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.

Helping students engage in lecture

In an article for the Chronicle of Higher Education, James Lane (author of Small Teaching) explains:

“The opening five minutes offer us a rich opportunity to capture the attention of students and prepare them for learning. They walk into our classes trailing all of the distractions of their complex lives — the many wonders of their smartphones, the arguments with roommates, the question of what to have for lunch. Their bodies may be stuck in a room with us for the required time period, but their minds may be somewhere else entirely.

It seems clear, then, that we should start class with a deliberate effort to bring students’ focus to the subject at hand.”

One strategy he advocates for is:

Reactivate what they learned in previous courses. Plenty of excellent evidence suggests that whatever knowledge students bring into a course has a major influence on what they take away from it. So a sure-fire technique to improve student learning is to begin class by revisiting, not just what they learned in the previous session, but what they already knew about the subject matter.

One way you can do this is by posing simple questions at the beginning of class followed by a few minutes of discussion: “Today we are going to focus on X. What do you know about X already? What have you heard about it in the media, or learned in a previous class?”  – Lang explains that this helps students:

  • “connect to your course material, so when they encounter new material, they will process it in a richer knowledge context”

  • It also helps you understand what preconceptions and misconceptions they may have about material.

Weimer (2018) suggests you ask questions about material previously covered. The strategies she suggests include:

  • Resolutely refuse to answer the question. That’s exactly what students want you to do.

  • Give them a hint. “We talked about this when we were talking about X?” “Check your notes for October 20. You might find the answer there.”

  • Be patient. It takes time to retrieve what you’ve just learned and just barely understand.

  • Still no response? Tell them, that’s the question you’ll start with tomorrow and if they don’t have an answer then, they’ll next see that question on the exam.

Have students review previously presented content.

  • “Take three minutes to review your notes from November 1. Do you have anything in your notes that doesn’t make sense to you now?” If someone offers an example, encourage other students to respond. “Help Shandra out. What do the rest of you have in your notes about this?” Conclude by giving them another minute to write more in their notes if they need to.

  • At the beginning or end of the class session, give students the chance to review notes from a designated day with someone sitting nearby. Encourage them to trade notes and then talk about what they do and don’t have that’s the same. What do they both consider the most important material in that set of notes?

Use the text in class

  • If the text offers a good definition, description, graphic, example, sample problem, study question, or something else, tell students you have it highlighted in your text. Ask if they’ve highlighted it in theirs. Then inquire about reasons why it might be highlighted.

  • Identify a key concept discussed several days ago or in a previous module. Start with what’s in their notes. Then ask about text material on the concept. Where’s it located in the text? What’s the relationship between what’s in the text and what was presented? Does the text add new information? Does it provide a different kind of explanation? Does it offer more examples?

Roberto (2021) recommends Creating Meaningful Prework:

Students will also come to class more prepared to contribute if you set the stage with effective prework activities. Reading assignments alone aren’t sufficient, and grades are not enough to motivate. We must broaden our perspective and think creatively about what prework is. The tasks we give students should answer the “So what?” question and require them to grapple with the material in some way, so they’re not blank slates when they get to class. It’s all about preparing them to engage. I’ve found the following tasks to be more effective than assigned readings; ask them to do some of the following:

  • Watch a ShowMe tutorial. This is an Apple app, though there are similar apps for other platforms. ShowMe turns your tablet into a whiteboard so that you can draw and bring in different colors and images as you record your voice. It doesn’t have to be fancy. The key is making a short video that breaks down a concept and readies students to apply that information. We need to get away from posting lengthy lecture videos and expecting students to sit through them.

“Articulating the ‘So what?’ before you hand out an assignment—and including compelling examples that reinforce the subject’s relevance—motivates students to do the work well, not just for the grade.”

  • Listen to an Audacity podcast. With this free software (also available at IUWare), you can record short audio podcasts that students can listen to on the go. My podcasts include a few simple bullet points and reviews of key topics.

  • Conduct interviews. Give students something active to do with the material. Sometimes the most effective prework is having them go out and be anthropologists, to observe or interview people about the topic. It could be someone on campus, out in the community, or even in their own homes.

Strategies for Course Communications with Teaching Tools

Creating dialogue between your students can be a challenging yet fundamental part of teaching. Effective communication can help to build and foster a safe learning environment where students can thrive, prosper and learn. In addition to the rhetorical moves you may use to structure your speaking style and structure your communication, you can also develop a plan for various ways you use technology to deliver your message. Develop a strategy for when and how your students will communicate back to you as well as use instructional technologies in your class. Having regular two-way communication that invites all students to participate is essential for building trust (How to Make Your Teaching More Inclusive, 2019). Decide when regular, expected communications need to happen, and how you can best fit these duties into your own schedule. The table below (modified from U of Wisconsin and Instructure), provides various examples of communication strategies and when to apply them in your course.

