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What do instructors need to know to accommodate Muslim students?
Increasingly, my school has been recruiting students from Central Asia, so I see 1-3 Muslim students in each section.
Near the end of the last term, one student asked for leave for some religious activity. He was surprised when I said he could go, then he told me he had missed many Friday afternoon religious activities, but his advisor (or perhaps some other school administrators) said he couldn't leave. I heard a similar story from another student.
I realized that many of the other Muslim students may have similar problems, but they are too nervous to speak out and let me know. Since they remain quiet, I'm not sure how to accommodate them.
What are some typical things a teacher can do to accommodate Muslim students?

There are a lot of places you could go to learn about Islam, starting with wikipedia.  It could be interesting to do so: I recently read the Autobiography of Malcolm X and found his description of his pilgrimage to Mecca fascinating and moving.  Last semester when I talked about Gabriel's Horn in my calculus course I wanted to be more balanced in my allusions, so I mentioned that in Islam the horn is blown not by Gabriel but by Israfil, and I was strangely pleased to figure out for myself that Israfil is the Islamic counterpart to Raphael (whereas Jibrail's role is expanded from that of his Christian counterpart).
The point of that preamble was: I do not doubt that learning more about Islam would be a worthy endeavor.  Nevertheless I am skeptical that such knowledge would directly help you to accommodate Muslim students. Like most major world religions, there is considerable variation in the way it is practiced.  I recommend rather that you familiarize yourself with the policies of your university on religious accommodations.  Just yesterday I received the yearly memo on Sensitivity to Religious Practices from my upper university administration.  It reads:

Many of our faculty, staff, and students commemorate various events of importance to their particular religions. Our institutional practice is to make every reasonable effort to allow members of the University community to observe their religious holidays without academic penalty. Absence for religious reasons does not relieve students from responsibility for any part of the course work required during the period of absence. Students who miss classes, examinations, or other assignments as a consequence of their religious observance should be provided with a fair alternative opportunity to complete such academic responsibilities. Students must provide instructors with reasonable notice of the dates of religious holidays on which they plan to be absent.
As you plan your syllabus and begin communicating with students, please keep in mind that some religious holidays affect a significant number of University of Georgia students and might require a student to abstain from secular activities or attend a house of worship. Different groups within a particular religion may also observe holidays on different dates, making it difficult to provide a comprehensive list of all potential religious observances. You may wish to search online for a religious calendar resource to serve as a guide for the dates of common observances.
Thank you for your cooperation.

At least if you are in the US (as I seem to recall is the case?) it seems very likely that your institution has some equivalent version.  You could keep copies on hand and give them to a student like the one you described above.  You can direct them to appropriate university administration if they feel that they are not being accommodated within the stated rules of the university.  If you really feel strongly, you could try to speak to the relevant administrators yourself.

The university where I taught in the US while earning my PhD also had a similar policy regarding religious practices and holidays. Though I would like to act one smart teaching policy: require students to inform you of these early in the semester.

What @virmaior says is a double good idea, on the one hand, you don't need to worry about all the various calendars; on the other, you show the students you are open in your policies and they can actually come to you and ask.

I had no idea the Gabriel in Gabriel's horn referred to the angel!  I always assumed some mathematician named Gabriel had discovered it.

@Anonymous: Well, I also spoke of "Torricelli's Trumpet".

+1 for Like most major world religions, there is considerable variation in the way it is practiced. As a religious student, I do not expect, need, or want my professors to know how I practice my religion; I will tell them what kind of accommodations I need. All I expect from my professors is that they follow the school policy on religious accommodations.

As a graduate student, my qualifying exam actually ended up taking place during Ramadan. As I was observing, I asked my graduate department to take that into account in scheduling the oral exams, which required two days for everybody to complete. They obliged in giving me an early morning slot, which was helpful compared to a late afternoon slot (when hunger would have affected my mental sharpness).
I would also note that Ramadan could conflict with evening labs, depending on how late they run. In such cases, it would be helpful to offer alternatives, where practical (perhaps the students could be allowed to start earlier or later, so that the meal break does not interfere too much with the lab schedule).
Finally, I should also mention that the observance of the Friday prayers, as well as the dates of the main observances, fluctuate: the former because they're tied to the solar schedule and thus shift during daylight savings time, as well as geographically according to both latitude and longitude, and the latter because they're tied to the lunar calendar but, unlike the Jewish calendar, are not intercalated. (Rough rule of thumb: the Islamic calendar "gains" one month every three Gregorian years.) Eid ul-Fitr this year was about July 28 in 2014; by 2017, it will be approximately June 26.

My general suggestions, for adjusting your course schedule to accommodate the religious and any other needs of your students, would be:

Don't make attendance compulsory if you can reasonably avoid it.
Of course, sometimes — e.g. for exams — requiring physical attendance may be unavoidable, but if there's any chance that a student could successfully complete the course without being present on a particular occasion, I'd suggest allowing it.
This may require some extra effort on your part, such as making lecture notes available for self-study, or scheduling supplementary lab sessions to make up for missed labs.  It's up to you (and your department policy) how far you want to go with this, but at the very least, I'd suggest that, if a student tells you in advance that it would be inconvenient or impossible for them to attend a particular session, you should try to accommodate them if it's possible with reasonable effort.
In particular, IMO there are other reasons to avoid compulsory lectures, anyway.  Just make it clear to your students that being absent does not excuse them from learning the material that the lecture was supposed to teach them (but that you're willing to help them do so, as far as practically possible).
Publish your course schedule well in advance.  This goes especially for exams and other things that are compulsory and/or cannot be easily rescheduled, as it allows students to plan their schedules in advance and to make an informed decision on whether they'll be able to properly attend your course.
You may also wish to ask prospective students to contact you if they'd like to attend your course but find the schedule problematic.  At the very least, even if you find yourself unable to accommodate them this time, the feedback will be valuable for planning the next year's / semester's schedule.
Ask your students to tell you if a particular time is inconvenient for them, and make it clear that you're willing to make allowances where possible, especially if multiple students find the time problematic.  If you do find that you have several students who'd prefer not to come to class at a particular time, bring it up in class (or e.g. on the course mailing list, if you have one) and see if there might be a way to reschedule the class without unduly inconveniencing anyone else, or even if it would simply make sense to skip it.
This should go for any reason, not just for religious ones, although those obviously do qualify.  All the same, if a significant fraction of your students would really like to, say, watch a football match during a particular lecture, rescheduling that lecture could also be a perfectly reasonable request to consider.
The important part here is to make your students aware that you want them to tell you if your schedule is inconvenient for them for any reason, that no reason is too insignificant to ask, and that, even if you may not necessarily be able to arrange a perfect accommodation, you'll at least consider all requests.  Do remind your students that you're not omniscient, and that if, say, an important lecture happens to overlap a religious event (or a football match), that might just be because you weren't aware of the conflict.
Try to anticipate potential sources of scheduling conflicts, such as major religious events, popular celebrations and, yes, even big concerts or sports events.  That seems to be the specific thing you're asking about here, but I'm putting it last on the list because I feel that it's of secondary importance compared to the other suggestions above.
Sure, it's a good idea to be aware that, say, having a class on Friday afternoon could be problematic for Muslims, and that you probably shouldn't schedule anything important on major religious holidays like Eid al-Fitr or Eid al-Adha (or, for that matter, on Christmas or Easter, either).  But, ultimately, it's IMO even more important to get your students to tell you if your schedule doesn't work for them, and to be willing to adjust the schedule or to find alternative solutions to accommodate the students' needs, whatever they may be.

+1 for #3. If the teacher is worried that students are not asking off for what would be legitimate reasons due to thinking they cannot, the solution is to ask those students.

Not all courses are lectures and for other formats participation is a major part of the course.

@virmaior: True, that's why I added the "if you can avoid it" bit. That said, there are also many non-lecture activities that one could more or less effectively substitute with self-study (or other means, like extra lab / practice sessions), if necessary.

I guess I would think of that backwards. Don't do lecture courses if at all possible.

#3 is good, but might go a bit too far: it almost sounds like “majority rules”, which is not good. I once had a class with a well-established schedule (see #2) where some students wanted to change the schedule to make it more convenient. The instructor agreed, announced it to the class and said we would make the change – unless any students objected, in which case we would not. One student objected, so we did not make the change. I knew that student, and I can say that their reason was much more important than a football match – it was related to their parenting commitments.

