Documentation:MECH Online Teaching/Office Hours
For equity reasons, more office hours will need to be held to allow every student to meet synchronously with instructors and TAs during the student's waking hours.
Synchronous
General suggestions
Consider varying office hour times to account for students in other time zones (both instructor and TA office hours). E.g. have 30 mins each at two times in the day. An 8-10 hour gap in time of day should permit any student to attend outside of sleep time.
| Vancouver | Tehran | Beijing | Istanbul | Toronto |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 7 am | 6:30 pm | 10 pm | 5 pm | 10 am |
| 8 am | 7:30 pm | 11 pm | 6 pm | 11 am |
| 9 am | 8:30 pm | 12 am (midnight) | 7 pm | 12 pm (noon) |
| 7 pm | 6:30 am | 10 am | 5 am | 10 pm |
| 8 pm | 7:30 am | 11 am | 6 am | 11 pm |
| 9 pm | 8:30 am | 12 pm (noon) | 7 am | 12 am (midnight) |
https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/meeting.html
- Consider inviting/scheduling a small group of students to chat with you each office hours (or setting aside another time to do this), to build relationship with the students. Chats can be about other topics.
- Quick after-lecture questions - to replace the "catch me at the end of class" questions, consider explicitly scheduling time for this. (Could be remaining in the online classroom session, on a discussion board, or a separate Collaborate session).
- For scheduling office hours, set one or two office hour times. Then ask students *who are unable to attend those times* to indicate what office hours would work (e.g. Doodle poll).
- Schedule alternative office hours in the evening, using the Augmented Evening Schedule (AES) for guidance.For more information on AES, see the MECH Canvas site.
Tools
Collaborate Ultra
Create an office hours session within your Canvas course.
Asynchronous
Some asynchronous question answering is recommended (can supplement office hours and after class questions), but cannot replace at least one synchronous office hour per week for other time zones. See information about Q&A forums to implement asynchronous office hours.