Office Hours

Research has shown that relationships with faculty can have a tremendous impact on retaining students and on their success.  Yet many students are intimidated by “Office Hours” or do not fully understand how they can utilize them. Your communication with them – through the syllabus, in class, or through other channels – can help to invite them in.  It is helpful to describe to students various ways that a visit with you can be utilized:

• Short meetings for getting to know each other (student one-on-one with instructor)
• Answering specific questions they have about the material
• Getting help understanding the material even without a specific question (such as when a student feels “just lost” and you can help them unpack their areas of misunderstanding
• Talking about school or career plans
• Doing additional practice (practice problems either with you or with a group of students)

Another factor in ensuring that your time outside of class seems inviting to students is time and location (that’s technically two factors, but they are tied under the single umbrella of accessibility.)  It turns out that accessibility is a key determinant of whether students will feel they can actually utilize the hours you have set aside. Your office location may be out of the way for students to fit in a visit between their classes, or on the trek between a parking lot and their class – especially if they are trying to stitch together a work schedule with a class schedule that gives them little extra time. Consider making use of other venues:

• Student dining locations around campus.  Some of these have some quiet areas away from the busier areas or can be used during times outside of the mealtime rush. These locations are terrific for making students comfortable enough to ask deeper questions about the subject matter or about school and career plans. (Shared meals have been a way to invite conversation since time immemorial!)
• If you look around campus buildings, you will find that many of them have spaces (sometimes tucked away and sometime in a main thoroughfare) with seating and even tables.  If your class is scheduled in a building with these amenities, you could consider making this one of the places you meet with students, which means that students already know how to find the location. But if your building does not have such a location, a close-by building or a building closer to student housing or more centrally located on campus may have one. In fact, this may give you an excuse to explore parts of campus with which you’re not yet familiar.
• When the weather permits, there are many welcoming outdoor venues around the campus – you could even consider a walk-and-talk for shorter meeting times. 

You may have other ideas for venues that are not your actual office, since the above are just a few ideas. You could even poll your students for places they would suggest.

And while you’re at it, consider WHEN you make yourself available to your students.  Are you aware of classes or responsibilities that a large number of your students have in common?  For example, if you teach a lecture course with a required lab, scheduling time to be available for students during lab times will leave out many students.  Are you able to vary the times of day that you are available for your students (but also communicate those so students are not confused when they want to find you)?  Simple (and free) scheduling tools, such as Calendly.com**, are now available that make it very easy for students to sign up for a specific time to meet you – saving them from the uncertainty of standing in a line of students to see you, and giving you a way to meet with students privately when that would be useful.

You will want to consider having some of your meeting availability take place online. Technologies that are commonplace today allow you to have students show up to a waiting room if you want to meet with them one at a time, or put a group of students in a “room” together to work on questions together, perhaps while you meet with another student individually to discuss their specific questions.  These online meetings also open up more flexibility in scheduling that could be more tailored to the times when people in their late-teens and early twenties are likely to be working on their studies, even if you are not physically on campus during those times.

Finally, when you do utilize your faculty office for meetings with students, try to look at the space through the perspective of a student who is new to campus and may even be new to the higher education setting or to this country.  How inviting and welcoming is your layout?  Hogan and Sathy have some specific recommendations about layout and décor.  For example, is it possible to arrange your office in such a way that there is not a computer monitor between you and the student who is visiting you?  Does your office have some personal details that would provide your students with an idea of your interests or some background about you? (Only that which you would be willing to share, of course.)  The authors also recommend having a box of tissues on hand – because, although we never intend for this to happen, there may be times when a student is overcome with emotion in your office and a box of tissues will be very helpful.  If you would like visitors to your office to wear a mask, it would make sense for your to keep some masks on hand to offer them for people who might not have one of their own.

References:

Hogan, Kelly A. and Sathy, Viji. (2022). Inclusive Teaching: Strategies for Promoting Equity in the College Classroom. West Virginia University Press: Morgantown, WV.

Nadworny, Elisa. (2019, October 6). College students: How to make office hours less scary [Radio broadcast]. WAMU/NPR.

Griffin, Whitney; Cohen, Steven D.; Berndtson, Rachel; Burson, Kristen M.; Camper, K. Martin; Chen, Yujie; and Smith, Margaret Austin. (2014). Starting the conversation: An exploratory study of factors that influence student office hour use. College Teaching, 62(3), 94-99.