I think I can contribute here as a muslim. Although some of us avoid it due to laziness, a muslim is required to pray 5 times a day, at certain hours. It is like a ritual that requires a clean and quiet place. But if the person has to do something at that time, he can pray later. So a student doesn't need to leave class to pray. He can pray all day's prayings when he goes home.
There is also friday praying which requires a community to pray with. Unlike the other prays (5 times a day) you cannot do this later or by yourself so it can be good if student is allowed not to attend class friday afternoon.
During Ramadan (which is now during summers but in few years will be during school time again) muslims do not eat or drink anything till sunset but people can eat or drink in front of them. If there are evening classes during sunset, it is best if these students who choose to be thirsty and hungry are allowed not to come so they can do their iftar as they require.

He can pray all day's prayings when he goes home! he can but he better not leave the prayers outside the specific times

@WolfgangKuehne that is a different topic. I am talking about the possiblity of making up for missed pray that isn't on friday.

Although the students who move abroad to study in countries which are much different in the religious aspect of they own, do not expect the same religious accommodation as it would be at home, my experience so far has shown that it is a pleasant surprise to them that someone shows interest in accommodating them.
One thing that they appreciate a lot is remembering the Eids (the main holidays) as well as observance of the Holy Month of Ramadan. These days are celebrated together with the family in their respective countries so being far away is hard. In that case receiving some "good wishes" message is very welcomed. Whereas, the best would be if the University of someone organizes the "fast-breaking" (Iftar) dinner.
In addition to that, the Friday prayer is important, if they are allowed not to attend classes during the Friday prayer time, it is very helpful. Last year we received an email from University administration which described their plan of building praying rooms for Muslim students. I have also read that the Katholik University of Leuven has a praying room. That email was very welcomed by the Muslim students.
All in all, I think just acknowledging that you know something about the religion and the important days is heart-warming as they do not expect more than that.

I would be very surprised to find any major university without at least a makeshift prayer room (eg reserved space in a hall).

*any major university* - ain't that too broad? major university where? US, europe, asia?

I actually mean any. And by I, I mean me. I personally would be surprised. I could be very wrong (and would be interested to learn). (Looking at the continental data, there is a high enough % of muslims to be a very large (or at least notable) minority everywhere except South America and Oceanic islands).
So yes I would be surprised if any major university didn't have at least a  make-shift prayer room.

@Oxinabox I don't think the proportion of muslims in the student population is the issue but the organization of universities and the way they deal with religion differ widely. I might be completely wrong about that but it sounds like you might be generalizing about your experience in one (or perhaps a handful) of countries. Without having looked at the issue thoroughly it indeed seems like a very sweeping statement to make.

My comment was not intended to be generalised at all.
It was a statement about me. I was hoping to draw out from Wolfgang (or another user) a explanation of how widely universities differ in how they handle religion. Which could then be incorporated into this answer to improve people who suffer from my misperception (or not if I was not incorrect)

I make zero accommodations for Muslim students. I also make zero accommodations for Jewish, Christian, Buddhist, Pagan, Hindu etc. Your religion is your personal business and it should stay your personal business. If my lecture / lab / test runs through your observance time you have two choices: take 10 minutes and keep quiet about it, or leave the room. If it's a test you don't get back in. If it's a lab you may miss something important, like how to handle dangerous chemicals. It would be very ironic if your prayers to your God resulted in meeting Him an hour later because you missed something important.
Tolerance and accommodation work both ways. I simply ask that all observant students show equal accommodation for the rest of the class who are quite happy with a 2:30 start time and don't want to rearrange their day because one person prefers 3:30. My reading of the afternoon prayer schedule, for example, says the time is not fixed: "... till the sun is still bright and enough daylight remains for a person to travel 6 miles". The sun is up until at least 5 in the winter, and 6 miles takes 20 minutes (10 on the highway that runs past campus).
Also, remember on the application form, when the school pointedly did NOT ask any questions about race, gender, color, religion, disabilities, heritage etc.? There's a reason: because the answers are irrelevant to the programs (and schedules) we offer.

one student asked for leave for some religious activity
one student asked for leave for some sports activity
one student asked for leave for some social activity
one student asked for leave for some political activity

How are these questions any different?

I agree wholeheartedly, except for the notion of not allowing students back in; you are not the owner of the room, and there is nothing that gives you such authority. The students paid to have a class, and how they choose to use that time is up to them, and no one else. You are hired to teach, not to set up a dictatorship.

I would be interested to know what kind of institution you teach at: in the US? public or private?  As far as I know, most US colleges and universities have official policy about religious accommodations along the lines of the one I copied in my answer.  If your university has such a policy, are you advocating ignoring it?

@alice : how many teachers allow students to come an go during exams? (I don't really care if they slip out the back door during a lecture)

@peter How many teachers don't allow students to come in late to a lecture or lab? The idea that you paid for a class and then are denied (re)admittance is sort of silly.

@alice answer re-read, ambiguity found and edited.

Sports activities are different because for many students, that's their "meal ticket."

@aeismail The religious institutions are the meal ticket for many, and in many cases are just as public and celebrated.

@Alice: How are they a meal ticket?

@LightnessRacesinOrbit Churches, Mosques, and religious institutions of all types are large employers. The Vatican's GDP alone is significant.

In many countries, there is a subtle hypocrisy in taking this attitude as Christian holidays and practices are embedded in our academic calendar. You claim not to make any accommodation for Christian students but most universities in Western Europe have no lectures on sundays, are closed for Christmas and Easter, etc. Also, most lecturers would also typically be sensitive to issues faced by all students (say public transportation stopping after a particular time of the day). This seemingly neutral stance therefore fails to address the main question here: How should we deal with minorities?

@Alice: I was referring to the fact that in the US many students are on athletic scholarships, and are thus dependent on remaining on the athletic team to remain in school. That means that they often can't decide not to show up for a game because of an exam.

@Relaxed: A single teaching person might be able to influence a part of the schedule of their class, but the general academic calendar is outside of their control. As such, they are not making any accommodations to certain religions within their realm of influence. It would be rather unfair to accuse them of being hypocritical if the only part that does not match with their statement is entirely outside of their control.

@aeismail There are other kinds of scholarships, including religious ones. There is no difference.

@Alice: There is an enormous difference between NCAA scholarships for athletics in the US, and most other scholarships. I do not know of religious or other scholarships that require daily or near-daily attendance at practices, games, and other events, and may require substantial travel during the course of the semester. "Athletic scholarship recipients" basically have to work a full-time job for free on top of their studies. (If there's a religious scholarship out there with similarly onerous requirements, I'd love to know about it.)

@aeismail (& other sports nuts): ThrowingTheBallAbout120 is a non-credit extracurricular activity and won't get you out of a test either. You are here to learn . If you fail it, the scholarship doesn't work either. I will be happy to write a note for the other professor guy holding the whistle.

The difference is that freedom of religion is enshrined in our constitution. The difference is that religion is someone's way of life. The difference is that the person may go to hell or an equivalent for not practicing. What you are doing it not tolerance. You are deciding for someone else how important their religion can be. You clearly have a distaste for religion and are letting it influence your actions, as evidenced by cracking jokes about people dying. You've just expressed a distaste for college sports as your reason for not accommodating that. You are not being tolerant.

@Relaxed : "How should we deal with minorities?" Trying to keep them off your lawn? One deals with "minorities" by treating them exactly the same way one treats everyone else. I don't care what you look like, where you came from, or do after hours. But you don't get special treatment either - that's discrimination against the 80%. I do have a stop-line for clothing and disabilities, but that's another discsussion.

@peter My point was that you are effectively treating some people differently by doing that. And pretending that also accommodating minorities (the majority is already well-taken care of, as I explained) is necessarily discriminating seems silly to me. But either way, “Minorities just have to comply with the majority's customs in every respect” is a valid point of view but a pretty radical one and one that needs to be articulated explicitly because “I treat everybody the same” is a lie in this case.

@Relaxed: I have no objections at all to working Sundays, national holidays etc. Yes, they began as church days but are now, in our culture, simply conveniences - the religious aspect was lost decades ago. And isn't "treat us the same as everyone else" exactly what the minorities have been asking for years?

@trlkly : You have the right to practice any belief system you want. So do I. You do NOT have the right to burden me (or your classmates) with your beliefs. Tolerance is also a two-way street. Where's Mr. Quarterback's tolerance and accommodation for everyone else's schedule (or mine, if I have to make a new test or do a lab twice)? How about this: if you want a lab or test rescheduled, YOU sell it to the rest of the students. If they agree, I will come in on any day you want.

@peter Sports and religion are not in any way equivalent. I already pointed out that religion is more important to the people who practice it. Tolerance requires making allowances for others. You cannot say you are being tolerant by making allowances for no one. Tolerance means treating other people's beliefs as having value, even if you disagree with them. You choose to belittle them, even here. You support making people choose between practicing their religion and their grades. That's not more acceptable than making someone choose between not practicing a religion and their grades.

