Office Hours Hold Value, but We Need to Adapt (opinion)

How many times have you sat in your mandatory office hours waiting impatiently for students who never come? During these times, it feels like office hours may be a relic.

In the early years of our careers, office hours were essential. These were times for students to ask questions, have important discussions and get to know us—and allow us to get to know them.

Today, we often hear the student ambassadors stroll by, boasting about how impressive it is that the faculty members hold office hours. To us, these pronouncements seem performative, primarily designed for parents who went to college, like us, in a time before electronic communication.

Now, students seldom come to office hours. They rarely, if ever, make phone calls to us. They report that they often don’t find office hours useful. They email, text and message instead of coming in person. This means that the bulk of the communication between a professor and the students that occurs outside of the classroom is computer-mediated. Hence our question: Are office hours pointless?

We don’t think so. We chose to work at a smaller institution that values the strong relationships that are part of undergraduate education. We chose careers where we could work closely with students, mentoring them in class and helping them outside the classroom to grow in meaningful ways. We value meeting with students.

We do also recognize that the academic landscape has changed during our careers. We need to find new ways to build the important student-faculty interactions when students are unlikely to attend office hours. Here are five of our recommendations that might help to accomplish this.

1. Use a shared electronic calendar. We need to keep our electronic calendars current and available. Students are as busy as we are, often even more so. Our scheduled office hours may not fit into their schedules—and students may be more willing to come to see us at times that are convenient for them. By accessing shared calendars, students will also be building a time-management skill that is necessary to function in many organizations.

2. Offer online office hours. Another option is to make sure that students know that we are available to meet them online, an option that is preferred by some (although not all—it seems that many students still prefer in person or have no preference).
3. Add an email response time policy. Students often email with questions rather than coming in person to ask questions. Consider adding a statement in your course policies about your email response time. For example, we say that if we don’t respond within 48 business hours, a student can email us again. Reciprocal computer-mediated communication is integral to student success, so setting an expectation about response time is more important to our students than providing more potentially inconvenient office hours.
4. Make office hours more welcoming. We can make office hours—and our meeting spaces generally—more welcoming to students. Some at-risk students, such as first-generation ones, fail to realize the importance of making connections with their faculty members. We’ve invited students to meet for coffee or espresso during (and outside of) office hours. We have a teakettle in our hallway that gets used as much by students as by faculty. Snacks or candy, even small ones, can help students feel more welcomed. Students report that they feel less of the stigma that’s associated with attending office hours when it is seen, in part, as social time or when faculty members hold office hours jointly in a shared meeting space rather than an office.

5. Discuss how to use office hours. The few students who do attend office hours report that they find them useful. When you welcome students to your class, make sure to include a discussion about how they might use office hours, how to schedule to meet with you outside of office hours and how meeting with you might help them to perform better on an assignment. You can have a dialogue with your class about their preferences, or if it’s a larger class give out a quick survey.

Office hours are a missed opportunity for our students who bypass a chance to get to know their professors, have their professors get to know them, and forge valuable relationships that may be essential when they apply for a job or graduate school. But the landscape for the traditional office hours has changed, and we must change with it. Each institution, department and college must find new ways to connect with students outside the classroom rather than the tired and simplistic office hours that are a remnant from the last century. Changing our approach to office hours can make it easier for students to get support they need and build relationships that will help them to succeed.