Virtual Office Hours

Virtual office hours provide an important way to connect with your students and offer them support when they need it. Virtual office hours can be one-on-one, in small groups or open to the whole class to drop in on.  Virtual office hours can conducted by video conferencing, by phone or even by chat!

Some of the Benefits of Virtual Office Hours Links to an external site. include being able to schedule them at a place and time that convenient for you and more accessible for more of your students. Holding this office hours online can also  reduce the number of individual email questions and provide an safe space for shy students who might come for help in person.

 

Some useful tips:

• Encourage Questions:  remind students that this time is not required but is offerred for them. Encourage them to show up with questions. 
• Support Session: consider splitting the office hours times you provide into time for individual meetings and time for several attend at the same time. This can be abother way to provide the community student seek. Some may just want to be a "fly on the wall" and hear what others are asking about!
• Drop Ins: encourage students to drop in to ask a quick question. Create a welcoming and safe environment in order to encourage participation.
• Convenient Hours: host virtual office hours during two different time frames on different days if possible (times that are still convenient to you). This allows students who work different schedules to still participate.

Remember, the aim is to be human, be present, be flexible!

 

Instructors who develop and teach online courses utilize virtual office hours in many different ways. They all recommend incorporating it into your teaching practice and point to it as a successful way to keep students engaged and at the same time taking the pulse of the class overall.

Hank Johnson finds it invaluable to schedule one-on-one office hour sessions in Zoom with his students at the beginning of the term. He acknowledges the investment of time upfront but finds it saves much time in the long run.

The hybrid MSOT program has been using live videoconferencing for virtual office hours for several years. When a quick shift to a fully online became necessary, their faculty and students already possessed a comfort using the technology and a practice of substantive and challenging conversations in this medium.

DJ Johnson. an instructor from Game Development and Video Game Design, plans to use Zoom for virtual office hours and also to replace what is his frequent just in time student consults on campus, "students know they can find me in the gaming lab so I am going to set up Zoom sessions for those drop ins along with using Zoom for my regular office hours..."