@peter You are forcing your beliefs on others. They must conform to thinking your class is a religion that must be put above everything else, or else you will give them bad grades. You dress it up as tolerance, but it isn't. You have specifically picked a type of tolerance that will not bother some people but will bother others. You are favoring the non-religious (and, apparently, people who aren't in sports.) Inaction can be just as intolerant as action.

@peter And, yes, a sports student should be allowed to make up a test, too. I've never been to a school where that is not the case. Other reasons also happen. I've had to go to a funeral or take care of my dying grandmother. I've known people whose kids get sick and miss class. Heck, one time I missed a test because I lost my glasses, and I just didn't have to take the test and it didn't count against me. That's the way a tolerant teacher responds. She works with you when there are problems. She does not dictate that things must go her way or else.

@trlkly : Like I said, if the rest of the class is ok, so am I. But you came to my class to learn my subject, the schedule is available before you sign up. If you don't like it there are other classes (and institutions) out there. I expect many devout students have come and gone but they kept it to themselves. Regarding funerals / hospitalization / illness that WILL get you a free pass as it's beyond anyone's control. That test you got to skip was likely just removed from the calculations, but the others counted for more as a result. I've done similar - 20 oral Q. right now -> you pass.

@peter And isn't "treat us the same as everyone else" exactly what the minorities have been asking for years? Precisely but you know full well that it's not what minority members mean by that and I just explained why you are effectively treating them differently. You might disagree of course but it's hard to see that (rhetorical) question as a good faith argument.

@peter That's utterly false; in the myriad of years I've been in higher education, many classes occur in a set time frame, semester to semester, and never change. It's meaningless to say the schedule is available if it is nearly identical each time with minor changes. That's like saying "Any color you like, as long as it's black"; it's the illusion of choice, not real choice.

@alice : they can't claim they didn't know it was coming. And their choice is to take the class or not. Just choose which is more important to you: good grades or the extracurricular activity. (if the latter, why are you here at all?)

FYI: Brandeis University that has a very sizable Jewish student body has breaks for both Rosh Hashanah and Thanksgiving. See http://www.brandeis.edu/registrar/calendar/

This answer is oozing with resentment. While I may share some of the underlying feelings, I believe that it is wrong to act them out, not to mention illegal in some places. Moreover the idea of accomodating minorities by treating them the same way as the majority is obviously faulty. The standard way of doing things is tailored to the needs of the majority, and asking a minority to adhere to that is intolerant and discriminatory.

A simple example is disability: If the lecture room is only accessible by stairs, according to your logic you might say that disabled people just have to enter the room in the same way as everbody else: by climbing the stairs. That they can't do so is their problem, isn't it?! Or they should have known better than to enroll in your course; after all they were given notice of the venue. – Minorities are accomodated not by overlooking their special needs, but by creating a situation where everybody can get by, in this case by making the room wheelchair-accessible.

I agree with the comments above some amount of leniency should be made as long as it doesn't negatively impact other students. Labs cannot be re-done, but tests can be rescheduled for that particular student.

All good answers here. Ramadan expect your students to fast during the day. As a Jewish Man I understood that fasting is a serious tenet of faith. Also, if you are a Jew or Christian the Muslim considers you a person of the book. Extend the same courtesy. Not saying anything bad... They avoid pork, alcohol and games of chance. If you ever speak of Muhammad... After you say his name say may peace be upon him.  Five times a day the call to prayer will go out. Facing Mecca prayers will be said on a prayer rug. Most Muslim countries have a system set up to where the faithful can hear said call... I.E. Iraq which I spent time in or in Istanbul which I loved. You will not see pictures of religious figures or icons as you would in Eastern Orthodox churches, Catholicism or Protestant churches. Meat is eaten and prepared in a similar manner to our kosher standards. They just call it Halal. Anyway, it would take forever to list everything.

The student must take their own decision, what is more important at the moment: to sit in the class or to make religious activities. The school should not prevent such, but if the one comes then later and means, he wouldn't take part at examine, cause instead to learn he done his religious activities, so he must get his bad note - religious activities aren't an excuse for non-completion of school duties.

Why ought this be true? If the event is scheduled ahead of time, it should be accommodated much in the same way other things are. An exam need not occur at the same time for each student; allowing a student with religious needs to take it early does nothing to benefit them and little to benefit other students if a suitable replacement exam is prepared.

This ought to be true, cause the rule of personal freedom: you are free to do, what you mean for right. But the environment has own rules too, and if you take your freedom, you must take into account, that if your act disturb third-part rules, you must accept consequences. This isn't my personal rule btw: this rule about religious activities is valid at many schools in Germany, whether you like it or not.

If the rules of the environment make no sense or are unnecessarily burdensome, they ought be removed or reworked. Simple as that.

If a single one means, the rule of community makes for him no sense, so he has to leave the community - simple as that;)

@Alice: "if a suitable replacement exam is prepared" - that's kind of the issue. Preparing only one exam already takes away resources from the respective department. Providing even more of those resources for an additional exam is usually out of the question.

@O.R.Mapper That is NOT an issue; you are required in most countries (let alone schools) to accommodate people who have physical or mental illness, or who cannot appear for other lawful reasons (jury duty springs to mind). If you are forced to accommodate them, there is no issue in accommodating religious reasons. It is never out of the question.

@Alice: As I stated in another question, those can be accommodated by allowing them to take part half a year later, when the next iteration of the exam is regularly scheduled.

@O.R.Mapper That is not accommodation; that is exclusion and forcing them to retake the class.

@Alice: That is accommodation, without such a reason as those cited by you, they might not be allowed to just undo their registration for the exam on short notice and take part later. Also, I think you misunderstood; they are explicitly not required to retake the class; their permit to take part in the exam will be extended to the next scheduled re-run of the exam.

@O.R.Mapper Again, that is forcing them to retake the class in everything but name; it's delaying their ability to graduate and go into the world. That isn't accommodation; it's in no way convenient to the student, and it requires no adaptation on the teacher or schools part.

@Alice: Compared to the alternative - failing the exam and possibly getting expelt - I'd say that is pretty convenient. Don't get me wrong - I'd be in favour of more regular scheduled exams per class than once every six months and I do see the benefit in that, but unfortunately, getting the required staff to do that is currently unrealistic. (I'd see an issue with offering a special exam for single people, as that might pave the way for allegations about them getting an easier exam than others etc.)

@O.R.Mapper That's sort of like saying a 9mm bullet is pretty convenient compared to getting set on fire; it may be true some abstract sense, but no one is particularly happy with either. If someone is deprived of their ability to take your exam and unfairly punished for it, that's not just and accommodating (and yes, a significant delay is unfair and unjust); it's your job as a teacher to accommodate them, so saying it's unrealistic smacks of not caring about students. I also don't buy the issue with special exams, as the exams ought (after the fact) be a matter of public record anyway.

@Alice: Never having seen or inspected a bullet in real life, I am not sure what happens in the described scenario, but I suppose it's nothing desirable. At the universities I'm referring to, it's the job of the employees to do research and to somehow fit in teaching, which successfully creates strong links between teaching and research, but unfortunately also means that there are no resources for doing any teaching beyond what has been regularly planned. With that in mind, university rules are very clear about what happens in case of exams not taken, a delay of a semester (which is by ...

... no means a necessary consequence of taking an exam later, unless the student was directly about to graduate) is not a catastrophe (though that might be different with the Bachelor/Master system now being introduced here), and lastly, if the student cannot solve the tasks of the exam half a year later any more, either the student should question the purpose of their learning or the teacher should wonder whether the exam actually checks the knowledge that students should and can acquire at least semi-permanently.

As for exams being public, that's up to the decision of the professors in my experience. Some prefer to not publish exam sheets after the exam so they can reuse tasks, while others provide the previous exam sheets as a means for students to prepare for future exams (which are then completely newly created, for obvious reasons). It is primarily in the latter case that someone will always find some aspect of the exam they failed and claim that aspect was more difficult than in an exam from another semester.

If a student has to choose between going to class or practicing religion, you have made no accommodation for their religion at all. Saying school must be more important than someone's god is not tolerating religion but denying it. The student has no desire not to do the work. You are forcing them not to be able to do the work by not providing alternative accommodations (which you admit are possible). Making someone choose between practicing a religion and getting a grade is no different from making someone choose between not practicing a religion and getting a grade.

@O.R.Mapper That was the point; your accommodating is between two unnecessarily harsh choices. That's not accommodation. Furthermore, your colleagues are being intellectually dishonest; not publishing results because you might be accused of something is dishonest and shows a lack of integrity.

@Alice: I'm not sure where you see the harshness in the available choice. Furthermore, please make sure to read carefully: As I wrote already, when exams are not published, it's so tasks can be reused, not to evade criticism. I suggest you rethink jumping to conclusions and switching to insults so quickly. Thank you.

