? Even so, if "students should take responsibility for their own education", should the choice of whether to take notes not be with them?

The pace some professors have with these Powerpoint things, taking comprehensive notes is truly impossible. Textbooks it is, then.

@Anko I do not believe the research included the difference between taking notes on slide handouts vs taking notes on blank paper. Let me see what I can find. I agree, it is up to the students to take notes or not. They choose, and they live with the consequences of their choices. The educator remains free do what they believe will best promote learning. The educator's job is not simply to give the student whatever the student wants (that would turn a university into a diploma mill).

@Anko Here are some references for you (simply addressing the point that note-taking is positively correlated with higher test scores): Bretzing, B. H., Kulhavy, R. W. (1981). Notetaking and passage style.
Journal of Educational Psychology, 73, 242–250; Fisher, J. L., & Harris, M. B. (1973). Effect of note-taking and review on recall. Journal of Educational Psychology, 65, 321–325.Titsworth, B. S., & Kiewra, K., A. (2004). Spoken organizational lecture cues and student notetaking as facilitators of student learning. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 29, 447–461.

When I was an undergraduate, I found that the most effective technique by far was to listen in class, ask the professor for the slides, then take notes on the slides at home. The professor may have valid reasons, but asking for the slides to be made available is not unreasonable. It's a little hasty to assume that by asking (or even expecting) for them to be published, a student is not taking responsibility for his education; Perhaps he is just trying to take advantage of a strategy he has found optimal. That taking notes in class worked for you is irrelevant if a better option exists today.

My experience with the math and CS lectures I took was that I needed all the time available to keep up with the lecturer intellectually, just to understand all the formulas, the proofs, etc as the lecturer wrote them on the board. Note taking was impossible. Luckily, it was also all available on paper.

I'd dare to challenge that if the professor created the slides as part of his university activities. In such a case, wouldn't the slides be owned by that university, and by extension, possibly by the people for a (mainly) tax-funded university? @Archimedix At my university, course materials including slides are firmly the intellectual property of their authors, and not the university.  But even if the university held the copyright, they would not be required to distribute slides to students.  The copyright owner always gets to decide how, or whether, to distribute their work.

Back when Plato was your age, writing was expensive, so he relied on this antique tool known as memory. Or maybe he did not. But I fail to see how the fact that you had to make do with what you had relates to an intentional retention of useful content.

@Evpok It is a pedagogical decision with research to back it up. My point was don't blame your limitations.

@Patricia asks what happens if a student is not able to take notes and think at the same time.
If the student has a disability that prevents note taking (say for example, they are blind or they broke their arm), then in the United States the university will normally provide a note taker (usually another student in the course). The student will of course have to petition the disability services office for this and provide documentation.
Otherwise, this professor is providing a valuable learning experience for you. Learning how to learn is just as - if not more- important in college as what you learn.
In life, there are many occasions when you will have to be able to take notes (using pencil and paper) and quickly respond:

Working with a client in a business who orally gives an explanation of their situation and wants an immediate bid/response.
Taking depositions as a lawyer and immediately needing to come up with additional questions.
Listening to testimony as a jury member and needing to come to a decision of innocence or guilt
Listening to a patient explain their medical history and then needing to come up with a diagnosis and treatment plan
Students complaining how life / your course is unfair and needing to come up with reasons why they need to suck it up.
etc. etc.

Life does not always give you its powerpoints.

+1 for "Life does not always give you its powerpoints."

Good points. And furthermore, PPP are terrible ways of conveying information as a standalone. I mostly use them as a visual reminder "oh, he showed that picture while he was talking about this and that".

Another plus for life not giving powerpoints (or in my case, LaTeX/Beamer slides), and the general uselessness of slides.  Though I admit I'm probably an outlier: I never mastered the art of note-taking, and got through BS & MS (with decent grades) without writing down much more than assignments.  I concentrated on trying to understand in class, rather than think later from poor notes.

I worked for a semester in college as a notetaker. Having to produce quality notes in each and every class for other people to use was a fantastic life lesson. It was singlehandedly the best "class" that I never took for a grade.

@RoboKaren Bless you. My wife had severe pain in her wrists for a while, and while the disability office did their best good note-takers pearls beyond price.

Oddly enough, I had a reasonably successful career without ever mastering simultaneous thinking and writing, to the point where I was able to retire at 52 to go be a PhD student. I picked a career for which problem solving was more important than lecture note taking. As a computer science PhD student I got A or A+ on every letter grade course, with the invaluable aid of a digital camera and permission from professors to photograph the blackboard during lectures.

@RoboKaren ..but it always gives you plenty of shit, and some occasional speeding fines. Damn life!

The choice to give them to you or not is the professors, not yours. If he won't, then you need to find another way to preserve a useful record what went on in class.
Mind you the only reason I see right away for withholding the slides involves trying to pressure students to appear in class. I have other way to do that, not the least of which is that a significant amount of material is not on the slides: it is only in my patter.

That is very, very bad for people like me who have trouble writing and thinking at the same time. Which do you think I should do: try to take down what you are saying, at the expense of not really hearing it, or listen and think, at the expense of not having any record?

@PatriciaShanahan You understand that many of us here have studied years ago, when we had to read the book for the course, take notes and teachers were writing on the blackboard instead of reading slides. Believe me, this interactive form of lecturing where you had a) to understand what the teacher said b) take short notes about it c) then look to the book for clarification instead of being half-asleep over watching the teacher recite the slides was much more effective.

I did my bachelor's degree from 1967 to 1970, which probably qualifies as "years ago". I did most of my letter-grade PhD coursework between 2002 and 2004. I got much better grades for the latter. Some of that is grade inflation, but I did understand the PhD material much better. I attribute a lot of the improvement to the intervening invention of the digital camera. I would have done better on my bachelor's degree if I could have listened and thought during lectures, instead of putting all my attention into writing as fast as I could.

