Office Hours

Office Hours are a wonderful opportunity for you to better get to know your students and work with them individually on specific concepts. Depending on the course delivery format or your personal preference, office hours may be held in-person or through Zoom.

Remote via Zoom

The easiest way to hold your office hours remotely via Zoom is to pick a standard day and time (as you would for in-person office hours). You will then schedule a recurring Zoom meeting, provide students with the meeting information, and start the meeting on the appropriate day and time. You can enable the waiting room so that you can admit students individually or as a group.

A couple of important notes: when providing your students with the Zoom meeting information, make sure that you include the meeting ID, password, and dial information. You also want to make sure that this information is easily accessible to your students. You can do this by posting it on sources such as your syllabus, your Canvas homepage, in an announcement, or you can send the information to your students via email.

How to Schedule a Zoom Meeting

If you start to experience a high demand for appointments, consider using the Canvas scheduler to have students book a specific time block for their meeting with you.

Office Hours for Online Courses

Office hours are an important part of any course, but the need for students to have opportunities to connect with faculty one-on-one is even greater in online courses. Benefits of office hours (virtual or in-person) during online courses include:

  • A face-to-face alternative communication channel for students
  • You can answer students' questions and concerns more efficiently
  • Students feel better connected to the course and more motivated to succeed
  • You can gain better insight and feedback about how your online course is progressing

While it's important to devote consistent time to office hours, you should also provide flexibility for students who may have busy schedules. This might look like: determining a time for office hours once a week, but allowing meeting times by appointment. For additional information on office hours, see section 3.1.4 in the USU policy for Academic Freedom and Professional Responsibility Opens External Link

Improving Office Hours

Office hours can be very simple, but instructors may find them underutilized for one reason or another. Here are some suggestions from Sarah Tulane, Jesse Jone, Melissa Scheaffer, and Carla Endres on how to improve your office hours:

  1. Meet students where they’re at: If they’re not available during your scheduled hours, try meeting them during class periods or on Zoom with a scheduling app that allows them to choose from a wider variety of hours.

  2. Choose a common space: Meet up in a common space, rather than your office, to shed some of the negative associations with a one-on-one office space.

  3. Set up quick check-in sessions: Arrange quick check-in sessions with each student during class once or twice a semester. This gives you the benefits of an office hours meeting without students needing to take time to schedule one.

  4. Un-office hours: Allow students to visit whenever you’re free in the office. This eliminates the fear of peer pressure and allows students to pop in with questions they may not think deserve a whole meeting.

For further guidance, watch their presentation Reimagining Office Hours, ETE Conference 2024 .