High Volume Office Hours

As you know, the demand for office hours is increasing as we get closer to finals. In particular, Western University notes: Students will visit your office hours expecting to hold an hour-long one-on-one study session. This could certainly be valuable for the student, but can you manage such a session given the time constraints that come with being an instructor of a large class? If the answer is no, you may want to organize a dedicated review session.  Dedicated review sessions or inviting more than one student at a time into office hours may be more efficient (before doing so, confirm with students that no one has a private matter to discuss). Record the review session so that it is available for students who were unable to attend.

I interviewed a few of our award-winning AIs in Luddy brainstormed tips based on how they manage office hours in large enrollment classes during finals which may be a bit different than the logistical systems you usually use to manage your large enrollment courses.

Before office hours begin –

• Compile a list of FAQs that have occurred over the semester. FAQ list can be generated from:

  • Any questions frequently emailed to instructors/AIs or posted in a community forum (such as Slack, InScribe or MSTeams)

  • Any questions that students have answered incorrectly in the past in discussion sections or labs

  • Any questions/concepts that have been historically challenging for students since the course has been taught

  • Any questions reviewed to be difficult based on analytics you have access to from Canvas or other course tools.

• Provide an agenda to students prior to office hours letting them know what topics you plan to cover during office hours before addressing individual questions.

• Solicit questions from students. Many of the questions can be consolidated to address more than one concern.

• Prepare handouts that cover FAQs that can be referenced during office hours.

During Office Hours

• Moderate the waiting rooms. Ask students to submit questions while in waiting rooms and direct to rooms as frequently as possible

• While students wait

  • Share threads to community forums in waiting rooms for students to review while waiting for individual help.

  • Share a list of study strategies that may be useful to enact.

• Edit videos used during pandemic that address FAQs. Use PlayPosit to add additional commentary to videos to help support specific questions. If office hours are held in a computer lab, have videos loaded on specific computers while students wait for personalized feedback.

• Create stations (in face-to-face classes) based on FAQ topics.

Office Hours Revisited

We have talked in the past about tips for making office hours equitable and accessible for students. 

This post adds to the conversation with a few best practices. The following are adapted from Vanderbilt University “Office Hours and Email” (n.d.) and Northern Illinois University  (NIU)“Connecting with Students in Online Courses” (n.d.). NIU notes that there are typically two types of students who actively seek out office hours: high achieving students and struggling students.

For high achieving students, office hours can be motivational—individualized faculty attention and support can further enhance their achievements.

For the struggling students, office hours can be supportive, with faculty offering individualized guidance and insights on how the student may improve.

By making a personal connection, you can motivate all types of learners to succeed. Getting to know your students will also give you the opportunity to understand how the course is going and how you might adjust your instruction to improve learning.

Some of the recommendations from Griffin, W. et. al., (2014) study to understand why students do not attend office hours included faculty “educating” students as to the benefits of office hours and making office hours as accessible as possible.

Tips that align with these suggestions include:

• Find the right place and time.

  • Consider holding office hours in a student-friendly location on campus, or virtually.

  • Provide clear instructions on how to locate your office hours(face-to-face or virtual) at the appropriate time.

• Reiterate the availability of office hours throughout the course and offer scheduled appointments for mutual convenience to promote attendance.

• Require a visit, preferably early in the course. If the visit is to discuss some course issue, say possible term paper or project topics, that conversation can show students the value of meeting with the prof. They get good feedback on the topic they’re considering, get ideas about other options, and can ask questions about assignment details.

• Encourage students to come and help them prepare for meetings.

  • Let them know what materials or information would be helpful to have access to during office hours.

  • Tell them how to submit files prior to office hours (if necessary).

• In addition to course topics, consider promoting discussions about careers, internships, research experiences and degrees in your field.

Inside Higher Ed Reminds us that virtual office hours benefit the following:

Students who don’t live on the campus. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, 76 percent of all undergraduate students lived off campus — either on their own or with their parents — while taking classes in 2016, the latest year for which those data are available. Living off the campus creates many challenges for students if only in-person office hours are offered. If office hours mean finding transportation (either public or private), then navigating through the campus and often a labyrinthine academic office building, and then perhaps having to wait, students will reasonably begin to evaluate whether their question or concern is “worth it.” Virtual office hours place these students on equal footing with their on-campus peers, allowing them to engage with the instructor without conducting a cost-benefit analysis of their time, money and effort.

First-generation students. The challenges first-generation students face are significant enough that they must discover what Buffy Smith has termed the “hidden curriculum.” Part of that includes their intimidation of one-on-one interactions with their professors. Your office, however, you might attempt to make it inviting, is still a foreign, rather scary place to many students. Virtual office hours, in contrast, allow students to remain in an environment where they feel comfortable yet can still build a relationship with their instructor.

Students with jobs. Turning once again to the National Center for Educational Statistics, 43 percent of full-time students were employed in 2018, of which 27 percent worked more than 20 hours a week. The pandemic has been destroying the economies of many college towns, including the businesses that employ students during their studies. Student employment will probably continue to be unstable in terms of scheduling and hours even after we return to fully in-person learning. Students need every bit of flexibility that they can get and offering virtual office hours can allow them that flexibility. This is anecdotal, but students have joined from their phones during their commute to work and told me that they would never have been able to make office hours if they were only held in person. This made me wonder, just how many students are we underserving by insisting on in-person office hours?

