As you know, the demand for office hours is increasing as we get closer to finals. In particular, Western University notes: Students will visit your office hours expecting to hold an hour-long one-on-one study session. This could certainly be valuable for the student, but can you manage such a session given the time constraints that come with being an instructor of a large class? If the answer is no, you may want to organize a dedicated review session. Dedicated review sessions or inviting more than one student at a time into office hours may be more efficient (before doing so, confirm with students that no one has a private matter to discuss). Record the review session so that it is available for students who were unable to attend.
A few of our award-winning AIs in Luddy brainstormed tips based on how they manage office hours in large enrollment classes during finals which may be a bit different than the logistical systems you usually use to manage your large enrollment courses.
Before office hours begin –
- Compile a list of FAQs that have occurred over the semester. FAQ list can be generated from:
- Any questions frequently emailed to instructors/AIs or posted in a community forum (such as Slack, InScribe or MSTeams)
- Any questions that students have answered incorrectly in the past in discussion sections or labs
- Any questions/concepts that have been historically challenging for students since the course has been taught
- Any questions reviewed to be difficult based on analytics you have access to from Canvas or other course tools.
- Provide an agenda to students prior to office hours letting them know what topics you plan to cover during office hours before addressing individual questions.
- Solicit questions from students. Many of the questions can be consolidated to address more than one concern.
- Prepare handouts that cover FAQs that can be referenced during office hours.
During Office Hours
- Moderate the waiting rooms. Ask students to submit questions while in waiting rooms and direct to rooms as frequently as possible
- While students wait
- Share threads to community forums in waiting rooms for students to review while waiting for individual help.
- Share a list of study strategies that may be useful to enact.
- Edit videos used during pandemic that address FAQs. Use PlayPosit to add additional commentary to videos to help support specific questions. If office hours are held in a computer lab, have videos loaded on specific computers while students wait for personalized feedback.
- Create stations (in face-to-face classes) based on FAQ topics.
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