"the rule of personal freedom" sounds like a religious belief. As such, it needs to be tolerated. ;-)

Plus to other recommendations (such as advanced scheduling , ...) some tips on cases, when talking about things some how related to Islam (as a course material).

Stereotypes are usually misleading, each individual reflects
his/her specific set of beliefs
Consider existence of variance or some times extreme variance in groups which all are identified with Islam label
Consider that many of them are not
observant (usually different nationalities show different proportions in this)
Consider that many political orientations and religious
beliefs have found blurred boundaries specially in recent decades
and for younger generations. So one talking about some political
topic might actually considers it a religious topic or vice versa.

May I recommend paragraphs and formatting, they make answers easier to read.

Thanks for the suggestion, applied some formatting improvement.

Description of Salat:

Muslims are commanded to perform prayers five times a day. These prayers are obligatory on every Muslim who has reached the age of puberty, with the exception being those who are mentally ill, too physically ill for it to be possible, menstruating, or experiencing postnatal bleeding. Those who are ill or otherwise physically unable to offer their prayers in the traditional form are permitted to offer their prayers while sitting or lying, as they are able. The five prayers are each assigned to certain prescribed times (al waqt) at which they must be performed, unless there is a compelling reason for not being able to perform them on time

From the above quote, I would expect the school has to provide time for Muslim students to perform prayer. This could be about 20 to 30 minutes every prayer time, except for Jumu'ah that could be carried out for half an hour to two hours.

The school should provide time; it is more difficult to argue that it must provide time, especially given how much variation there is in the times of individual prayers throughout the year. For example, where I live, the afternoon prayer can start anywhere between 14:00 and 18:00.

On Fridays Muslims have to pray, they also need water to wash themselves before they pray, in a group, you should really only take about 10 minutes maximum for them to do this. 2 hours is only at the mosque where the imam lectures about a topic.

I have now taught for about ten years to classes with a significant fraction of Muslim students. Here are a few remarks:

If you have a class on Friday afternoon, you might want to ask if it needs to be rescheduled or delayed because of the Friday's prayer. A couple of years ago I had a class on Friday starting a 2:30pm: a representative of the Muslim students asked me to delay the class of about 30 min to allow them to come back from the mosque. I told them that 30 min were a bit too much, but 15 min were ok. They replied saying that by hurrying up a bit they would have been able to be roughly on time and we agreed on a 15 min delay. Had they insisted for a longer delay, I would had asked the faculty a rescheduling of the class.
I avoid to offer to shake hands to female Muslim students when they come to my office during office hours or after an oral exam.
In my classes students participate also to electronics labs, where they divide in groups of 3-4 students each. Sometimes I have to sit among them at their bench to better show how a certain measurement works or to fix a circuit they assembled. In those cases, if there are female Muslim students in the group I pay a bit more attention at not touching them while I'm speaking.

I've never been asked to make any other special accommodation.

Things have changed since this answer was written: now everyone is supposed to avoid shaking hands.


text:
Is it unfair to regrade prior work after detecting cheating?
I teach various undergraduate courses. I make the cheating policies clear on the first day of lectures, check the student's understanding of this with an on-line quiz, and remind students of the policy almost weekly in class. I try hard to detect cheating, but cannot catch everyone.
Sometimes I discover cheating mid-way through the semester. For example, I caught some students submitting duplicate assignments. After making the discovery, I looked back to past work that they submitted to the course Web site, and found the students sent identical papers for all past assignments, but I already awarded them A's.
Is it unfair of me to go back and regrade prior assignments when students cheated?

Unfair of you to the student who cheated, sure. Unfair of you to the rest of the students you teach who didn't cheat and want integrity in their grades, no.

Perhaps you don't have to regrade his prior assignments, according to some policies cheating means failing the class, just like that. Then, if you fell sorry about the student, you could offer him lenient treatment and only regrade his prior assignments.

What happens if students cheat on your "do you understand cheating" test?

In what university is plagiarism (which is what cheating is) not a serious misdemeanor that at least causes the student to fail the class? If the only consequence of cheating is that you fail that one assignment you were caught on (and realistically if you're not completely incompetent I'm sure you'll remain undetected in a majority of cases) seems pretty encouraging to do just that.

I'd seriously check your university's policies concerning academic dishonesty. I can't speak with universal authority, but the university I attended was very specific, any form of academic dishonesty resulted in expulsion. On top of that professors promised a failing grade in the class (although that's kind of like being slapped on the wrist on your way to being hung at the gallows)

I'm curious how you didn't notice that they had submitted identical papers before. Are you not reading the papers (meaning a TA is), or do you just have an enormous amount all on the same topic so it is difficult to notice this?

@Ben expulsion for a single time cheating is certainly over the top, but falling the course? Both the universities in Europe and the US had that policy (they did let the teacher decide whether to instigate the process). Without serious consequences every student who doesn't cheat on an assignment they couldn't finish themselves would be an idiot - you're basically encouraging academic misconduct at that point imo.

I grade the papers personally, but as there are about 250 per week and each week everyone writes on the same topic, so it is not so easy for me to notice identical writing until someone submits something particularly special.

Your school's lawyers are lazy. F for the course would be reasonable, and saves you the trouble of re-grading.

Looking over previous assignments after detecting cheating is perfectly reasonable.  In fact, I'd advise that you should do it if you can.
Revising previous judgment calls about the quality of a student's work could be unfair, or at least extremely upsetting to the student.  For example, it wouldn't be reasonable to say "Remember that paper I gave you an A- on?  After thinking about it a little more, I've decided that I was too generous and your work deserved a B+ instead, so I'm changing your grade."
However, looking for evidence of cheating is different from reconsidering your grading standards.  You aren't changing your opinion of the grade the work would deserve if it was properly done.  Instead, you are trying to figure out whether it was in fact properly done.  If not, then the student never earned the grade in the first place and has no cause to complain about unfairness.
In other words, there's no statute of limitations for cheating.  Just because a grade has already been assigned, it doesn't mean you can't be found guilty of cheating, in which case the previous grade becomes irrelevant.

"In other words, there's no statute of limitations for cheating." Whether or not there is absolutely no statute of limitations for cheating depends on the school (my particular institution will only accept honor violation reports regarding a student for up to two years after graduation), but I'd be willing to bet that at most (if not all) institutions, the duration before limitation at least exceeds one semester.

+1 for the difference between regrading and reevaluating whether there's been cheating.

You should consult your institution's policies; there may be due-process requirements.
At one institution where I have worked, as I recall, university regulations required that before an instructor could impose a grade penalty for cheating, they first had to meet with the student, present the evidence, and allow the student to respond.  The instructor could then make a determination as to whether cheating had occurred, but the student had the right to demand a hearing before a university panel set up for that purpose, whose decision could overrule the instructor.  Further appeals were possible beyond that point.  Until the student either accepted the charge, or exhausted their appeals, the instructor had to grade the assignment under the assumption that it was completed honestly.
So under such a policy, you could certainly go back and look at the past assignments to see if you thought there was evidence of cheating; but you could not actually change the grade until the hearing process was duly completed.

US fetishism with lawsuits starts at college already.

US fetishism with lawsuits starts in kindergarten, if not before. It is what it is, unfortunately.

I don't see how this answer is related to past assignments any more than current ones.

@Mehrdad this answer is relevant in as much as it says: "What is the schools policy?" THAT determines what can/should/will be done - about this assignment, past assignments, future: School policy can trump all or give complete decision to teacher. Same thing about breaking "laws" differs from state to state, country to country.

@CapeCode Is that not just "innocent until proven guilty"? If I were accused of cheating, but was innocent, I'd certainly like the right to have my case heard.

@Moriarty sure it's important to have a way to dispute a decision but the usual process should be: give the kid a 0 -> move to something better to do, not a whole season of 'Ally McBeal'

@CapeCode, "you're permitted to appeal to a higher authority" is just about the most basic system of justice imaginable. That's not "lawsuit fetishism"; that's simply trying to move beyond allowing a single (involved!) person to make life-changing judgements.

I think we all agree that it's reasonable for the student to have to have his/her side of the story heard.  The only difference here is whether the instructor makes the grade change first and waits to see if the student complains, or talks to the student first.  Under the policy I described in my answer, in most cases the instructor would meet with the student and explain the evidence, the student would accept the decision, and the grade was changed.  The various levels of appeals I described were rarely used.

@NathanTuggy for people like me who are unfamiliar with the common law system, so much formalism for something that trivial is amusing. My point is that, IMO, the same amount of fairness can be achieved in a much more expedite manner. My comment was not meant as criticism of this answer.

