Wherefore Office HoursEarlier this week, I was on the campus of High Point University to lead a workshop on teaching and AI as part of their welcome back event for faculty. The workshop went well and gave me a lot to think about as I start working with University of Virginia faculty around AI this fall, but it was a lunch discussion with a few High Point faculty earlier in the day that keeps sticking with me. Specifically, I heard from more than one instructor who can't seem to interest students in participating in their office hours. This isn't the first time I've heard this, of course. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, I knew instructors who were often disappointed at the crickets they heard and tumbleweeds they saw during their office hours. But I think I hear this even more now, post-pandemic (well, post that pandemic). Instructors who would really like to connect with their students and help their students through office hours often report students not taking advantage of this instructional service. Sidebar: There are faculty who are more than happy to have some alone time during their designated office hours. I don't believe those faculty read this newsletter. I shared a little advice with those faculty at High Point on making the most of office hours, and I'll share that advice here. But frankly, I don't think I have the best advice going. I'd love to hear from you dear reader about how you approach your office hours. And I'm open to challenges to the very idea of office hours in the year 2024. Why do we have office hours? What goals do they have, and are there better ways to go about those goals? First, however, some practical advice as you head into the fall semester:
Those are my tips. What advice do you have for better office hours? What strategies or approaches or framings have you found useful in your teaching? Thanks for reading!If you found this newsletter useful, please forward it to a colleague who might like it! That's one of the best ways you can support the work I'm doing here at Intentional Teaching. Or consider supporting Intentional Teaching through Patreon. For just $3 US per month, you can help defray production costs for the podcast and newsletter and you get access to Patreon-only interviews and bonus clips. |
Welcome to the Intentional Teaching newsletter! I'm Derek Bruff, educator and author. The name of this newsletter is a reminder that we should be intentional in how we teach, but also in how we develop as teachers over time. I hope this newsletter will be a valuable part of your professional development as an educator.
The paradox of textbooks During a recent online workshop, I wanted to introduce the idea that students might need help organizing the new information they encounter in our courses. I told the faculty in the room to imagine they were going to sit down with some friends to play a board and when they opened the game's rulebook, they were confronted with this: I asked the workshop participants to share an emoji in the chat that represented how they felt about that. Here's a recreation of their...
Neurodivergent Students in Active Learning Classes A lot of the accommodations that have traditionally been given for students with learning disabilities, like notetaking assistance and extra time on exams, assume that a college course is mostly lectures and tests. That's not as true as it once was, especially for STEM courses where years of research on active learning have directed faculty to structure their courses differently. What is it like to experience an active learning class if...
Surfacing Students' Prior Experience with AI Last week I helped lead a two-day institute for faculty members participating in the University of Virginia's new Faculty AI Guides program. These faculty have signed up to explore the use of generative artificial intelligence (AI) in their own teaching and support their colleagues as they make informed, intentional decisions about the roles of AI in their teaching. We covered a lot of ground in our two days with the AI Guides, as you might...