@PatriciaShanahan Everyone faces the think or write dilemma. It's all over the pedagogy research. There is also scads of advice on how to help, and "give them the slides in advance" is only one of the usual suspects. I use "test them on the reading so that most of them will do it before class, then give them the slides after" approach. But posting the slides is part of my strategy to maximize the value of my classes. Other choices I make---backed up by the pedagogy literature---generate complaints every semester, and I'm not about to change them because they work.

"Other choices I make---backed up by the pedagogy literature---generate complaints every semester" - My experience exactly!

@dmckee I think the seriousness of the think or write dilemma does vary for different people. I know some people who are sure they learn more in lectures if they take notes, rather than concentrating completely on what the lecturer is saying and writing!

@Patricia Shanahan: I suppose different people learn in different ways, but I always find it much more effective to think rather than write in class.  And not to brag or anything, but I usually did wind up near the top of the class when the grades were handed out.

Other choices I make---backed up by the pedagogy literature---generate complaints every semester — Well, of course.  Learning is work.  Many (most?) students would rather not work if they don't have to, and other instructors have convinced them that they shouldn't have to.

@Alexandros How would you know it was "much more effective" while at the same time claiming it was years ago, indicating you have no experience with what I imagine you decrying as "newfangled" teaching methods?

@Lilienthal Because I taught many more classes since then, than the ones I have attended as a student. PPT presentations cause people to yawn and fall half-asleep in less than a half an hour in most of the cases. It also makes the teacher lazier, because he does not have to do much and has always the slides to fall back, instead of having to do proofs by hand on the blackboard.

@PatriciaShanahan, imho the point of making notes in class is not to produce a verbatim copy of everything said or shown, but to take down the important points, enough in order to enable you to repeat the material later on your own using a textbook. In my experience, deciding which are the important points and thinking about the material do not conflict, but actually support each other very well.

@A.Donda Unfortunately, mathematical proofs are very difficult to summarize unless you already understand them extremely well.

@Alexandros Then perhaps the subject matter you teach is ill-suited to presentations or you haven't found a way to leverage the advantages they offer. Since we're bringing personal experience into this, I found that I was much more attentive and engaged in a course where I had the slides open on my laptop and just had to add a quick note whenever I wanted to expand on something or add missing details. It seems Patricia has the same experience. That said, all this is completely and utterly besides the point of OP's question and I expect this will end up in chat before long.

I'll only add that I feel like this debate centers on ascribing student behaviour to what is essentially just one out of many tools and technologies available to a lecturer. The idea that students will be bored and the teacher lazy just because there's a light bulb projecting words on a wall seems to be awfully close to such legendarily misguided Luddisms as soul-stealing cameras or moral-corrupting television.

I really like earthling's answer, but like all the others it (rightfully) tells OP why she/he shouldn't try too hard to ask for the notes. To the question of whether one can force a professor to give copies of the slides it's pretty clear that the answer is: No, you can't.
The reasons are that there is most likely nothing in the school regulations or, even less so, the law, that can coerce a lecturer to give copies of presentations.
Deal with it.

+1. The question of whether or not to share PowerPoint slides would likely be regarded as a pedagogical decision for the professor to make. (As you can see from other answers, some people think it improves learning to not share them.) And universities generally give their professors a lot of autonomy in pedagogical decisions, and refrain from interfering unless things are clearly haywire. Hence the absence of such regulations.

There are several reasons why a student would want the slides, and several reasons why a professor might not want to make them available.
For example, I can add a Dilbert cartoon to my slides, and, so long as I'm only showing them in class, that can fall under the umbrella of Fair Use. Make those same slides publicly available, though, and I may have just committed a copyright violation.
If we want to give the benefit of the doubt to the students, we can assume they find these slides to be a convenient way to review major topics. If we take a more skeptical view, however, perhaps the students are trying to "shortcut" the educational process.
I've been surprised sometimes at the number of students who tell me, "Sorry I could not attend class yesterday, but I'll make sure I look at the slides," as though looking at the slides is almost as good as the real deal. (A lot of my slides contain visual prompts that remind me of topics I want to discuss, and little more. For example, if I want to discuss the Denver Airport fiasco, I might post a picture of an airplane on a tarmac. Good luck, absentee, on figuring out what that sleek 737 represents or means.)
One of my students once remarked, "Your slides are really good in class, but not so good when studying for exams." I smiled, and informed the class that my slides were intended for me to use as a presentation tool, in order to help me lecture more effectively – not as a study aid. I'd be put off if students demanded my slides as though they had some sort of right to them.
That said, I do understand there can be legitimate reasons to use slides when preparing for exams. Occasionally, I have built two sets of slides for each lecture: one "juiced up" version to use while lecturing, and another "pared down" version to give to the students; that can be a nice compromise. (Of course, it can take a lot of time to develop two sets of slides, so I don't always do this. In this business, everything is a tradeoff.)

In this case, the copyright status of the presentation files is irrelevant, as what you want is not the right to use a copy, but a copy itself.
Just because you attend concert doesn't mean you can demand that they give you a copy of the score, or require that they provide you with a recording of the performance, regardless of the copyright status of the work.
Similarly, it would be unreasonable for you to demand that the professor furnish you with a copy of presentation files.
This is a similar principle to that involved in selling free-as-in-freedom software or works that are under the public domain: even though anyone with a copy is allowed to distribute it, they are not required to do so, and can even charge others money for the service of furnishing a copy.

These comparisons are exactly to the point. Very good.

Somewhat a tangential answer to how to cope with this situation. Hope it'd help.
If you missed the chance of taking the notes in the first class, by all means try to explain to the professor and ask for at least an outline for this one lecture. After that, you'll need to use a new strategy.

At least practice writing down the main theme or title of the slide, so that you can go home and fill in the details.
Do the preparatory readings so that you can better put the slides into a mental framework, familiarize with the lingo, and ask relevant questions to clarify.
Practice to listen for "hint phrases." Lecturers come with different ways of speech, some are more "fluffy" and some are "denser." Nonetheless, they often have some catch phrases before enumerating main points or emphasizing key concepts.
Use systematic note taking system like the Cornell method or Mind mapping to quickly write down the ideas and their associations. Then you can rely on readings and research to fill in the details.
Compare notes with your peers. It may help to clarify what's missed.
Negotiate with the professor within reason. For instance, if he/she just flies through many tables and graphs from many journal articles, at least try to ask for a list of the references for each session. Do show the lecturer your notes and explain that it'd be very hard to copy the citations. (Although with author's last name, year, and the first three words in the title there is usually no problem.)