Table of communication strategies to use with students
When Communication Strategy Example Technologies Used*
Prior to the course start Introduce yourself to students Add your photo and a short bio to the course welcome page, and link students here from a welcome email.
During the first week Help students meet each other and "break the ice" Ask students to update their Canvas profile, and use Name Coach to help learn how to pronounce their names
Learn more about who students are and their needs for learning Assign an anonymous survey in Canvas, Google Forms or Qualtrics that asks students to share questions or concerns they have about the course. View their images through the Class Roster
Ongoing weekly Reach out to "inactive" students in Canvas Use "Message students who..." to contact any students who haven't completed the Discussion or Survey in the first week.
Provide a place to ask general questions Create a Discussion board in Canvas that's available throughout the course and intended for general questions. Create a Teams or Slack group for your class
Give students low stake assessments to help master material Conduct formative assessment for instant feedback during a presentation in Top Hat. Create low stakes automated quizzes in Canvas that students can complete and receive feedback on course material
Kick off each unit or week Post an Announcement to start each week that connects the prior week's activities to the upcoming activities. Please note you can preset announcements for each week with reminders of upcoming test or due dates for assignments, or tips on how to prepare for class.
Provide regular opportunities to discuss course content Ask students questions to formatively assess how well they learned material through Top Hat. Use Discussions to ask deep dive questions around course content.    
Provide regular opportunities to ask individual questions Hold office hours, either drop-in or by appointment, Face-to-Face, in Teams or by Zoom  
Provide timely feedback to students Students are introduced to the Rubric as part of the activity directions. Instructor uses the Rubric as part of their feedback, and encourage or require students to revise their submitted work based on the feedback. Instructors use Speedgrader to provide students with audio or video feedback​, and/or students use peer reviews to provide audio or video feedback to their peers.  


Ideas for the first day of class

The following are a few ideas collected from a variety of sources on activities first the first day of class.

From (Weimer, 2017)

  • If it’s a course where students don’t think they know anything about the content, start by dissecting the course title. For each keyword, ask students to submit the first word or phrase that comes to mind to Top Hat and create a Wordle. Point out the ideas that are correct.

  • Share some information that will personalize you – your teaching experience, the reason you entered your discipline, an anecdote from your undergraduate learning days. If you have graduate teaching assistants, introduce them, and let them tell something about themselves. 

  • Play a brief a slideshow or a collage of pictures that shows who you are without prior to the start of class—pictures of you at work, in the lab or library, at home, with kids and pets, you in college, grade school, etc. The pictures can be interspersed with favorite quotes or some pithy sayings about learning.  Run the slide show as students are arriving or make it available online before the course begins. A slide show introduction gives you the opportunity to invite students to send you or share with the class a couple of their own introductory pictures

  • Did you ever take the course you are about to teach or one with closely related content when you were a student? Start the class by sharing some of your experiences as a student in the course. What were you worried about? What do you remember about the course? Did you do well or not so well? What would you do differently if you were taking the course now?

 From Waltje & Evans (2017)

  • Combine an attendance sheet with a mini-questionnaire. You can use a Top Hat poll or paper. If you use paper, on the left-hand side is the column where students sign in with their name, but on the right-hand side we always put a “Question of the day/week”. Here students answer a question or finish a prompt. This is a small addition that can help to develop and deepen the sense of class community and get students ready to learn. If you are savvy and have a good memory you can integrate or intersperse what you learn from these mini questionnaires into future class discussions (“Ashley, you mentioned you are interested in film noir/climate change/macramé…”). Some of the prompts can be about the assignments or readings done for the class (One thing I remember/did not understand), others could be on there just for fun: my favorite movie/song/TV show. You could also start them off with a saying or a sentence fragment they have to finish: This summer I will…., The best things in life are…., After college I plan on…., My dream place to visit is…. Before class begins and during breaks, we often overhear groups chatting about the answers they read on the sign-in sheet.

From UC Berkley

  • Have Students Meet. Have students greet someone else in the class. Even if this ritual takes only 30 seconds, you should find that your class warms up considerably. 

  • Attention Grabber. Use a problem or a demonstration to capture students’ imaginations about what is to come in the course. Often, an intriguing example will provide a guiding context for the material that follows.

From University of Iowa

  • Consider adding a surprising fact or a current event that demonstrates why the content in this course matters. Establishing relevance and promoting intrigue can help motivate student learning right from the start.

  • Set up clear communication strategies for the students. These could include when you have office hours/student help sessions, the best way to contact you, e-mail parameters, phone policies, Teams or Slack course chat., etc

  • Let your students see the enthusiasm you have for your subject and your love of teaching. It’s much more effective to begin the course letting students know that this is a course you want to teach with content you love, and that you are there to help them learn.