Virtual Office Hours Follow-Up and Plans for Next Semester

After almost a full semester of virtual office hours (I started them part-way through the semester), I want to share my experience with it and what I plan to do differently in the coming semester.

First, I set up an account separate from my other IM accounts so that I could be online for the students only when I wanted. Then, I set hours during the week and also let them know that I could be online other times if they arranged it with me in advance. I was on for 2 hour blocks in the evening twice a week. Over half the class contacted me at least once during those times, either with small questions that took only a few minutes or long discussions about paper revisions or explanations of the works we were talking about that week. Invariably, the days before papers were due were the busiest. Practically nobody asked me anything earlier than that, but the night before I was often juggling 3-4 conversations at a time. In comparison, my real-life office hours saw maybe 3 visits all semester long.

So, I learned a few things. My worst fears about my students' work habits were true. The really do wait until the night before to work on things. But, the much lower barrier to access made it far easier for students to pop online, ask me a quick question, then get back to work. It almost makes me wish I didn't need to hold real-life office hours since students so rarely take advantage of them. Of course, the few times students do show up for them tend to be more productive than online ones. Students tend to type far slower than I expected, so a long discussion can take a full 2 hours at times. It's also harder to judge if they're really understanding what I'm saying since I can't see their expressions. Still, based on the work I saw from students who did chat with me online and the very high percentage of the class who chatted with me, I'm definitely keeping up the practice next semester.

I will make some changes, though. First, I'm only going to schedule hours for the day or two before papers are due. I may, in fact, schedule them 2 days in advance simply to force students to start working on them a day earlier if they want my help online. That should be close enough to the deadline for most of them (I hope), especially if I announce my intentions in class. Second, I'm going to extend the windows from 2 to 3 hours both to account for those long conversations and because I'm only going to hold 1 session a week. Third and finally, I'm going to make it clearer to students that I prefer real-life visits (and why), but that I'm also available other times for either face-to-face or virtual office hours; they just need to ask.

In short, I think virtual office hours are a useful teaching tool that I'm going to keep using. I'd be very interested to hear other people's experiences with them.