I especially like "Compare notes with your peers." What a great idea!

It is the student's own responsibility to take care that he has all the material he needs for review. Take notes and draw sketches, if he shows pictures. I am now almost half-way through my 4th semester of lecturing and I do not hand out any of my materials: no powerpoints, no lecture scripts. The only thing the students have, is a schematic overview, so to say the "table of contents" of my lectures.
The reason is simple: Taking notes by hand is the most efficient way to memorise something. If I would provide all the material, they would not pay attention anymore. In fact, a survey around here has shown that the average grades are higher in lectures where no material is provided.
//edit
And the other problem is: Facts and figures may change over time. If I hand out my material and it circulates among the students, then they suddenly get confused and use outdated material.

For some people taking notes by hand is the most efficient way to memorize something. For others, including myself, having to take notes is a serious obstacle to actually learning anything at all during the lecture. If you give out notes, those who are aided by taking their own notes can still do so.

Handing out notes would eventually lead to people not being involved in the lecture anymore. I'm taking it quite easy when it comes to presence (they're adults after all) but preparing for an exam is one's own responsibility - including the preparation or organisation of material. If I'd have a student with a serious issue in this, I'd help him of course, but so far I never saw that.

For some professors the reason for not giving out slides and lecture notes is even simpler: they do not want to bother themselves preparing decent materials for the lecture.

Yes, that's unfortunately even more common that it ought to be...

It has more to do with law. The slides are probably the intellectual property of the Prof, or maybe they are the IP of the Uni.
Yet another possibility, that they are under publishing, or they were soon published, and the contract between the publisher and the IP owner rules out any reproduction.
In any cases it is unlikely if you can do anything. But actually the whole thing isn't governed by the IP laws of your country, but by the local policies of your university. The problem is, that these are probably against you, too.
On my opinion, your have the best chances if you try to reach your goal on a more cooperative way.
I think, the goal of the prof is probably to motivate the students for an analytical reproduction of his lectures.
I also really don't like this - unfortunately, not uncommon - behavior. But the prof has his viewpoints, too. Most of the ppts are easily reproducible by free hand. On my opinion, a slide is the best if you can reproduce its content on your logic, while you hear the lecture.
His goal is probably not a bit-to-bit reproduction of the slides, but a real understanding what he teaches.
Maybe a little bit hilarious idea, but he may or may not allow to make photos from his slides during the class. But one is sure: you can ask him, if he allows it, in worst case he will reject.

@DavidRicherby I extended the answer. Now it starts with a literal answer at the beginning, and ends with a practical explanation/suggestions about the probable wider context. What about this version?

Much better -- thanks! I wouldn't be so sure that the slides are the IP of the university, though. Universities don't usually claim IP on academics' writings (as distinct from inventions), as far as I'm aware.

You could always explain to your professor, about the situation (ie. You needing it for review), telling him you might understand his reasons for not wanting to give it out. Also you could suggest that he give you key points in text books so you could make your own slides (you'd understand it better).


text:
Ethics of not referencing StackExchange in a publication?
So I'm feeling a bit guilty. I've been working on a publication proof (my first) of an interesting theorem. The issue is I've been using StackExchange (Mathematics) to answer some similar questions when I get stuck on much smaller parts of the proof.
So the question here is, is it generally ethical to put just my name on a paper, even if I may not have come up with the lemma's using only my ideas, or is there a good way to I should reference StackExchange in a publication?
On one hand, most of the stuff I received answers for was for a learning purpose, similar to  that of me asking a professor or teacher, not so much as a co-author. And although relevant to the publication, the answers I received could be very common in other proofs as well and were not directly related the lemmas themselves.
On the other hand, it was not necessarily my ideas that first assisted the lemma, but those of others through SE.
Take for example a question I asked earlier today. I wanted to see an alternate proof to an equation, so that I could use it as a new method of proving a lemma related, it as the original proof (Euler's Thereom) could not be generalized with such a method Proving $a^{(p-1)p^{k-1}} \equiv 1 \pmod {p^k}$ without Euler's Theorem. The proof I was looking for was simply done using the Binomial Theorem. Therefore the idea of using the Binomial Theorem in my proof will assist me in my own similar generalization. But even though I was just given the tool, the work will be done myself.

It would be extremely nice of you to go after the authors who answered you, indicate that they helped you, ask if they would share their real name, and then thank them in the paper.

I think this question could be a good fit for Academia SE. There has been some related questions you may find enlightening or helpful.

In my publishing experience, and from what I have seen elsewhere, I think the most appropriate thing to do in this scenario is to simply have an acknowledgment. This is standard for most professional publications.
For example, consider the article Counting Triangles to Sum Squares by Joe DeMaio that appeared in the College Mathematics Journal (a periodical of the MAA). Here's a snippet from the article:

As you can see, it would probably be appropriate for you to have an acknowledgment section at the end of your article that ran something like this:
Acknowledgment: Many thanks to members of the Math Stack Exchange community, anonymous and otherwise, for helpful comments and suggestions.

Depending on space constraints, it may also be appropriate to name the exact users involved, IMHO. Also, in such situations, once the paper is accepted for publication I think it is worth it to comment on the answers involved to point to the paper, if the paper may interest people who look at the answer.

@a3nm Right--it completely depends on just how much help you've received I think. I honestly would never cite an exact user unless that user had a legitimate name (how ridiculous would it sound to thank "moddedbear", for instance). It would also be appropriate, in some instances, to give thanks for specific help; that is, what a user(s) helped with in regards to a particular part of the article or whatever written composition is being put out. There are many ways to go, but I think the most important thing is that whatever kind of acknowledgment is given is given in its own little section.

source: Stack Exchange

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

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text:
How can I answer the question "what do you hope to achieve during your studies at University X?"
Currently I am writing a Statement of Purpose for a PhD application, and they asked me this question:

What you hope to achieve during your studies at the XX university?

