Making Office Hours Work

Do you find office hours underutilized or unproductive?

Do your students know what office hours are for?

Join us for this workshop to discuss how to co-create experiences that minimize stress and make way for intentional, meaningful, and productive uses of office hours for you and your students. We will review relevant PSC CUNY contract obligations and explore how instructor and student positionalitiesโ€”such as first-generation, international, or BIPOC identitiesโ€”shape office hour experiences. Participants will work together and leave with creative strategies for developing their office hour pedagogy.

This workshop was offered in a hybrid synchronous mode – in Room 3317 and on Zoom on October 6, 2023, from 2 PM to 3:30 PM. The workshop and materials were developed by Kristi Riley and Manju Adikesavan.

Materials

All materials on this page and in the linked Google folder are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC-BY-SA) 4.0 International Public License.

This folder contains outreach materials, workshop plans and slide decks.

Materials Folder: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Gp30Z25lT_qg7OWgd3KVBFi2aShg6PM-?usp=drive_link

Making Office Hours Work Workshop Agenda

  • Introductions & Overview

Please complete the pre-participation survey

  • Origins of Office Hour Pedagogy

 

  • Slido Activity: One Word Office Hour Descriptions

You can submit as many answers to each question as you want

  1. What describes your experience with office hours as a student?
  2. What describes your experience with office hours as an instructor?
  3. What activities or tasks do you do during office hours?
  • What does the PSC Contract Say about Office Hours?
    1. Required hours
    2. Guidelines
    3. Follow up questions for PSC
  • Padlet Activity: Contractual Guidelines vs. Lived Realityย 

 

  • Co-Creating Office Hours with Student Buy-in
    1. Why donโ€™t students utilize office hours?
    2. Reimagining what office hours can offer students
    3. Centering instructor and student positionalities
  • Padlet Activity: Strategies for Co-Creating Office Hoursย 

 

  • Open Discussion & Collective Problem Solvingย 
    1. Resources
    2. Exit slip