You have detected a willful and on-going pattern of cheating.
I don't know about your school, but many including mine have an explicit policy on academic misconduct. Indeed, we're required to copy the policy into our course syllabus every semester. Ours reads in part:

Penalties for academic misconduct in any course may include a failing grade on the assignment, a failing grade in the course, or any other course-related sanction the instructor determines to be appropriate.

(Emphasis added.)
One option is to preserve and document the evidence and simply inform your department head that you are summarily failing the students. Once he or she is on board you tell the students (in private, of course) and move on.
That way the question of re-grading doesn't come up.

"Unfair" is a pretty slippery concept.  As I have quipped several times on this site already, I feel very confident that by writing down even some of the things that students insist must be done in the name of fairness, we could logically deduce that the only fair thing to do is to give them all A's.  More seriously: let's talk ethics instead of fairness.  I don't find regrading homework in lieu of information gained to be unethical in the slightest.  If you graded a problem incorrectly and later noticed that it was wrong, then on the contrary the ethical thing to do would be to change the grade.  However a lot of instructors would think twice about doing this because students may find it unfair not be happy about it.  (Sometimes they regrade the problem and say "I'll give you the credit anyway", but  isn't that truly unfair to the other students??)
(Added: I agree with Anonymous Mathematician's answer that revisiting subjective grading issues after the fact is less defensible.  What I had in mind above was noticing that you added up 20 and 30 and 20 and got 90 and similarly clearcut matters.)
I don't think a lack of detecting cheating is a grading error, so regrading when you detect cheating ought to be more defensible than the in principle correct practice of fixing incorrectly high grades.  However, I predict that the students may find it unfair not be happy about it.  A regrade may encourage the students to contest the cheating, which is of course their right.  So, as usual, when you accuse students of cheating you can't do so lightly.
But hold on a minute: is the nickel-and-dime approach of regrading necessary in this case?  You say that you have already caught the students cheating on other assignments.  You don't build a case of academic dishonesty piecemeal: you look at all the incriminating evidence at once.  The students' past duplicate assignments can certainly be used as evidence in your present allegations of academic dishonesty.  If they are found guilty of cheating, then the penalty should not be localized to precisely the problem sets in which cheating was observed (especially if the cheating takes place across multiple problem sets).  In the circles I travel in, having their homework grade for the entire course reduced to zero would be one of the lightest punishments on the table in this case.  No worry about regrades if that happens.

IIRC, in Germany there have been court decisions that it is not okay to change a grade for the worse after having published the results of an exam. As a grader, you have one shot -- make it count. (I'm not sure how this applies to provable cases of cheating, though.)

@Raphael: In Germany, some prominent people’s doctoral degree was revoked due to cheating in the thesis – in one case, more than 30 years later.

@Raphael I imagine it is similar to what happens in Spain. The results are published and the student has the opportunity to see the exam and discuss the results with the professor before the grade is made final. If you change the grades afterwards, you are taking from the students the due process, and may end up with an unfair (or, more likely, unexplained) grade.

@Raphael: I would severely doubt that. What might be questionable is retroactively changing the grade for the worse when a mistake by the grader is noticed, in particular when that mistake is pointed out by the student (though declaring the exam or task void for all involved could be acceptable). Other than that, as a matter of fact, my German university explicitly declares in its exam regulations that are read out before every exam that "any awarded grade, certificate or degree will be revoked at any later time if cheating or attempted cheating is discovered afterwards".

@Raphael: For what it's worth, please note that legislation differs between types of exams. What you are referring to might be true for highschool grades; there are state-specific time limits of a few years for retroactively revoking Abitur (A levels) grades when cheating is discovered later on, and thus possibly, there are even less or no such restrictions when it comes to university grades.

In cases not related to cheating, I think there actually can be a fairness argument related to not 'fixing' grades where errors in the student's favor were discovered, especially if a significant amount of time has passed. In particular, students taking many classes often need to budget their time between those classes. When I was in undergrad, if I was going into a final exam with a 98% average in the class, I would tend to budget less time for preparation for that exam than if I were going into it with a 90% average. Retroactively changing a grade wouldn't have allowed me to plan properly.

In cases of cheating, though, then the student should just be thankful that you're only going back and regrading those particular assignments rather than initiating expulsion proceedings, especially in the case where you've found an ongoing pattern of cheating. The only thing you'd need to be careful about is making sure that both students were willing participants in the cheating, rather than one student copying another without their knowledge. I was later made aware of at least one incident in which someone behind me was copying my exam answers. Thankfully, they had a different form. :)

Cheating is an Academic crime that should be punished by academic death.
Grade change has nothing to do with it.
It is the academic institute's policy to contain such crime by expulsion.

-1 For the absolutism. In particular, the final sentence is nonsense: there is no single world-wide policy. You can claim it's a duty but it's clearly not universally a policy.

In all fairness, I think cheating is just the same as answering correctly.
In real life, you are graded on the result of you work. If you are asked to deliver X and deliver X, that is acceptable regardless of the means (unless illegal).
What really is the difference between cheating or studying? in the long run, I would argue that cheating is actually a much more beneficial skill to lean. For example if you know how to cheat, you can cheat at any subject, if you study for math, you wont necessarily pass science.
School is suppose to prepare you for life, And thus should take into account things like technology. Never in life will a boss tell a co-worker to find a solution to a problem but they can not use the internet or their mobile phone to find the answer. Before starting my own business, I have worked for a few larger companies and the mentality of most of the young out of college employees seem to be if you are tasked with an assignment, do it on your own and don't ask anyone for help even if you don't know the answer or else you will seem incapable, probably because they have this mindset coming out of school that asking peers for the answer to a problem is not the way things are done.
If you student(s) have found a way to receive a positive result with less work, I think that deserves and A...
The exception I would give is plagiarism.

Isn't a point that cheating is illegal?

In the "real world," people are routinely fired if they are caught passing off someone else's work as their own. So if you truly believe that the best way to prepare students for the "real world" is to mimic it as closely as possible, then the best response to catching a student cheating would be expulsion. (I'm not advocating expulsion, just pointing out the logical inconsistencies in your answer.)

And if you are asked to deliver X and do not deliver X, because have no idea how to achieve X, that is a severe problem in the "real world". The methods of cheating you might learn in educational facilities can help you get around the requirement that you have to submit the result of your own work, while many others are submitting their own results for the same task. They cannot help you get around the requirement that a solution that did not previously exist has to be developed.

@PeterJansson Cheating (in the united states) is not illegal. Plagiarism is.

@ff524 I did not say passing off someone else's work, the OP never said that he/she took some one else's paper and submitted it. Also that would be plagiarism in that case.

@O.R.Mapper But in this case X was delivered, was it not?

@SteffanPerry: Only because of the course situation. In the "real world", there would not be any course, or other students, from whom X could have been duplicated. Hence, there would not have been any X to deliver.

In the "real world", passing off some other employee's work as your own is a problem. But if I'm told "take two weeks to perform a study about problem XYZ", and the next day I return and say "I found that someone has already done the study that we want, and here it is", that's an excellent result.

Why should academia have the same standards as industry?  The goals are totally different.

Also, by the way, plagiarism is not illegal per se in the US (or in any other country that I know of.)  I think you may be confusing it with copyright infringement.  (And although cheating is also not illegal per se, many instances of cheating in the business world would constitute fraud.)

"Cheating" means breaking the rules that were assigned to you with regard to your specific task, not necessarily breaking laws. Anyone who thinks that they can't get in trouble in the business world for not following rules laid out by their superiors is either not actually in the business world or soon won't be. The idea that you acquire skills in X by precisely replicating the conditions under which you will eventually perform X is similarly out of contact with reality (academic or no). This answer could be dangerous if it weren't so over the top.  As is, I doubt anyone will be taken in.

The result that instructors are asking for is not X per se, but evidence that the student can produce X. If you cheat, you are not delivering that result, and you should be graded accordingly.

Using a public-domain or internally-developed solution that already exists is fine in the business world (and even in academia in the context of research... almost any good research builds on previous work.) What is not fine is claiming it as one's own. That will get you expelled in academia and fired in the business world. Most people don't like dishonest employees... and the ones that do aren't the types you'd want to work for or with. Thinking you're above the rules and/or that dishonesty is ok is certainly not good preparation for the real world (except maybe politics or espionage.)

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text:
Research comparing paper and online student evaluations of instruction

What research exists (point me toward references) that compares the effectiveness, validity, and security (or at least a subset of these) of paper and online student evaluations of instructors?