How I can answer this question, I need some ideas.

Well, what do you hope to achieve during your PhD?

If you really have no idea what you hope to achieve, why are you applying?

How I can answer this question — Honestly and directly.

At this point, you can't really say what you will achieve or accomplish, exactly.  I mean, if you knew all that already, you kind of wouldn't need to go there to study, would you?
What I did was I described my fantasies, of what I wanted to study, which I hoped I would find there.  At the time, I was working as a COBOL programmer.  It was tedious.  Once in a while there was a fun logical challenge, but mostly I was pulling data from the student database at a community college, and writing tedious code to format the results in a nice report for a college administrator.
One fantasy was that I would write a program that would generate the tedious COBOL code.
That's not what I ended up doing once I was in the grad program.
But that was okay.
I don't remember what my other fantasy was, but I think it was something that I imagined as a result of programming a spline fit for a numerical methods class I took as an undergrad.  That was a really fun project and I wanted to do more of that kind of programming.
Just write about what sorts of things you'd like to learn more about when you are in a grad program.

How I can answer this question, I need some ideas.

You can answer the question. What do you hope to achieve? Why are you doing this? Why this university? What direction do you see yourself heading in?
Critically, if you do not at least have an inkling of what your answer to this question is already, it's time for some genuine self-reflection as to whether or not pursuing a PhD at this point is a good idea.

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text:
How can a distance education student get a copy of the lecture notes?
I am a distance education student at a Parisian university, and I am currently preparing for the exam in a research-level mathematics course.
While on-campus students have attended the lectures and presentations of sample problem solutions, distance education students only get incomplete lecture notes in pdf format, sample problems without solutions, and a list of recommended textbooks.
I think I was quite successful studying about 85% of the course this way, but the last one or two lectures and sample problem solutions cover some very advanced material, which is not adequately addressed by the recommended textbooks. I also could not find this material is a sufficiently concentrated form in research articles, and I estimate that it may take thorough reading and understanding of no less than 50 articles and maybe 3 months to properly figure this out by myself.
One of the professors recommended to me that I get a copy of the lecture notes and sample problem solutions from a student that attended the course in person, but when I requested a few email addresses from the secretary, she said she is not authorized to divulge that information. I asked the other professor of this course, but got no reply.
I can't go to a course lecture to locate such students, because the last lecture was some time ago.
I would like some advice on what else to try to obtain the lecture notes.

Email can get lost. Did you try making a phone call to the professor?

I haven't tried that, but he has always answered my emails in the past, and in general, in France people feel quite free not to answer an email in lieu of a negative response. So I'm pretty sure that he either does not know the emails, or he doesn't want to give me any. Perhaps I should indeed try calling him though.

Or call the department.

If you sent only one email, it is reasonable to send one or two more before deciding that the professor decided to ignore your request.

Can we get some clarification about how you are a 'distance ed' student? I ask because at the university I teach at, we don't offer distance ed courses but students can complete the course in this manner because everything is online/lectures are recorded. However, they are not 'proper' distance ed students and so additional materials are not offered etc. Are you enrolled as a proper distance ed or are you supposed to be on campus but choosing to complete the course in a distance ed format?

In the program brochure, it is specified that it can be taken in distance education mode, and in particular that certain course can be taken that way. The course in question was marked as such.

Some comments and the already given answer give advices that can be counter-productive in France. You mention that this is about a research level course so I understand that this is a "Master 2 recherche" course.
It is unlikely, for privacy reasons, that someone will give you email addresses of other students. My advice is to ask the professor to forward to a few targeted students your request.
Going to the department chair/dean will probably be useless. If you really want to go up the ladder, ask to the person in charge of the master 2. But it will probably be useless too since in the French system professors are free to do as they want for their lectures. For those surprised by that last sentence, keep in mind that having lecture notes in pdf and a list of recommended textbooks is something that you don't have in all lectures in France.

Our university has students that take notes and scan them in so they are on record for students who miss lectures, I presume this is not available but you could check if it is.
If not, perhaps you could look on facebook or another site that may have a group for people on the course and ask there if people can send you their notes.
Failing that, you could ask the staff (professor or secretary) if they can ask the students on the course if they would email you first, so that you can give your email out without breaking any confidentiality the other way.

I can understand them not wanting to give you students' contact information.  But it would be reasonable for them to email the other students, and offer your contact information to anyone who would be willing to help.
Also, I think the professor should be giving you a copy of his own notes, and answering your questions.
But first -- make sure to ask whether that last topic area will be included in the final exam.  Maybe it was just offered as enrichment.
Don't hesitate to speak with the department chair or dean about your frustrations.  It may be that there are some expectations that one or more instructors are not meeting!

The lecturer is under no obligation to provide a copy of their own notes as this is their intellectual property, regardless of whether the student is attending on campus or completing the course as a distance ed unit.

authors: Евгений Тарасов


text:
Is it a good idea to respond at all if a person I never heard of is asking for a reference letter?
I received an email from a person that is completely unknown to me, who claims that they were in an online master's program provided by my university department. They are asking for a recommendation letter for an application to a PhD program.
However, I am a postdoc and don't teach any classes. By quickly looking things up, I could not confirm that this person was ever even a student; however, it is in principle possible that they maybe audited some courses or otherwise didn't leave much easily accessible data.
My thoughts are that I should not even respond, because the request is, at best, entirely unreasonable, and at worst, an attempt to commit some kind of academic fraud.
What would be a best practice approach in this case? Would it be more professional to give a negative answer? Should I perhaps report this request to the department?

Is it sent from your institution's domain?

@AzorAhai-him- From a Yahoo email address.