Students with a disability. Every student should receive the accommodations and accessibility arrangements they require in order to succeed academically and personally at your institution. Students are not always willing to make those disclosures, however, in part due to the perceived effect on their relationship with a faculty member or instructor. Offering only in-person office hours can deny access to many of these students, whether their disabilities are mobility related, psychological or from the lingering fatigue of a COVID-19 infection. Offering virtual office hours allows these students to access faculty one on one and build relationships crucial to learning and academic success while still being empowered as to where, when and to whom they disclose their disability.

Office Hours: Approaches to improve student engagement

Explain WHAT office hours are for, not just when
In The Privileged Poor: How Elite Colleges Are Failing Disadvantaged Students, Anthony Abraham Jack argues that “office hours” is a classed term and one of many ill-defined yet consequential activities for undergraduates. The expectation that students attend office hours often goes unsaid and feeds into what Jack calls a “hidden curriculum” that further places low-income students at a disadvantage. Jack recommends faculty explain what office hours are, not just when you hold them. “I remember feeling apprehensive about communicating with faculty as a first-generation student. For a long time, I thought office hours was reserved for academic crisis rather than ordinary course-related inquiries. I recommend a more expansive definition of office hours that reframes the time as a student-centered resource and takes a holistic approach to teaching”. – Consider renaming office hours to “student hours” or another student friendly term.
 
Be Consist
Be consistent with when and how you’ll hold your virtual office hours. Have the link to your office hours listed on your syllabus, on your office door, in your LMS, at the end of your PowerPoint slides or other lecture tools each week and remind students of the link in your weekly announcements.  Keep the hours consistent.  Just as you hold your class at the same time and day each week, do the same with your office hours. For students learning how to self-regulate, this type of structure helps with student efficacy in planning for success.
 
Use A Scheduler that will allow students to make appointments
If possible, have an easy way for students to sign up for a specific time to meet with you; you could try sharing a Google Calendar appointment link. I strongly recommend using Canvas’s scheduler 

The more opportunities students have to see when you are available, the more likely they are to jump on and join. One final note: if you have some flexibility, consider asking your students when they would prefer you be available to help them outside of class. Once students have a stake in selecting your office hours, they’re more likely to take advantage of those times.
 
Consider Incentivizing attendance.

​Give students an incentive to come. Students are more likely to attend virtual office hours if you’re doing something they enjoy and value.

• ​​Use office hours to play games with the course content, and then give away small prizes to the “winners” like a point of extra credit, or a voucher for something they value. Examples include: “turning in one assignment up to 24 hours late with no penalty”

• You can also utilize digital quizzing tool like Top Hat where students can deeply engage with digital content like videos, pictures and web links, but my students also love traditional games, like bingo using key terms or concepts.

• Tools like Free Bingo Cards can allow you to create the cards, and then distribute these electronically to anyone that attends the office hours. During the game, students hear questions such as, “What word describes the technique where a function calls itself?” Students would have to know the answer is “recursion,” then see if they have it on their bingo card.

• Let students use their books and notes during these games so they’re actively engaging in the content. Then, ask a student who had the correct answer on their bingo card to share the answer and provide an example to the other students.

These types of games can not only be fun to students for exam reviews, they’re great formative assessment activities to see where your students are with the course content.
 
Make it relevant.
Use Google alerts to identify possible real-life examples of what is taking place in the class or find an accessible research article to discuss. Once or twice during the semester, select an interesting and relevant article and provide a link to the students telling them this article will be the focus of your office hours. Record these discussions for students who cannot attend in person so they can watch later if they choose.
 
Use live coding
Rather than using slides, instructors can create programs in front of their learners (this tip comes from this great article:https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1006023 and has a bit more detail as to why it works).
 
Provide study ideas
There are many strategies that can be used for any class, but some subjects have specific strategies that work particularly well for that class. Provide tips about ways students might consider studying or taking notes for your class.

Get Feedback
Ask students about their classroom experience. Students are poised to evaluate your pedagogical practices better than anyone else. Let’s say a student is seeking clarification on a confusing term. You can follow up by asking what, if anything, would have better clarified the term in class. It’s likely that they will comment on the pace of lecture, which provides you with priceless feedback for improving lecture comprehension (e.g., slowing down, repeating main ideas, introducing fewer terms per class, or making more time for discussion).
 
Foster connections
Lastly, and this is a big one, be proactive during your office hours to reach out to students and engage.

• ​Lead by asking how a student is doing instead of waiting for them to pose a question.

• Did a student answer a question in class in an exceptionally insightful way? Send the student an email acknowledging the great contribution made during the class discussion.

• Did a student miss class? Send an email telling them their absence was felt and remind them the lecture was recorded and is available in the LMS (if applicable). – The attendance tools in Canvas might help with this task https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Canvas-Basics-Guide/What-is-the-Roll-Call-Attendance-Tool/ta-p/59

• Do you have an athlete/performer/musician that recently had an event? Send them a note of congratulations and recognition.

• Is it almost time for registration? Send students individual reminder emails via Canvas and tell them about a course they have to look forward to next semester.

• Is there a big paper coming up? Send a note to a student who struggled with the first paper and ask if they’d like to schedule a time to discuss their concept.

• Finally, use this time to reach out to students and ask them to “help” you during the next synchronous class session by having an example ready to share when you discuss a specific topic or describe a concept in their own words. This builds engagement during the synchronous session, as well as creates a connection with the student