Holding Virtual Office Hours
Office hours offer an important opportunity for students to receive extra help and advice from their instructors and TAs. Before the pandemic, most instructors (and some TAs) held weekly face-to-face office hours on campus. It was easy! You made sure you were available in your office at a set time every week and students could drop by for questions or clarification. Now that we’re in the online learning environment, students can’t drop by your campus office, but they can still benefit from office hours. This article provides tips and considerations for holding virtual office hours.
Logistics of the Online World
Platforms. When deciding how and when to set up your office hours, consider what platform you’re going to use. Microsoft Teams could be useful because you can set up recurring invitations through Outlook and students can join the session from there. Collaborate Ultra, which is accessible through Brightspace, is another option. Collaborate offers a few more features that may be useful for office hours. You can create a session in Collaborate that students can join anytime during the designated times and students can be grouped in break out rooms. This function is helpful if more than one student at a time joins the session. You can create a breakout room for you and a student while leaving the other students in the main session, which can act as a waiting room. If you have ever sought help through ATS’ Brightspace drop-in session, you may have experienced this. Whichever platform you decided to use, it’s important to be consistent. At the start of the term, decide on a platform and (if possible) stay true to it for the whole semester.
Timing. Another unique challenge of the online environment is deciding when to schedule your office hours. Students may not be in Halifax for the fall semester and could be residing in different time zones all around the world. To allow for the majority of students to attend office hours, it’s helpful to offer multiple office hours at different times throughout the week. You may need to offer one session in the morning and then later in the week offer another session in the afternoon or evening. At the start of the course, you might want to send out a survey asking which time-zone your students are in so that you can best plan your office hours. If you are offering multiple sessions in the week, it’s okay to shorten each session so that you don’t spend the majority of your week in office hours.
Another consideration related to time zones and scheduling is how to ensure you can help as many students as possible during your office hours. Since your office hours might be shorter but more frequent, you may need to create a time limit policy. If your office hours are only 45 minutes each, you don’t want one student taking up the whole time while others wait in the virtual waiting room. You don’t have to dismiss students who need more time, but you may need to schedule a one-on-one meeting instead. This may be especially prudent if you have a large class with many drop-ins during office hours.
Session Type. Depending on your class size, you may choose to offer a mix of one-on-one and group office hour sessions. One-on-one office hours are great for personalized questions and advice. They’re also beneficial for students who may be anxious about asking questions in front of others during a synchronous session. However, there are some instances in which a group session may be preferable. These can include exam prep and exam review sessions or special tricky-topic sessions. Some of these sessions could be run by the course TA as well. For these group sessions, it may be beneficial, with the students’ knowledge of course, to record the session and post it for students who couldn’t attend. This can help decrease the number of repetitive emails about exams and tricky topics.
Setting up your space. Your on-campus office is inherently a space for work. Our homes, however, are now expected to become our new work locations, which may present some challenges. While some office hour consultations are basic, such as clarifying a concept from the lecture, others can be quite personal, like a student struggling with a health concern that is affecting their course performance. When offering office hours, make sure to set up a space that can be private. When students share their personal information, they most likely don’t want your partner, roommate, child, etc. to overhear.
In addition to protecting student privacy, you’ll want to be mindful of your own privacy. Since you may be on video during office hours, it’s important to be mindful of what’s visible through your camera. If you have a corkboard or a white board with private information that you don’t want students to be able to see, whether it be work-related or personal, perhaps choose a new location. If a new location isn’t possible, some platforms, such as Microsoft Teams, have an option to blur the background. However, double check to see that the blur is working to hide any sensitive information.
Ensuring Safety for You and the Students. When office hours were on campus, there were usually other faculty around to alert if you were feeling unsafe with a student. It was often recommended that faculty keep their office door open when alone with students to ensure transparency and to support the safety of both the faculty and the student. At home, while you may not be in any physical danger from a distressed student, there are also fewer supports available. Create a plan for what to do if you’re uncomfortable with a situation. While it’s hoped you never have to use this plan, it’s important to be prepared in the event a student becomes aggressive or inappropriate.
Similar to having a plan for your own safety, review the Blue Folder for how to deal with a student in distress. Your plan will look different depending on the student, so consider how you would handle different difficult situations.
Other Considerations
Accessibility. Making your course accessible goes beyond just course content. When offering office hours, you should ensure that all students can access you. It may be useful to offer a text-based option for students with low bandwidth because videos or even audio may be difficult for them to access. This option also could be helpful for students who prefer or require text over audio.
Other Modes of Communication. If you notice that you’re repeatedly getting the same questions during office hours, you might save yourself some time by creating a discussion forum in Brightspace for frequently asked questions. In this forum, students can ask for clarification on assignment details or exam processes. The forum could be managed by you or your TA. It also might be helpful for students to be able to respond to each other so that they can solve the problem without you or your TA stepping in.
Conclusion
Office hours are still important in the online environment since students will inevitably have things to discuss with you. Taking into account the above suggestions can help you to move your office hours online and hopefully make the move a simpler one!