Yeah just delete it, already spent too much mental effort on it haha

It has become fairly common in the last few years for hackers and spammers to conduct phishing attempts by emailing university staff/faculty and pretending to be students, while asking for letters of reference. I receive mails similar to yours every 2 to 3 months, and just by me doing some Googling on the student's name and info mentioned on the email, it is usually pretty clear that the information on the email is taken from public profiles on the internet.
If you do not know the student, or if the email seems to be somewhat generic (that is, the student's field is only tangentially related to your topic of research, and the student's email shows that they did not bother to do any research about you in advance), then you should do the following:

if possible, do not open the emails (check the subject and email
preview only)
do not click on anything written on the email, do not open or
download any attachments whatsoever.
immediately mark the email as spam and delete everything inside the
spam folder.

You might want to refer the phishing scam to the IT administrator at your school.

Is there some reason you expect these emails to be more dangerous than the average phishing email, e.g. more likely to take advantage of an exploit triggered by viewing the message to install a virus? If not, I think this answer slightly overstates the risk; in particular, the need to immediately mark the email as spam, and to delete everything inside the spam folder, sounds like overkill.

@DavidZ I certainly understand your comment, but there were a couple of departments close to where I work that were working on pretty advanced experiments, and therefore make attractive targets for hacking. Also, a regular visit to sites like https://www.securityweek.com/ can make one very much aware of how relaxing even a little bit in terms of security can be deadly.

Just to add that, the above 3 steps are mainly for cookie-cutter, generic attempts that can be identified relatively quickly. If you do get an email that's well-researched, and does appear initially to come from someone you know, but something about the message feels off, then I usually contact the person in question by sms or phone, and if it is indeed a fake email, then it's best to notify the IT department.

If you are afraid that the email may be phishing of some sort then sending it to spam is not a good idea. You should contact your IT department and they should investigate the issue. This will make them aware that you/your organization is experiencing some cyberthreats, and they may take some steps to mitigate the risks. Sending the email to spam might not cause harm, but if the threat is real, your organization might remain oblivious to it.

@DavidZ But why would you do anything else with a phishing attempt?  Even if the risk is minuscule, there's negative value in keeping it around.

@MatthewRead I did not suggest keeping it around.

Then you should be fine with immediately being rid of it.

It doesn't really matter whether you ignore the request or reply with a negative response. You do not know this person, they may or may not have any actual relation to a course you didn't give. I would just ignore the request.

I would give a negative reply, telling you could not find him. Then he tries harder to reach the right person. Otherwise he might wait for too long, hoping for an answer which is never coming, finally hurting his PhD application.
I think it is impolite and a disservice to your employer not responding with two sentences.

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text:
Is it unreasonable to set assignment deadlines on Saturday/Sunday?
I read a similar question
(Knowing that most students submit assignments right around the deadline, is it advisable not to set deadline that is very late at night?)
about setting assignment deadlines at different hours of the day
(e.g., 9 AM, noon, 5 PM, 9 PM, midnight).
At my institution,
we use a learning management system
to manage our courses.
I require students to use it
to submit all of the assignments for the course.
I am wondering if it is reasonable to set assignment deadlines on Sunday.

On the one hand, I don't want to ruin the weekend for students
who may be working on my assignment at the last minute.
However, I feel that Sunday deadlines
have minimal conflicts with students' other commitments.
If for example I were to set the deadline on Monday,
students may skip classes to meet my deadline,
or they may be busy with work from other classes.

Question:
Is it unreasonable to set assignment deadlines on Saturday/Sunday,
say 6 PM on Sunday?
Would this be forcing students to work on the weekends?

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.

"The assignment is due Friday by 5pm.  However, I'll accept it until Sunday if you need extra time."

Don't assume anything about your  students' schedules. Set your deadlines so everyone can manage their time based on their own needs.
You are concerned about encouraging your students to do work on the weekends. Consider that many students have customer service jobs that require them to work on the weekends (retail, restaurants, etc). They might work nights or swing shifts. They might have children to care for at certain times. You have no way of knowing if doing homework on a Saturday or Sunday is convenient for them or not.
Don't arbitrarily pick a deadline based on what you perceive to be best for them. Give your students a full week to work on assignments if you can, because they might only have small chunks of time available to do homework. Make it due when it really needs to be done, such as when the next class starts.
For example, I worked 10 PM to 7 AM Thursday through Sunday for my first couple of years in college. I often worked on homework during my lunch breaks, which could be at 2 AM on Monday morning. I'm sure all of my instructors assumed I would/should be sleeping at 2 AM, but it was actually a perfect opportunity to finish up homework.
Since there will always be students that procrastinate, and some percentage will inevitably have an emergency at the last moment, you may want to make it clear at the beginning of the course that you are not able to grant any extensions for any reason, because the deadline is already at the last possible moment. Also give the reason why that's the case, whether it's because you will review it in class, or there will be a quiz on it they need to be prepared for, or whatever the reason is. Be clear that since you are already giving extra time, you expect them to manage that time properly, so that an unexpected difficulty does not make their homework late.
You can always choose to make exceptions later for truly exceptional circumstances, but having a clear policy that you don't make exceptions will discourage people from taking advantage of your already generous deadlines. I've taken many classes with this policy, and I've never heard anyone complain about it.

This all the way.  There is no possible way you could anticipate what time would be most convenient for all students, since there are so many things factoring into that (course schedules, work schedules, family needs, religious observances, social engagements, ...).  Let the students manage their own schedules.

I'd add the caveat that your deadlines need to take into account that some some submissions will be late. An example of where this matters is when you intend to release solutions in the next class. A deadline just before the class will run into problems when some students submit late. (And there's always a valid reason - death in family, institution-mandated extension due to disabilities, etc.)

@beldaz are you proposing the deadline artificially be moved up so there's a period where assignments can be late and not cause any problems? Because I don't see how that would be helpful.  If someone is supposed to get more time for homework, that doesn't mean you shorten the time for everyone else. If someone has a death in the family just before your earlier "soft" deadline, they're probably not going to get over it and get their homework done before class. Maybe I'm missing your point?

@Kat the example of death in family is just an extreme one I've encountered a couple of times, so don't get hung up on it. But it's pretty common to be required to grant ~1 day extension for students with disabilities (I get about 5 a year of those). So my point is to avoid making a submission policy that is so rigid that you create problems for yourself. Personally I prefer setting an earlier deadline, which I can then extend if many of my students say they are struggling to meet.

