A challenging part of moving online is the limited face-to-face time and interactions you get to have with your students. When students are on their own, they may get frustrated when they can’t figure out how to solve a problem. You can help resolve this – by transitioning your office hours online and using your time to support students when they need it most.
Keep reading to find 4 tips for hosting office hours online, using WebAssign.
1) Set a Time and Place
Going to your office isn’t an option, so how do you plan to meet with your students? Determine when you will be available for office hours and what tool you’ll use to host them – whether it be through a video conference software like Zoom or private messaging in WebAssign.
Communicate this information to your students with suggestions (or requirements) for how they can make the most of your meeting. We’ll go over a few ways you can utilize office hours in the following tips.
2) Require Office Hours Attendance
How many days have you spent waiting around for a student to stop by your office? In an online environment, communication is especially important – so require it! Ask your students to attend at least one office hours meeting per semester, or month depending on your students’ needs.
3) Use Office Hours for Progress Checks
You can use your office hours to check in with students, see how things are going and review their performance together. Prior to these meetings, ask students to review My Class Insights and be prepared to discuss which topics they believe need more work. On your end, you can view individual student performance and give them a few additional areas to work on. If you notice a student is having a lot of trouble, suggest a follow up meeting so you can support them.
4) Utilize Office Hours for Homework Help
Encourage your students to use your office hours for help with their homework or topics they may be struggling on. While students are working through their homework, they can use the Ask Your Teacher feature to request help and show you exactly what they’re having trouble on.
Within Ask Your Teacher, you can:
- View the specific question the student is stuck on
- View the student’s progress on a question through their previous submissions.
- Collaborate with the student to solve the problem – entirely within the assignment
Students can also private message you during this time if there’s topic-specific questions outside of their homework that they need support on.
Looking for More Tips?
Transitioning to a virtual or hybrid course especially mid semester can be stressful – let us help! Keep in mind the following resources that are available to you.
- WebAssign Help for step-by-step how to’s and tutorials
- Follow us on social media for timely WebAssign best practices & tips