At my institution, a working group of faculty and administrators have proposed switching from a paper-based student evaluation system to an online system. I do not doubt that an online system will save time and money. The current system involves printing, sorting, distributing, collecting, sorting again, reading, and processing three pieces of paper for each student enrolled in each course, followed by data entry and number crunching. I lose an entire period of class time when these happen so that we can guarantee most students participate. According to the office that coordinates this effort, the time and cost involved are equivalent to one full-time employee above and beyond what people are already paid to do.
However, many faculty members have raised concerns, among which are the following:

Participation will decrease. Only the motivated (very conscientious and very irritated) will participate, potentially skewing the results.
In order to increase participation, instructors will be required to offer "carrots" that amount to grade inflation.
Since all students on the roster will be notified by email, even students enrolled in the course, but who have never come to class, will be evaluating instructors. These students who have not participated, do have a right to evaluate instructors, but usually do not because it occurs during class time.
Student evaluation of instructor surveys will no longer be anonymous. Students will have to log in with a certified log in to verify that they are who they say they are and to match them to surveys for specific classes. While this data will be "anonymized" prior to processing and distribution back to instructors, it will always exist somewhere with identifying information attached to it.

Members of the working group have responded to these and other concerns with statements beginning "Research shows..." However, as an academic, I do not believe "research" until I have seen it myself. The working group has not yet provided a list of references.

While this data will be "anonymized" prior to processing and distribution back to instructors, it will always exist somewhere with identifying information attached to it. - Why would the survey answers tie back to the student? It is perfectly possible to record that a student "voted" without actually connecting answers back to their individual vote. If you cannot create a truly anonymous system, that will lower participation (amongst the very irritated), skewing results.

"Participation will decrease." - You can implement a policy like, students who complete they evaluations have access to final grades several weeks sooner than students who don't. (I've attended a school that implemented this, and also what earthling said)

@earthling - While I understand that this can be done, not all of my colleagues do.

@ff524 - That is one of the "incentives" for participation that has been suggested, but faculty do not like holding grades hostage, which we currently do not do with the existing system.

@earthling: Certainly it is possible to store the responses only in anonymous form. The question is, how do you convince students that this is really being done? Also consider that there may arise cases where university officials really want to break anonymity; what if a response contains reports of criminal activity by an instructor, or threats of violence or self-harm? Are people willing to have a system that would make such  responses impossible to trace?

@NateEldredge If they want non-anonymity they will get lower responses. That is why many local governments have "anonymous tip lines" where people can leave information and still feel safe. A separate issue is what to do when you see something that you want to tie back to someone ("I know the instructor is stealing the computers."). You can investigate anonymous tips but you can also ask the the class for "someone to step forward, under protection" where only one person knows who is coming forward. There are always solutions. Which is better, a tip without an ID or no tip at all?

There has been quite a bit of literature on this topic. Because your question is broad (regarding acceptability, security, reliability, and validity), I have provided a brief overview; these articles should provide you with a starting point to locate additional information.
Reliability and Validity
A recent article providing an overview of the validity of different student evaluation methods in general may be of interest; the article does address online administration as one component impacting validity (Spooren, Brockx, & Mortelmans, 2013).
In a longitudinal study of over 63,000 student evaluations over 10 years (comparing paper in-class with electronic out-of-class evaluations), no significant differences in evaluation scores were found due to administration method (Risquez, Vaughan, & Murphy, 2015). However, one study had nearly 200 business management students evaluate the same teaching with both on paper and electronically within two weeks (Gamliel & Davidovitz, 2005). Although the mean scores were similar between the two groups, stability of scores was higher in the paper method. Thus, if the same teacher were to be evaluated multiple times, there might be more variance if the method of administration changed. The authors suggest that paper evaluations may allow students to look at the written horizontal profile of their responses, which they may recall on the second administration. In contrast, electronic systems that display questions differently may remove this effect.
A small study of over 120 medical students found that those who submitted paper evaluations immediately after training gave more favorable reviews than those that submitted electronic feedback at a later point in time (Palmer, 2009). The author posits that it is possible the rapport between the instructor and students immediately after session lead to better reviews, while those providing electronic evaluations did not have that social pressure. However, they state it is also possible that the time required to log-in and take the electronic survey may have been irritating, resulting in more negative evaluations.
Response Rates and Timing
Adams and Umbach (2012), reviewed 135,000 online course evaluations completed by 22,000 students. They found that students were more likely to respond to evaluations for courses within their major, and less likely to respond for ungraded courses or if the student was receiving a D or F grade in the class. They also noted some differences in response rates across majors, and evidence of survey fatigue that may impact response rates. Similarly, a study of graduate students using online course evaluations found that those students who responded earlier had more positive course ratings and expected to get higher grades, while those who submitted information later had lower grade expectations and course satisfaction (Estelami, 2014). The author suggests that universities must be aware that early/late responders differ in several specific ways that may impact the data they provide. In contrast, Pegden and Tucker (2012) found that the timing of completing the evaluation electronically did not impact responses, as evaluations were generally stable regardless of when there were completed.
Another article based on online evaluations at the University of British Columbia provides guidance on how to assess adequate response rates to enhance reliability and validity (Zumrawi, Bates, Schroeder, 2014). Nulty (2008) provides suggestions for improving response rates for teaching surveys, and compares paper/electronic methods; he suggests a mixed method approach may result in the highest response rate.
Acceptability
A study of nearly 1,000 students found fewer students completed the electronic version compared to a paper survey; students reported frustration with the site’s complicated and time consuming log-in process and were concerned about anonymity (Dommeyer, Baum, & Hanna, 2002). However, those authors caution that these burdens may be reduced as technology improves. Indeed, a more recent study of over 1,000 students found that students preferred the electronic evaluation option because they felt it was more anonymous, convenient, and presented less time pressure than completing the survey in class (Kinash, Knight, & Hives, 2011). A study of student perceptions about what is important in an online evaluation system reported a list of student concerns related to anonymity, ease of use, and being made aware of the impact of their responses (Nevo, McCLean, Nevo, 2010); this study provides information on a range of student concerns related to the evaluation system, with suggestions for other universities to follow.
Anecdotally, my graduate school recently transitioned from paper to online evaluations. I prefer the online evaluations because they allow me time to gather my thoughts, and I can provide more structured feedback regarding the class. Log-in is simple and is based on the universal log-in for our university; I take it on faith it is de-identified before being sent the instructor. Given how small some of our graduate courses are, that actually feels more anonymous than turning in a paper survey with my handwriting. We receive multiple email reminders to take the surveys during the last two weeks of class, which indicate the overall percent of students that have already responded (a form of social pressure, I suppose). There are only two things I dislike about the system. First, the response period ends before the final exam period begins, so you cannot include thoughts about the exam in your evaluation (the survey ceases to function). Second, responses are only available to the department chair, tenure committees, and the professor being evaluated. At my undergraduate institution all course evaluations were public, so students could read the evaluations of past classes to determine whether and when to take the course.

Adams, M. J., & Umbach, P. D. (2012). Nonresponse and online student
evaluations of teaching: Understanding the influence of salience,
fatigue, and academic environments. Research in Higher Education,
53(5), 576-591.
Dommeyer, C. J., Baum, P., & Hanna, R. W. (2002). College students'
attitudes toward methods of collecting teaching evaluations: In-class
versus on-line. Journal of Education for Business, 78(1), 11-15.
Estelami, H. (2014). The Effects of Survey Timing on Student
Evaluation of Teaching Measures Obtained Using Online Surveys.
Journal of Marketing Education, DOI: 10.1177/0273475314552324.
Gamliel, E., & Davidovitz, L. (2005). Online versus traditional
teaching evaluation: Mode can matter. Assessment & Evaluation in
Higher Education, 30(6), 581-592.
Kinash, S., Knight, D., & Hives, L. (2011). Student perspective on
electronic evaluation of teaching. Studies in learning, evaluation,
innovation and development, 8(1), 86-97.
Nevo, D., McClean, R., & Nevo, S. (2010). Harnessing information
technology to improve the process of students' evaluations of
teaching: An exploration of students' critical success factors of
online evaluations. Journal of Information Systems Education, 21(1),
99-109.
Nulty, D. D. (2008). The adequacy of response rates to online and
paper surveys: what can be done?. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher
Education, 33(3), 301-314.
Palmer, R. (2009). Evaluation of teaching--paper versus electronic
methods. Medical teacher, 31(12), 1094-1094.
Pegden, J. A., & Tucker, B. (2012). Does the timing of evaluations
matter? An investigation into online student feedback and whether
timing has an impact. Studies in Learning, Evaluation, Innovation &
Development, 9(1), 55-65.
Risquez, A., Vaughan, E., & Murphy, M. (2015). Online student
evaluations of teaching: what are we sacrificing for the affordances
of technology?. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 40(1),
120-134.
Spooren, P., Brockx, B., & Mortelmans, D. (2013). On the Validity of
Student Evaluation of Teaching The State of the Art. Review of
Educational Research, 83(4), 598-642.
Zumrawi, A. A., Bates, S. P., & Schroeder, M. (2014). What response
rates are needed to make reliable inferences from student evaluations
of teaching?. Educational Research and Evaluation, 20(7-8), 557-563.