@beldaz so what happens if students physically hand in their homework at the beginning of the next class? I maintain that artificially moving up your deadlines so you can give "extensions" instead of giving everyone more time is absurd and obviously against the spirit of the requirement of extra time, but I'll grant you that bureaucracy sometimes creates absurd situations. I don't think I will recommend that strategy in my answer, though.

In the case in this question, there is no physical handing in of homework. The students are required to submit it though the learning management system.

It's fine. Students are expected to manage their time appropriately.
However, one of the things I despise most as a student is when the instructor doesn't finish covering the material needed for the assignment until shortly before it's due. So if, for example, you have a Friday lecture that contains information pertinent to the assignment (other than to answer clarifying questions and such for those who've waited that long), making the assignment due Sunday almost certainly eliminates the possibility of a free weekend.

The worst case I had of this was when the assignment was due at 5 pm, with our lecture covering important material from 2-3 pm! That was a stressful 2 hours ...

What are these things you call "free weekends"?

Some kind of theoretical construct. Clearly no practical applications.

@Jezzamon The worst case I had was an assignment due at 8 a.m., with the lecture covering the important material from 8 to 10... I skipped that class that year. Next year's instructor did a better job.

It's absolutely valid to set deadlines on Sunday evening. You do not force the students to work on weekends. This is their own responsibility to manage their workload. They are still allowed to hand in their results on Friday and then they can have a free weekend. One may even argue that a deadline on the weekend gives even greater freedom to the students as they have two additional days.
Time management is one ability that is trained while attending university. Students should be allowed to make their own experience. In their future jobs, there will be quite a lot of deadlines such as "until next week" which is also a deadline on Sunday.

Personally I always appeeciated weekend project deadlines as an undergraduate.

If the weekend does not count toward the amount of time allocated for the assignment, why not put it on Friday ? Putting it on Sunday would only make it seem as if they have more time than they actually have. (If student are expected to work on weekends, that's a different story).

Yes.  And if any student complains about it, you can always say "well, you can hand it in on Friday if you'd prefer that".

Is IT support available on Sundays at your university? Is there somewhere students can go or somebody they can call if they run into technical difficulties submitting?
If your deadline is, say, noon on Monday or 5pm on Wednesday, then students can get help if they run into trouble. If your deadline is midnight on Sunday, then, on my campus that would mean anybody attempting to submit in the last 55 hours available would be unable to access anything but the out-of-hours hotline. Not only is the existence of this very new, it is of limited help at best. I wouldn't want to be a student relying on this in the face of an imminent deadline.
Note that technical issues can affect even the most adept and experienced users of virtual learning environments. A web browser or OS update, some change to the VLE itself can cause problems or some service can go down. Class policies should assume that Sod's Law has special applicability out of business hours.

This seems like a non-issue. It's perfectly possible to have a contingency plan for such cases. On the off chance there are problems with the submission system during the hours before the deadline, you can always extend the deadline by a few days (or even just a single day) to give students another chance to submit.

@TomvanderZanden You can, but it is an avoidable complication and the OP didn't say anything about actually having thought about this or having communicated such a policy. Not communicating such a policy leaves students to panic if they have difficulties. Communicating such a policy risks giving students an easy excuse if they want to delay for other reasons. I'd rather not have to arbitrate those kinds of cases. And extending the deadline in such cases risks unfairness, too. So I think you invite complications easily avoided.

The IT department may even have maintenance to facilities or VLEs scheduled during out-of-hours so that it would be least disruptive.

It is reasonable to set deadlines on Sunday night or the like. I've had midnight Sunday deadlines for quizzes and assignments (in math & computing) for about 8 years now; the last lecture each week occurs on Wednesday or Thursday. I've only had one or two student complaints in that time (those from students also holding a full-time job through the weekend). I almost always manage to grade them all in the 10 PM - 1 AM zone Sunday night, so I can turnaround with feedback immediately at the start of Monday. Works well for me.
Edit: A comment by Mehdrad got me curious as to the exact distribution of submission times leading up to the end of Sunday. Below is a chart for one introductory programming assignment from Spring 2017 (N = 25), when I temporarily set the cutoff for 10 PM (thinking that I needed extra time to grade the submissions). In this example, about 55% of submissions are made before 6 PM Sunday; 20% come in 6 PM to 9 PM; and 25% come in the last hour (two being within the last possible 2 minutes). Two faulty attempts were submitted on Wednesday (not shown here) and subsequently cancelled/replaced; and another fourteen students submitted nothing.

They actually turn it in a full 2 hours early so that you can begin grading at 10pm? That sounds lucky for you! And also sounds like the assignments aren't that long... :-)

@Mehrdad: I think the majority tend to come in by the 7-8 PM hour or so. At 10 PM about two-thirds are submitted and I can usefully get started and pick up the remainder as I'm finishing. (I actually just started experimenting with grading before the deadline last semester and was pleased how it worked.)

The "Yes" confused me because I thought it was an answer to the question in the question title (then I realized that the one in the question body is the complete opposite).

@nomadictype: Ack, I hate it when that happens. Expanded the first sentence to clarify.

For your statistic, Is it possible the someone has finished the task but waited until the last hour to submit it, to have the chance to review or improve it.

@Shuangistan: Possible but very unlikely. I'd say I have maybe 1 or 2 students per semester who ever tell me they've done such a thing.

So, set the deadline for 8AM Monday morning - needs to be convenient for you though, but it does mean that it won't conflict with classes - does depend on the "late hand-in" policy though...
This also depends on the submission method - it sounds like you have an online system in place in this case.
Some students will want the weekend to work on it, others will accept a hand-in on Friday 5PM...
Whatever time you set - stick to it (obviously there are some external factors that can change this ie a fire alarm etc)..
I have peer assessments that have a final closing time of 23.55 Sundays - there are always some students who say it closed too early...

Students who don't have morning classes tend to get up at noon and stay up all night. I like start of class session X for due.

