of CM. How did I ever make it without this place?I see there's no big thirsty today, so I'd love to ask the group something on my mind. (Although I don't know if my issue is BIG enough to get the big yellow graphic!)
I'm required to keep 4 hours a week. (Never mind the system; it is what it is.) I actually keep 5 hours of official time in my office each semester. Last year I decided to start keeping track of the usefulness of this time, vis a vis actual student time...boots on the ground, students actually in my office.
My numbers, as of today, for this semester, 12 total weeks, 60 official office hours...
75 minutes of student activity. ALL SEMESTER SO FAR.
Is that a lot? Hehe. Too little? I'm not in a fucking basement. I'm in a well traveled building on a well trafficked floor. I tell students about my hours. It's on the syllabus. I have my name on a door
. The door is open.Q: What actual amount of traffic do you get in your office hours?
Yep, that's about right.
ReplyDeleteI've had 120 minutes today; with another appt. this afternoon - so easily 150 today.
ReplyDeletethis week: probably a total of 40 other minutes.
this was a light week.
I work in a crazy world where we are pretty much in our offices and expected available for student meetings pretty much all the time.
the upside is that if they make an appointment and don't show, they get in trouble.
That means you are getting 58 hrs 45 min of actual work done or web surfed. Buy yourself a beer. You earned it.
ReplyDeletevietcong, I did some of my research at one of the service academies, and that matches my experiance. I don't know if you teach at one national service academies or one of the asorted other military schools but I've found myself explaining that system a lot lately to civilian academics.
ReplyDeleteI keep 4 hours per week. Generally, around 3 of those are filled with students coming by. This week, it was 6 hours, counting the two hour time I spent with a student this morning, as an additional appointment.
ReplyDeleteI'm giving exams on Friday. I hold 5 hrs/week, and so far they have been filled this week.
ReplyDeleteIf I am not giving exams, I am visited 20 min/week tops.
Hmmm...I wonder if there is a correlation.
I'm required to keep an hour a week (I'm a TA), which I do (unlike many of my fellow TAs). But at times when there is the potential for more student interest, I usually schedule a second hour during the week for a time just before/after some other on-campus obligation.
ReplyDeleteThat doesn't mean they come, of course. They almost never do, and I can usually depend on having my office hour as personal prep-time. But I've had students mention on evaluations that I'm easily available to meet with -- even if they never take advantage of that. Frankly, as a TA, I'm grateful for any means by which I can enhance students' opinion of me without having to actually lower my grading and teaching standards.
That sounds about right. After a recent exam I surveyed my students. One of the yes/no questions was, "Do you understand your solutions to your homework problems?" About 55% said no. The next question was, "Do you seek help from the instructor/tutors when you don't understand your solutions to the homework problems?" Again, about 55% said no.
ReplyDeleteI keep 7 official office hours/week, but I'm definitely in my office a lot more than that. This has to do with the fact that we are a small liberal arts college and our campus culture is that professors are on campus 8-4 M-F no matter what. So, because that's the culture, I have at least one student in my office almost every day, often during times that aren't even official office hours. They come for everything from homework help to advising issues to "I was just walking past and your door was open."
ReplyDeleteMy point here is that I think the answer to the question really depends on the institution. My colleagues at the state schools almost never interact with students outside of class. At my institution, though, I wouldn't get tenure if I didn't.
We are required to have 15 office hours a week at my SLAC. Students typically only stop by VOLUNTARILY... oh... never. They only come for a signature, for advising (and even THAT is not voluntary b/c they need me to clear them for registration online). That takes 20-30 minutes per advisee, depending on how prepared they are.
ReplyDeleteI do notice that my VERY attractive young male colleague has a flood of girls (if they giggle like teenagers, they're girls, to me) stopping by.
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ReplyDeleteI'll speak some terrible truths. I tend to teach those large intro science classes. We have dumbed them down over the last few decades such that I expect *no one* to need to stop by my office for help. Typically, anyone who stops by during office is incapable of understanding the simplest concepts in the simplest of courses. Again, typically, when I check their HS GPA and SAT scores, I find their struggles in my class are in agreement with their low HS scores. In other words, they should not be in college.
ReplyDeleteSo my office time with students is a waste. If they are mildly competent students, they do not need help. If they need help, we are seeing the first signs that they will probably not graduate.
I know this sounds mean and cruel, but my experience is that this is true and harsh. And we plan these large lecture classes so that we expect no office visits.
I am laughing at the presumption that we all have offices. ;)
ReplyDeleteMy "camp out on a couch or coffee shop table outside the classroom" time has always been a waste (1 hour per week per course PLUS too much e-mail time on top of that). In the past, even those who make appointments usually never show.
Like honest_prof, usually the ones who needed me to re-teach something they should have learned in junior high are the regulars who show up. I'm usually grateful they're at least trying.
The "You Plagiarized" chats are awful behind ajar doors if I can borrow a private space, so just imagine them in the middle of a busy hallway. And those take up the most time.
