Attending Office Hours

How your professor can motivate students to attend office hours

Many successful college students seem to have little knowledge about the impact of office hours. Even though many of the students are aware of the existence of these hours, only a few always take their time to contact their professors during these hours. The students who approach professors regularly do perform better than those who do not. Therefore, there is a need to encourage other students so that they can be able to engage their professors during office hours. The following paragraph is a discussion of ways in which a professor can motivate students to attend office hours.

For instance, there are cases where students that do not attend the office hours perform better than those who attend. The primary reason is that there is always no plan for attendance, which brings confusion since students have different questions that the professor needs to address (Nguyen, 2011). Therefore, the professor should create a time frame, whereby every student will be able to have his or her own time to establish a conversation with the professor, as this will discourage interruption during the discussion. It will allow every student to understand every detailed discussed with the professor which will enable them to perform better, which will encourage others to attend similar sessions. 

Additionally, it is always a challenge for students to come up with questions they need the professor to address. The professor should encourage them to learn how to develop open-ended questions that would allow them to inquire information (Nguyen, 2011). These questions would enable the professor to clarify what the students would need to understand. In many occasions, the students will be keen on listening to a professor emphasizing on specific information. They always believe that whatever the professor emphasizes on, will appear on the test. What is more, the students will also use these open-ended questions to inquire from the professor what they did not understand in class (Guest, 2017). Thus, the ability to create open-ended questions regarding the area of discussed in class will motivate the students to attend office hours since they will have the ability to inquire more details from the professor. 

Furthermore, the students who attend office hours without knowing the professional details of the professor, are not likely to perform better than those who do not participate. As a result, this discourages their colleagues from attending, since they will not see the need (Nguyen, 2011). The professor should inform the students about his or her professional research and career. For example, the students should know the areas in which the professor has conducted research and all other relevant professional information. He or she should inform the students on where they will find such information such as faculty website. If the students are aware of these details, they will be able to know what areas they should seek an explanation from a specific professor. As a result, they will be able to get relevant information regarding the field of study, which will enable them to improve their performance. This strategy will help in motivating other students to participate in office hours since everyone will want to have better results. 

In summary, the above premises show that students who attend office hours with their professors perform better than those who do not. However, there are situations where those who do not attend, perform better than those who do, which discourages other students from attending these sessions. Therefore, the paper proposes ways in which a professor should apply to encourage students to participate in office hours, for instance, helping the students to develop open-ended questions in the area of discussion. 

Reference

Nguyen, R. (2011, September 8).Make The Most out Of Office Hours. Retrieved from: https://collegeinfogeek.com/make-the-most-out-of-office-hours/

Guest. (2017, December 19). Professors’ Office Hours and How to Use Them. Retrieved from: https://www.universitylanguage.com/blog/academics/professor-office-hours/