Allow the students as long as you possibly can from when they have all required information for the assignment to when it must be turned in. The turn in time should be based on when you need to start grading in order to return the assignments when you plan to do so.
Every student has their own life, schedule, work commitments, classes etc. A narrow window that is fine for one student may be very inconvenient for others. Making the window as wide as possible increases the chances that every student will have an opportunity to concentrate on your assignment, and get the most benefit from it. Making the window narrower than necessary will lead to some students trying to do the assignment during a work lunch break, or cutting into their sleep time.
The students who choose to leave each assignment until just before its deadline are not your problem. They are adults making a sub-optimal choice. Look after the students who are doing their best with time management, but may not have a free hour until Saturday afternoon.

On the one hand, I don't want to ruin the weekend for students who may be working on my assignment at the last minute.

Leaving the assignment at the last minute, especially in order to enjoy the weekend, sounds more like a choice than an obligation. I don't think it's your responsibility to do time and goal management for your students, especially if they are adults.
Otherwise I want to agree with Solar Mike, just pick something and stick to it. Your student will manage their time to make things work for them.

I don’t think there is anything wrong with that, especially since the submission of the assignment is done online. Saturday and Sunday are only two days. If the students have to sacrifice their weekend to complete the assignment, that is usually because they didn’t manage their time wisely during the days before.

It seems that your options are to either set a deadline on Friday evening or over the weekend. Let's turn the question around. Suppose you enforced the Friday deadline.  Would you actually mark the submitted work over the weekend, or would you wait until Monday?
If the answer is that you'd take the weekend off and start marking on Monday, then it's the Friday deadline that's unreasonable. Why would you demand that students hand in work so that you can ignore it for two full days? Set the deadline for Sunday night (or even early Monday morning) and let the students manage their own time. If keeping the weekend work-free is important to them, they'll make sure their work is finished by Friday.
Conversely, if you would spend the weekend marking, a Friday deadline would make sense.  Whether or not it would make more sense than a Sunday/Monday deadline depends on other factors.

Sometimes it's important as a teacher to do things that are unpopular with the students.  However, unless there's a good reason otherwise, why not do what the students want?  They'll be happier, you'll be happier because they're happier, and you'll get better evaluations.  And you can think of this as banking some popularity that you can spend when you need to do something important that's unpopular.  In this case I'm pretty confident that the students would prefer a deadline on a weekday, but if you're not confident why not ask them?

As a student I hated nothing more than deadlines before midnight. I would be happy with a deadline on either Sunday 11:59pm or Friday 11:59pm, Sunday would better because that means two more days to do work where I don't have lectures to exhaust me. Trust me when I say that to a student free weekends don't exist anyways/
However Friday 5pm would be horrible. Considering lectures can run until 6pm, a Friday 5pm deadline is equivalent to a Thursday midnight deadline.
Unless you are deadset on marking that evening I don't see why the deadline couldn't be moved to midnight.
Would it really make a big difference for you, it sure would to a student, thats a good few hours lost, and making deadlines harder to hit simply because 'students need to learn time management' is a terrible reason.

If I set you a Friday 5pm deadline, it's because I intend to give up a good chunk of my weekend to mark your work.

If your assignments are taking a good chunk of a weekend, they're too big to be assignments or your class is too big to be marked by one person in a reasonable time.

There are two major concerns with setting weekend deadlines,

a number of students may not have access to a computer in order to submit online, at that time. Beware of disadvantaging groups of students that tend to face this restriction. This can be avoided by ensuring sufficient computer availability on campus, which is likely to be true.
the times over the weekend may be inconsistent, disrupting regular schedules for some students. In particular this will affect students who have significant work or family commitments while studying that they cannot just "time management" away. This can be avoided by setting every assignment to the same time every time e.g. Sunday at 1700 local.

Apart from considerations to ensure all students have an opportunity to meet this submission time, the actual submission time itself is largely irrelevant.
Students who are ready earlier can submit earlier or improve their work over the weekend. Students who are not ready earlier will appreciate an educator who doesn't respond to issues in the learner's life with "too bad, you should have been perfect like I want to pretend I was".

The common argument is that you are simply giving students a choice; if a student is still working on Sunday, that's their choice. While this argument certainly has some validity, taking it to its logical conclusion, if a sporting event were to allow steroids, then they are simply offering a choice, and if anyone takes steroids, that is simply their choice. Clearly, anyone competing against people using steroids would not feel that they have a "choice" whether to use steroids or not. Similarly, a student whose work is going to be evaluated in comparison to someone who worked the whole weekend may not feel that they have a "choice" whether to work the weekend as well. A central issue is how much of an impact extra time has on the result. The more sharply the assignment runs into diminishing returns with additional time spent, the less of an issue this is. (Note that if your assignments do offer a significant advantage to those who spend a lot of time on them, you should be taking a serious look at whether you can design the assignments differently and reduce time without reducing academic value; students should be evaluated on how well they understand the material, not how much time they're willing to spend on assignments. Sometimes spending a lot of time on assignments is necessary, but as an instructor, one of your obligations is to work towards optimizing the value received/time spent ratio.)
Another argument is that you should not be doing time management for your students. While time management is primarily the student's obligation, that doesn't mean that instructors shouldn't consider it. Instructors should design their courses to support student learning, and that means taking students' challenges into account. There seems to be an undercurrent to this argument that procrastination is a form of mental weakness, and making accommodations for it is coddling students. However, procrastination is quite often a result of anxiety or other conditions that should be taken seriously, and not dismissed as merely being character flaws. There are going to be some people for whom dashing off a paper on Friday and turning it in knowing that they did the best they could because that's when the deadline is, is significantly less stressful than having a Sunday deadline and spending the weekend feeling like they "should" be spending the time polishing the paper and worrying whether there's some flaw that they could fix if they just spent more time on it.
These are issues that you'll have to weigh. There's no universal answer; I'm not saying that you definitely shouldn't have a Sunday deadlines, I'm just pointing out that there are valid concerns with such a deadline.