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text:
How to save one's ass in the last year of PhD with supervisors that never keep up with the project?
It is a doctoral project in engineering, a long, tedious, and grumbling story. I was contracted as a PhD candidate for another project but when I started, the director suggested me to change for the current one (which they just obtained some funds). Later, a co-director was added who has never led a doctoral thesis before and has no ambition in research but is a nice person to chat with given the previous expertise with administrative tasks (it's the truth...) I accepted and began my journey.
In the beginning, it was the 1st director that taught the 2nd director and me the idea of the project. Gradually, I found out that they repeated the same stuff in all the meetings. When I asked for suggestions on choosing a focus of the project, they didn't shed many lights but suggested a topic that is not within the scope of our group. I tried to avoid it but through more and more readings, I came to realize that this topic was unneglectable for the project. Luckily I got some idea and tried to start either with software analysis or experiment. I asked my directors for support in acquiring software license and equipment, they have been "working on solutions" for years without results till now, not to mention the great inertia to keep up with the project. They copied my report as accessing report for me and their comments to my report were usually only correcting the department name...
I did my best to keep it cool and went for an exchange program at another university in another country. There, I got something done, which was not perfect but more persuasive than the non-evolutional system diagram drawn by my director in each meeting. After the exchange program, I realized that there was a lot of room for improvement even corrections which involved concepts/skills in another field. And such improvement and correction is the essential part of my work- how to analyze data and how to link analysis to reality. We happen to have another research group in our university that works in this field but crosstalk is not appreciated especially with the absence of your own directors... Anyway, I convinced them that I need someone who could give me directions in my project. They said that they would try to find a third director for me from that group. Months have passed with me chasing them from time to time. Finally, they found someone and we went to visit this professor together. I received some useful suggestions then I asked my directors if we could initiate the procedure to include this professor as my third director and they replied: "oh, let's see if it's necessary". I told them I need at least to make my papers and thesis "theoretically correct". If there is any fatal mistake that none of us could tell, I will be failed for sure.
I've got the feeling that I have survived many heart attacks and mental disturbances these years. (Compared with my colleagues, who have given up long before talking to these directors: even if their topics are not as "off-topic" as mine, they didn't receive any guidance either...) Now it is my last year or months of the doctoral journey, I have no faith in receiving academic help from my directors. Their reluctance to bring in someone who knows it would make me drawn (everyone should sign a paper to include a third director so I cannot go my way). Probably by the time they agree to sign, I would only have 2 months left... What should I do? Any practical suggestions?
Revised with more specific questions that came to my mind.
1) I may have to accept that I will never have a "useful" director till the end. However, I know 2-3 other professors from different institutions. Is it very much against conventions to ask for their help to review my papers and doctoral thesis?
2) In order to get things done as soon as possible, should I put more effort on the publication or on the final thesis? I have no publication yet and just started writing the thesis... Is the doctoral thesis more like a continuous physical work?
3) How to make use of my own directors? The primary director has had several graduated PhD students. Given the circumstance, it would be unlikely that they even bother to read my thesis. I don't know how they plan to have PhD graduated without knowing anything.

Please can you narrow down your question? At the moment you give a long and specific set of circumstances and ask "what should I do?", which is not a good fit for SE.

You seem to have a problem of waiting for permission before doing something: you mention that something was "not appreciated" so you didn't do it, then you're wondering about what is within or "out of convention", but who cares about convention? What's the problem of going beyond what is "of convention"?  You waited months to set up a meeting with someone who may have helped you (and waited for your advisors to do it), and so on.
Stop asking for permission. Break the "rules" (some of which you may think are rules even if they aren't) and ask for forgiveness later, if even necessary.
Take charge of your PhD and get the help you need: ask these professors at other places to read your stuff. Tell your directors that you're doing it. Ask your directors about publications versus thesis. Figure out what you need to do to not fail your PhD, and if you want to stay in academia, start looking for postdocs with advisors you feel can work with you (but as a postdoc you are expected to be much more independent than you seem to be at this point.).

You are right. I should have been more proactive and dominant. I always wanted to involve my directors within my activities so that they wouldn't get left out. Besides, in my culture people do respect the professors. During the past years, each time I proposed some collaboration they would say let them do it and later they didn't... Now I understand it's just their gesture rather than intention. I should have just notified them and do it myself.

I am not sure if this advice will help or not.  When I started my PhD work I had a vision many great things I wanted to accomplish.  I had big plans.  I mentioned this one day to may main adviser.  He is very accomplished and well known in our field.  He immediately, guided my thinking and strongly advised that I change my thoughts.  He told me my goal as a PhD student was to get done as fast as possible and that my real research and big picture goals will happen after I earned my PhD.  At first, I did not like this advice.  Since then I have valued it just about as much as anything I have ever learned.  So, is there some way you can adopt this kind of approach towards the time and resources you have left and just figure out how to get done?  Sorry to answer your question with a question.

I agree. In my case, I have already cut short my project scope because I knew I won't be able to finish that much. 4 years for an engineering PhD with 2.5 years isolated from tools and guidance can't make anything big. I would figure out a way to get myself out of there asap.


text:
How to withdraw ones name from an already published paper
I am having the following trouble. Within a collaboration I was asked to prepare and pre-characterize some samples. I did so and sent the samples along with a report on the characterization results.
A year later I received a first draft of a paper: some paragraphs related to the collaborators experimental technique some copy paste of older papers of his. I thought I could safely ignore this as it was just meant to signal "we are working on this!".
Next thing I get (four months later): Mail from the submitting author

Congratulations, paper accepted!

I asked him to send me the draft: Nothing!
Six weeks later, after having met one of his PhD students at a conference the submitting author sends me the proof from the publisher for proofreading. I come up with six pages of corrections (ranging from basic logical errors in argumentation to manipulative data representation), sent it to all coauthors (I assumed the others also might not have seen the manuscript before) and received zero feedback.
Paper was published two weeks later with most of my grammatical and semantical corrections incorporated.
I asked my boss (also co-author on the paper) how to deal with it. His answer: "Take it as one more paper and forget it!".
However, I do agree with this attitude. Now the tricky part: I never agreed on the authorship nor explicitly disagreed (hoping to bring the paper in a decent shape and considering the amount of work already put in). Should I adress the editor asking to withdraw my name arguing that I basically had not seen the paper? Or should I also point out the obvious flaws which might lead to a complete rejection?

You say "most of my grammatical and semantical corrections [were] incorporated".  Is this a typo (ie, you meant to say they weren't and were mostly ignored)? If you gave them six pages of issues and suggested corrections, and they implemented them, then combined with the actual bit of the research you contributed that sounds like you meet reasonable metrics for authorship criteria.  But at the end you talk about the obvious flaws, so I'm thinking maybe you meant to imply the "weren't" version.

Implicit is that your objections related to logic and data manipulation were not addressed?

@zibadawa timmy Sorry that it was unclear. I ment to say that "grammatical and semantical corrections were incorporated". However, this corresponded to merely about one of my six pages corrections. Inconsistencies and issues raised on the data analysis part were not corrected. Considering the amount of research contributed I clearly meet the criteria for authorship, however, I do not agree with the scientific conclusions and my arguments were not considered, i.e. there was no proper discussion before publishing.

The most effective and natural method would be to simply ask, possibly explain your situation if needed, to the editor or publisher of the paper.
If you have more issues with the publication, you are free to mention them, but this is mostly orthogonal to whether you want your name on the possible publication.
It would also be a good idea to inform your co-authors of this decision, as they may take it badly if they aren't notified.

It's more complicated to act now if you didn't do it right away, but to me the big problem here is that these people submitted a paper with your name on it, without asking for your permission first.
Once you notice that a paper has been submitted, or accepted, or published, with your name on it, and you didn't give permission for this to happen, my opinion is that you should contact the submitters immediately, let them know that you hadn't agreed to this, that this is not acceptable, and that you need a copy of the draft to decide whether you are OK with the paper bearing your name. If they don't answer (as is the case here) you have every right to request them to remove your name from that paper that you didn't saw. If they don't do it, you should escalate to whoever is publishing the paper and let them know that the material has been submitted without your consent and you don't want your name associated to it.
(Let me clarify that working with people on stuff, even circulating early drafts and exchanging feedback, does not mean that you implicitly agreed to these people submitting without your agreement. Just because you agreed to the general idea of publishing something with these people eventually but not agree with the publication of a paper in its current form. The actual submission of the paper for publication shouldn't happen unless all authors have had a chance to confirm that they were OK with it, e.g., with the choice of venue, with the current shape of the draft, etc.)

