Wherefore Office Hours

Earlier this week, I was on the campus of High Point University to lead a workshop on teaching and AI as part of their welcome back event for faculty. The workshop went well and gave me a lot to think about as I start working with University of Virginia faculty around AI this fall, but it was a lunch discussion with a few High Point faculty earlier in the day that keeps sticking with me. Specifically, I heard from more than one instructor who can't seem to interest students in participating in their office hours.

This isn't the first time I've heard this, of course. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, I knew instructors who were often disappointed at the crickets they heard and tumbleweeds they saw during their office hours. But I think I hear this even more now, post-pandemic (well, post that pandemic). Instructors who would really like to connect with their students and help their students through office hours often report students not taking advantage of this instructional service.

Sidebar: There are faculty who are more than happy to have some alone time during their designated office hours. I don't believe those faculty read this newsletter.

I shared a little advice with those faculty at High Point on making the most of office hours, and I'll share that advice here. But frankly, I don't think I have the best advice going. I'd love to hear from you dear reader about how you approach your office hours. And I'm open to challenges to the very idea of office hours in the year 2024. Why do we have office hours? What goals do they have, and are there better ways to go about those goals?

First, however, some practical advice as you head into the fall semester:

1. Don't call them office hours. When I had Anthony Jack, author of The Privileged Poor: How Elite Collects are Failing Disadvantaged Students, on the podcast last year, he related a story from a colleague about how her students thought about office hours. She learned that at least one of her students thought "office hours" referred to times the professor would be in her office trying to get work done and shouldn't be disturbed by students. That's the opposite of the intended meaning! Whether you call them office hours or student hours or something else, the point here is that we should assume our students, particularly first-generation students, know what these scheduled times are all about. Heck, I'm a second-generation college student, and I didn't take advantage of office hours until my junior year!
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2. Encourage social learning during office hours. I remember a few years ago hearing that a colleague had trouble getting to all her students during office hours because she asked them to come in one at a time for help or consultation. The good news was that she had a line of students out her door. The bad news was that she had a line of students out her door! I don't know when or why I adopted the practice of having all my office hour participants in my office at the same time, but I had been doing it so long I didn't consider there were other ways to do. Sure, there are occasional times when a student needs to meet with you individually, but if you're just helping students with course materials, odds are they'll benefit from sitting around a table with their peers. Hearing other students' questions can help students sharpen their own question asking skills and provide some reassurance that they're not the only one struggling with a particular topic. Want to take this idea a little further? See how Viji Sathy, co-author of Inclusive Teaching: Strategies for Promoting Equity in the College Classroom and former podcast guest, describes three types of office hours to her students. Or check out the last paragraph of this blog post for how my Vanderbilt colleague Brooke Ackerly handles office hours in her writing-intensive political science courses.
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3. Leave the office. This is advice I hear a lot on making office hours more enticing to students. Don't meet in your office, since that can be intimidating for students. Head for a local coffee shop or student center or somewhere else students will find more familiar. This isn't bad advice, and I think it works for a lot of instructors. It's not always practical, and I think we can also get a little more creative with time and location and modality of office hours. Being available for a five-minute Zoom call with students can help you connect with a lot of students who wouldn't grace your office doors. For a couple of years, I was teaching mostly engineering students, so I booked a conference room in the engineering building for my office hours since the students were generally in the building in the late afternoon anyway. If your department organized any kind of tutored study hall for students, that can be a great place to meet with students. Sometimes those study halls are scheduled too late in the day for grown adults, so that's not always practical. However, if you find your students are intimidated by finding or visiting your office, I suggest either (a) requiring them to pick up a test or paper from your office just once, to get them over the hurdle of finding it, or (b) scheduling some informal get-to-know-you meetings with students at the start of the semester. I've been doing that for years, holding them before students really have any questions, as a way to build community in the classroom. And I have students sign up in twos and threes for those meetings, so they don't feel the awkwardness of sitting along across from their professor.

Those are my tips. What advice do you have for better office hours? What strategies or approaches or framings have you found useful in your teaching?

Thanks for reading!

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