Rebranding Virtual Office Hours in an Online Course

For the past two years, the College of Business has advised faculty to rename "Office Hours" to something more student focussed (Student Hours, Zoom Meetup, Zoom Chat, Weekly Review, etc.). Joel Whalen has shared a very useful resource that underscores this suggestion. Well worth reading.

We have some received some very helpful feedback from faculty who have embraced this rebranding of office hours to be more student focused:

• Attendance and participation went up.
• Scheduling could cause issues:
• Using Doodle increased participation and student satisfaction.
• Avoiding a time that conflicted with regular class time (or when students were at work) is recommended (students got frustrated that they could not attend).
• Recording is highly recommended, particularly if you are using the sessions for content review.
• Students really don’t understand “office hours,” or find the term intimidating. Taking time to explain what the time was for and rebranding with a friendly term is essential.
• Students who did not attend saw the student hours as a safety net – something that was useful to have.
• Students need to talk. Some of them are still feeling very alone.

Tags: office hours, Online Learning, Joel Whalen