I had my first during-offical-hours, non-scheduled, non-required student drop by this week! Of course, she did it on the one day I have taken off in the entire four years I've worked at this school.
ReplyDeleteOverall, including the out of official hours scheduled visits and the required visits, I'm spent four hours this semester talking to students in my office. And countless hours handling things through e-mail. Hmmmm....maybe I should just insist on doing things in person...
We're required to hold 3 hours per week for each class we teach. This semester one of my assigned classes didn't make, so I only have 3 office hours. I have seen not one student during those hours yet this semester.
ReplyDeleteI tend to see a lot of students in my office hours and I'm not sure why because many of my colleagues don't. I do repeatedly remind students that they can drop by so maybe that helps. When they do come, I really work hard to help them and I try to be kind no matter how silly their questions. Perhaps that's something students tell each other? Of course, there are some students I never see and those who do come usually come more than once. And, of course, I see more students before the final essays.
ReplyDeleteStill, most days, at least half of my office hour is mine alone and I just use the time to get other work done. It's not like we're ever short of work to do!
Before the first paper is due? Relatively little.
ReplyDeleteAfter the first paper is graded and returned? Substantial and often unpleasant.
Before the final paper is due? Somewhere in between little and substantial, and usually quite productive.
I remember having office hours one semester. No one ever came by. But then the same students who didn't come by also wrote on my evaluation that I never showed up to my office hours.
ReplyDeleteIsn't there any way to sue these bastards?
Today, I had a student walk up to the front of the room to interrupt me and quietly ask me when the semester ended. I kicked him in the groin. OK, I didn't kick him in the groin, but I was tempted to.
ReplyDeleteEvery week for 1/2 hour, but that's a senior and I'm in charge of their thesis. Regular students? 1 hour a semester combined, tops.
ReplyDeleteI've had wildly different experiences. When I was a TA for a large lecture class, I almost never had students come by office hours. When I was teaching Freshmen Composition, they were required to conference with me about their drafts and I had lots of people coming by for regular office hours.
ReplyDeleteNow that I am at a teeny tiny SLAC where the students call us by our first names, it is rare I don't have a student coming in. I have to kick them out when I have class prep to finish. Now about 40% of them just want to visit, get candy from the candy stash or lounge on the small couch while they are waiting for class.
As for "working" visits, I had about three hours worth yesterday and five hours worth today. I suppose some of those shouldn't count as they are theses I am supervising.
In all of these cases, I have found one constant: whatever time I set never works for 90% of the students, so they just make appointments with me.
I keep about 7.5 hours a week officially, when I'm guaranteed to be in my office or within 30 feet of it. I am in my office more hours than that, grading or updating lesson plans or whatnot.
ReplyDeleteI'd say I have, on the average, 1 hour a week of face-to-face student time during those hours. During the first 10 weeks of the semester? 15 minutes a week if I'm "lucky." During the last 5 weeks of the semester? Many many frantic meetings.
And I am available outside of my scheduled hours if the student wants to make an appointment. I just had such a student not show for what she swore was the ONLY time she could meet within the next two weeks and she's failing my class.
No good deed...
Not quite a Haiku:
ReplyDeleteTen hours per week
Zero students
Crickets chirp
I hold 4 hours (2 face to face, 2 virtual -- which means I'm usually in my office, having made sure I'm listed as available to chat on Blackboard, and checking email frequently, but I might be at home, or elsewhere, doing the same). As a rule, nobody stops by, but if I count on one of those hours for class preparation, someone inevitably does, and stays until I say "I have to leave; I have a class" -- even though office hours officially end 20 minutes before that point.
ReplyDeleteTotal for face to face office hours this semester is somewhere in the neighborhood of 2 people, 4 visits (1 visit by one person, 3 by the other), under 3 total contact hours.
One of the disadvantages of the underuse of office hours by most students is that a few students can overuse them, and I can't, as my own professors used to do, point to the cluster of people waiting outside as a reason to keep the meeting to the minimum length necessary to achieve its purpose. A growing queue of emails just doesn't have the same effect.
I was only required to have one office hour per week (as an adjunct). Students almost never visited. I used it as time to grade papers and generally be productive...until I discovered online Boggle.
ReplyDeleteI'm a TA, and I hold office hours for 1.5 hours a week. About 1/3 of the time, at least one student will come by to ask about something. I usually use the time to get ahead on readings or catch up on grading for the class.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I (of course) don't have an office of my own, but I don't mind; I hold my office hours in a large and beautiful commons room that is usually (inexplicably) empty or almost empty. I actually look forward to my office hours because I like working there :-)
I keep 6 hours per week (1.5 hours/4 days). I usually do not see students until just after midterm grades come out, and they start to panic about their grades. This past week I had about 175 minutes of f2f time. I expect that to go down until conference week (class is canceled so that they can make an appointment with me to discuss their research papers). The students I do see are almost always in my 100-level courses.
ReplyDelete