I do understand your issue with the paper that was eventually published: you are an author, but you don't agree to what was in it. So neither accepting nor rejecting can be the answer here. In other words: you might not be asking the right question. Instead, I would do what one does to criticize any paper one wants to criticize, i.e., I would do what everyone does daily in scientific communication: publish a second paper with all you have to say.
Consider two scenarios: in the first, author A publishes a paper and author B disagrees with it; in the second one, author A publishes a paper and years later author A him/herself wants to change his/her own view on it. In both cases, the initial paper would be the object of a critique made in a second paper, right? After all, he/she couldn't simply "change" a paper published earlier (maybe days or weeks in your case, maybe years in author A's case). So it's the same here. I'd turn those 6 pages of corrections into a paper (a "reply" do the first one). You could do it by yourself or with any (or all) of your coauthors, but you can (and should, in my opinion) always do it.

I disagree with your answer, because OP's problem is not that he has a different opinion about what is written, but that he thinks that there are basic logical errors in argumentation to manipulative data representation. Having such a bogus paper published under one's name can hurt you, because a reader could assume that OP agreed to publication of these errors and manipulations.

You're half right: my answer is not the only possible. There are different paths here. I presented one, which assumes the paper published will hardly be corrected by the editor, so publishing an "erratum" or self-critique (or simply a critique, regarding the OP's co-authors) as a second paper is a way. Another would be to present a direct claim to the editor with some sort of request, but what would exactly be appropriate here: to remove OP's name from authors? To replace the paper for a corrected version? Or to publish an erratum along with it? These are all options available do the OP.

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text:
Possibility of doing mathematical/theoretical research with software-development principles
I come from a mathematical physics background, so I have very little experience with other areas of Math, so what I say may not apply to mathematics research in general obviously (and probably much less for other areas of theoretical sciences). Please let me know if this question is suitable for this site.
In short, what I observed my field of mathematical physics is that most recent advancements generally consists of either finding links between physical models (like percolation, random walks, and spin models), or making an incremental (yet non-trivial) improvement over previous state-of-the-art techniques to solve major open problems. I suspect this to be true for most science fields as well (say theoretical physics or computer science).
I think the latter is exemplified in a very important paper by Duminil-Copin that rigorously establishes the criticality of the self-dual point for the random-cluster model. The paper is almost 30 pages long, but most of it is just basic motivation and introducing standard definitions or classical theorems to set up the main arguments. The core idea is encapsulated in exactly one figure (Figure 6 in the paper), and that is a modified box-crossing argument for percolation models satisfying the FKG inequality. However, to convey this very important argument, the author had to (justifiably) spend much ink on giving context, and I think this is a fundamental inefficiency of the paper-publishing medium.
On the contrary, I find that many software-development principles/techniques may address the inefficiency of paper-publishing, and perhaps they can be implemented in some sort of online system like Github. Note that I'm not suggesting that we should do mathematical research programmatically, or invent a new language that allows us to "code-up" proof. These software-development principles should only pertain to organizing and communicating the mathematical results (and not the act of deriving them). To give a few examples for concreteness.
Reducing code repetition: this one translates to collating and organizing a list of classical or recent results that is verified and deemed useful by most researchers into a "repository". Whenever a researcher wishes to communicate a result that heavily relies of them, they can simply "import" them from the corresponding repositories accepted by the community. Similar to how you would pip install and import numpy for Python projects, instead of rewriting these packages yourself from scratch (which most likely contains errors or be inefficient).
Incremental updates and version control: if one finds an improvement of an existing theorem/technique, then they should "clean-up" the findings and make the minimal changes necessarily to the existing "codebase". The referee process would then be some sort of pull-request review, and the "moderator" can then choose to accept or reject the changes based on correctness and relevance. Of course, this may be very difficult in practice, as it is unclear who that "moderator" should be, especially if the "commit" is exceptionally novel or difficult to understand. Of course, if the commit is later discovered to be incorrect, some sort of version control system would allow it to be easily undone.
Abstraction and inheritance: The act of "finding links between models/areas" would be analogous to a code-refactoring effort, which would better organize the existing "mathematical objects". For instance, the Ising model is a special case of the random-cluster model, so the former can simply subclass from the latter, inheriting the latter's "attributes and methods". Of course, the Ising model has many attributes/representations that the random-cluster model does not have, such as the random-current expansion. To handle this, one can simply add new attributes to the Ising model class without repeating the attributes inherited from the random-cluster model.
If everything goes well, the paper-publishing process would be akin to writing some custom scripts that rely on existing packages. For example, you would organize all the technical lemmas (that are not sufficiently general for committing to a major repo) into utility files, and the "paper" itself would be a main script that contains the actual logic of the proof using these lemmas and packages.
My questions are:

Are there already existing systems that attempt to organize scientific research, or at least a very small research topic, into this sort of system? I know about the polymath project, but it's still a bit lacking in terms of the above-mentioned Github-like functionalities.
Is this system any practical for mathematical research in general, especially for fields where results are generally less incremental or less problem-solving in nature?
How would you think writing textbooks, monographs, or review papers would work under this framework, especially if they are pedagogical in nature?

It seems that the most important question is missing: Does this system have any chance to work at all in any field of mathematics? The answer is most certainly no, no matter how incremental the results in the field are. It also won't work in mathematical physics. The reason is that the evolution and the writing of new (and also old) maths is a much, much messier process than your suggestion seems to assume.

(Maybe your second question is similar to the question I mentioned, but it seems to assume that the proposed system will at least work in some fields.)

@JochenGlueck, thank you for your input. I guess I should have restricted my field to really mathematical physics dealing statistical models (like Ising, GFF, Euclidean fields, etc.) Some of the recent problems are solved by mainly discovering links between these models, or new representations of old ones. This plus careful handling of probabilistic arguments are the main recipes of solving certain open problems

@JochenGlueck, for other fields with a more messier research process. Would you think it's at least possible to maintain a package of classical results (that everyone would agree is correct and relevant), and writing a paper would not necessarily be making incremental commits, but rather building your own custom software not meant to be maintained, etc

Do not reinvent the wheel: https://www.nature.com/articles/s42005-020-00403-4

Well, such packages of classical (and less classical) results exist and have been common for a long time: they're called textbooks and monographs. ;-)

@JochenGlueck But they become outdated quick if the field is sufficiently active. And some of which are not generally affordable

Maintaining code consistency and quality across anything larger in total than a screen or two of code is hard. Look to the successful open source projects out there - without dedicated maintainers who rule with an iron fist, it becomes chaos. Random folks 'simply adding new' stuff to code will render the experiment useless very rapidly.

Your approach is the tipical top-down approach of people trying to optimize something already existing.
This approach is well known to bring unstable steady state and inefficient systems.
However, you are welcome to publish a paper showing a proof of concept of your novel system of publications, there are many discussions on the failures of the current system and your voice will be listened, if you have the patience of carefully exposing your ideas.
Regarding exposing your ideas, I must note that I am deeply offended you mention GitHub as the archetype of the "central" repository. This denotes either:

ignorance of the many subversioning system that have been developed over the years and therefore your refer to the successful commercial one (OP in a comment states

And no, I have not used any other subversioning system (nor do I know
of anyone that does)

so I suggest OP to have a look at least to GitLab (to be based on Git), if not even Mercurial to see a different philosophy;

typical ego and superiority feelings "of course I know GitHub is just an example, but it is to explain my very important and complex idea to the mass of ignorant".

Don't take it personally, I am just offended by the exposition of your idea, not by the idea or by you.
At last, but not at least, do a deep literature research on what is already being tried, for example regarding your goal of

the paper-publishing process would be akin to writing some custom
scripts that rely on existing packages

there are some beautiful tools and trials out there, for example this interactive paper based on Jupyter.
Good luck!

The discussion about Gitlab has been moved to chat.

Also, this answer does come across rather hostile against the question-asker (e.g., "typical ego and superiority feelings"). I'm sure this was unintentional, but I recommend trying to rephrase a bit to avoid this.

@cag51 Thank you. However, I still believe this answer does not address my question (besides being unnecessarily hostile, unprovoked nonetheless). Also, the resource provided is irrelevant to the question. The question pertains to theoretical research not experimental, and explicitly states that the goal isn't to make Math programmatic.

@PeaBrane - I believe EarlGray is providing what we call a frame challenge; instead of telling you how to do a thing, they invite you to step back and consider whether you are doing the right thing. And there is some attempt to address your question of whether your idea is practical.  I understand this may not be what you wanted, but mods do not delete answers (even if they are objectively incorrect); that is left to the voters. Rather, we only delete clear nonsense that does not even try to answer the question. But relax, some other answers are likely to come in if your question stays open

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