A colleague of mine recently included a question about deadlines in the course evaluation survey. The deadlines for the assignments were set on Saturday at midnight. The students (~40) overwhelmingly commented that deadlines on Saturday were "perfect", "not a problem", "very convenient". Only one student was dissatisfied with having the deadline on Saturday and commented that they would have preferred Sunday!
So, at least from the students, it seems there are no objections. Moreover, you are not "forcing" them to work during the weekend, but, by setting a weekend-deadline, you know that many of them will choose to. However, when you set the deadline does not affect the total amount of work: if they choose to work on the assignment during the weekend, they have more time off during the week.

" when you set the deadline does not affect the total amount of work" That is far from certain.

Hmmm "Saturday at midnight" Is that midnight the first moment of Saturday or the last?  As various people interpret  "Saturday at midnight"  differently, suggest a less ambiguous deadline. Deadline by "the end of Saturday"

The only reason I can think of where this would not be "reasonable" is if the students weren't being given ample time to do the assignment.
If you were assigning the work on Friday, for example, and asking for it to be due on Sunday, that may not be reasonable. Why not let them have Monday morning to do the work? However, assuming the assignment only takes an hour or so to complete, there should be no problem with assigning something on, say, a Wednesday and having it due Sunday.
So long as there is enough lead time, that bit about students potentially procrastinating until Sunday is their problem, not yours. If you assign it on a Wednesday and it's not due until Sunday, it's not your fault if they elect to wait until the last minute just because you gave them extra time. If they don't like doing the work on Sundays, they will learn to carve out some time to get it done before the weekend.
One other recommendation I'd make: if there is a good reason for having a six PM Sunday deadline, then share that reason with your students. If I told my class, "I like to look over the homework submissions on Sunday night while I'm preparing my Monday lecture; that way, I can see if there is anything we might need to revisit," I think my students would respect that.

As most others have said, the main thing is: give students enough time to get the assignment done. Given that, no deadline is too bad.
Other than that, I think a good deadline should be at or near the "end of working hours" (or at the very start, which basically is the same). Because that maximises the student's capacity for time management. Most of us like to "flow", so planning a full day for a given assignment is normal. And if they need to use the whole last day (not the best idea but still a possibility) allow them. For most people that is at/after sundown. People working nights know they are doing it different and will adjust as usual for them.
As to the day. Do you do classes on weekends? So fine, make a deadline on sunday. You do not? So, why would you expect students to be working on a sunday then? Students may have days off too, no? Set the deadline for a regular working day, please. Sure, students use weekends (I did, I do, I will, I hope) but it is their choice not your's

As a student, and being the few ones that had a good computer at home at the time, I joined a few colleagues and often we did work at night for several reasons. I also had a couple of side jobs in my first few years of University.
One of the reasons, is that it can get pretty hot in the Summer time, and besides the night silence, you work cooler and focus more at night.
For me at the time, an assignment deadline of 0800AM Monday would allow me both to work during the day/or enjoy the beach in Summer time and working towards the assignment during the night.

It is common for assignment due dates to be specified in the course outline/syllabus. Then the due dates are generally discussed during the first class period or two as the students become acclimated to the course. Since the students know well in advance what is expected of them it is their responsibility to decide when to get things done.
It is often wise to avoid changing due dates as this can be surprising for students. The exception to this is to provide additional time to complete the assignment. For example, if the assignment was originally due on Friday but you extend the due date to Sunday night few will complain. However, if the due date was originally Monday and you move it to Sunday night before this could cause problems.  Of course, if there was no original due date this does not apply but it would be strange to have no general idea of when you want an assignment submitted when planning a course. I'm sure we all complain if the Dean changes the due date of various administrative task and students are no different.
Therefore, it is best to stick to the due dates specified in the course outline (if they are there) or to extend the due date but to avoid moving the due date up.

Just to throw my own two cents' worth in: I like to try to pretend that I won't necessarily demand anything of students (even grad students) outside of some sort of reasonable work-week. Otherwise, I'd feel that I was pretending to command more of their life than I'd really feel I have any right to.
So all due dates are "within the work week". Yes, this has implications for due dates that are early in the beginning of the work-week... Regardless of rationalizations about planning... I don't do this.
Also, by the way, all due dates are known at least two weeks or so prior, so there's hopefully no abusive creation of conflicts or sacrifices and so on.

Good point about announcing due dates two weeks prior so that students can plan their time appropriately

@ILiketoCode :) ....

Clearly a Saturday/Sunday deadline is more generous than the previous Friday, but less generous than the following Monday.  If a deadline on the previous Friday was not unreasonable, then an extension to a deadline on the Saturday/Sunday cannot be unreasonable.  (After all, students can always hand it in on the Friday if they prefer.)

This is not at all clear to me. It seems you are missing the psychological component here!

It is not the job of academics to pander to the irrational psychological foibles of their students.

This "irrational psychological foible" seems to be widespread among students, researchers, industry people and so on. While it may or may not be part of academic's job, it is still not "clear" that it is more generous.

If you intend to start grading the assignment when you get to your office on Monday morning, what would be the point in NOT allowing students until midnight Sunday?  (And, of course, accepting work that arrived in the early hours of Monday morning, as long as it WAS 'on your desk' by start of work hours Monday.)

This is probably not a major concern for most of your students, but I mention it because it would have affected me as a student, and it has not yet been addressed by any of the other answers:  Some students may belong to religious faiths in which doing work on Saturday or Sunday is prohibited.  For example, observant Orthodox Jews and Seventh Day Adventists generally would not do homework from sundown Friday evening until sundown Saturday night.  (I am not sure of specific Christian denominations that would have a similar prohibition against working on Sundays, but I have no doubt that they exist.)  For such a student, making an assignment due on the weekend neither constitutes extra time nor a temptation to procrastinate; rather, it effectively means that they have one less day to get their work completed than the rest of the class.
Now, I don't think faculty should feel obligated to accommodate every student's religious observances -- Sabbath-observant people are used to living in a world that is not designed around our needs.  But in the same way that you would probably not schedule an exam on Christmas day or Rosh Hashana, you might want to consider whether weekend deadlines place any of your students under a disadvantage relative to their classmates.