Do you ever wish that your students would take better advantage of your office hours? Do they apologize to you for "interrupting" on those rare occasions when they do come to your office, even during office hours? Some students feel that going to a professor's office hours is both an admission that they are struggling with the course material and an imposition on the professor's valuable time (Freishtat, 2017). Most faculty members I know find this frustrating, both because they would like to know when students don't understand the course material and because helping a student understand the course material is one of the most enjoyable aspects of teaching. What can you do to encourage more of your students to take advantage of your office hours?

Here are several suggestions from Richard Freishtat (2017), with my own suggestions of how to apply them:

Make it an assignment. I've done this in my own courses, and I'll be the first to admit that I don't know whether it makes a difference. But it does familiarize students with the location of your office, and it does communicate to them, indirectly, that you think talking with students is a valuable and appropriate use of your time.

Let students know that office hours can serve many purposes. Although office hours can be an avenue for students who are struggling with the course material to ask you questions or review their notes with you, there are other ways students can use office hours. For example, students can practice explaining key concepts to you to check their level of understanding. They can ask questions about how the course material is related to what they are learning about in other courses, or how it relates to something they have seen or experienced outside of class. They can let you know if something is interfering with their full participation in your class. They can ask what they missed when they were sick for a day or several. They can ask you about career options in the geosciences, or about transferring to a geoscience program at a four-year college or university... and so on. Knowing that you see office hours as the setting for many possible kinds of conversation may help students feel less awkward about coming to talk with you.

Coach your students about how to start a conversation with you. Although most of us don't try to intimidate our students, our position as a faculty member can be intimidating to many students. That can make our students nervous about talking with us. You might consider giving your students examples of conversation openers, such as "I have a question about something you said in class the other day..." or "I don't know where to start. I'm feeling overwhelmed in this class because..." or "What we're learning about [topic X] doesn't make sense to me, because..." or "Can you really make a living studying [fill in course topic]?" Giving students options of how to start a conversation with you re-affirms the idea that they can use office hours for a variety of purposes, and it may also make it just a little bit easier for them to talk with you.

Stagger office hour days and times to enable students with varied schedules to attend. If your campus has classes that meet either M/W/F or Tu/Th, choose office hours so that some conflict with M/W/F classes and other conflict with Tu/Th classes. Set them so that each office hour conflicts with a different set of classes -- for example, don't have office hours from 9-10 AM on both Mondays and Wednesdays. Choose start and end times that don't coincide with when class periods start and end, so that a single hour in the office overlaps with two difference class periods. Although many faculty members I know add the words "or by appointment" to the list of their office hours, making an appointment is just one more barrier to talking to a professor.

Remind students about office hours throughout the course. You can remind them about office hours before and after exams, but also when it's time to register for the next term's classes, when you're discussing course material that you think students are likely to find challenging, when you give examples of geoscience career options or show examples of geoscientists at work, or when you realize you haven't said anything about office hours recently.

One more possibility, not from Freishtat's list: offer online office hours. Online office hours can take many forms, from being available via Skype or online chat to committing to answer emails as they come in. Not only does this make you more accessible to students who can't easily get to your office outside of class time, it can also be less intimidating to some students than talking with you face to face. Some conversations that start online may lead to a face-to-face consultation; others won't. Either outcome is likely to be better than not having the conversation at all.

Do students flock to your office hours? If so, how do you encourage them to come talk with you?

Reference

Freishtat, Richard (2017). Don't Be Alone during Office Hours. Tomorrow's Professor Posting 1570. Available online at https://tomprof.stanford.edu/posting/1570. Accessed 6 September, 2018.