Office Hours and Student Writing Conferences

I've been trying to resolve a few issues related to my office hours:

1) students remembering that you even have them,
2) hours of no students and then a clan of them arrive in the last 20 minutes of your office hours,
3) students scheduling appointments with you and then never showing up (usually b/c it slipped their minds).

I recently set up an online office hours scheduler for my students and I'm so pleased to see that it's working (or at least it has within the last two weeks). While the real test will be whether it works for the duration of the semester, I still think it's worth a try.

I am using the free version of a program online called ScheduleThing.

When I add extra "out-of-office" hours at Donkey Coffee now and again (something my students love, in case you haven't done this), they are easy to add as once-off hours within the system and students have responded by coming to see me more often than they had before (and for a wider range of issues). I actually see some of my most problematic students in "out of office" hours. I think the neutral terrain helps them feel less intimidated or insecure when they're coming in to discuss tough issues.

The Benefits?

1) You can generally know what to expect if students have actually officially set an appointment;
2) The system is set to send email reminders to students when they have an upcoming appointment (helping solve the "I forgot" excuse);
3) I find that students are signing up in the middle of the night (at the height of their "I have no clue what I'm doing" panic) when previously they would have calmed down by class and convinced themselves that they didn't need to see me;
4) I get announcements that students have scheduled an appointment (which then allows me to, in some cases, prepare for them specifically);
5) It's also working for drop-in purposes b/c students can quickly see (from their dorm room or elsewhere) whether I'm in my office and free (without other appointments),
6) And in general my need to be neurotically organized is satisfied by having the knowledge of what my office hours will look like.

Scheduling Writing Conferences

Lastly, I did writing conferences with my students for project one and will likely do the same (but optional) in project two. This program allowed me to open up the days I planned for conferences, shoot an email to my students, and the next day I knew I had a solid schedule without the hassle of thinking about this in class and reminding the students all the time of their appointment (or dealing with: "I forgot what time I signed up for" emails).

What does it look like?

If you'd like to see what the program looks like (from the student's perspective), take a look at my appointment scheduler: http://messitt.schedulething.com/ Also, feel free to schedule an appointment and then cancel it so you can see the whole process and confirmation emails received by students. If you do, just don't forget to cancel the appointment unless you plan to come and visit me with coffee during those 20 minutes (my order: a large, extra-shot Americano, black).

Hope this helps!  If you do try it, I'd love to know how it is or isn't working. If anyone else knows of schedulers that might be better, please let me know. I know many other universities have schedulers for all of their professors and students are used to using them. While I wish OU had this, this feels like a great alternative.

What my Dashboard looks like: