I’ve been busy with various school preparation things (and it’s kind of slow news around campus), so haven’t had much of a chance to post much lately here. But as I think about my schedule for Fall 2009 and about the not-so-distant faculty contract talks, I thought I’d bring up something I’d like to see addressed: the need for changing the rules for office hours.
I came across this discussion here in the Confessions of a Community College Dean blog (via Inside Higher Ed), where “Dean Dad” was talking about this post by Dr. Crazy at Reassigned Time (you gotta love the pseudonyms in the blogosphere, right?). The short version is this: the tradition of faculty holding “office hours,” because of contemporary communication technologies, is outmoded and unnecessary.
Here at EMU, faculty are contractually obligated to hold a total of 10 office hours a week, though the way that I’ve always done this (and I’ve always been told this is perfectly acceptable via the contract) is to schedule at least five hours and be available via appointment. The idea, obviously, is to be available to students, both ones in classes the faculty person is teaching and also ones a faculty member might advise. When this format was devised (30 years ago? 40 years ago? more?), requiring faculty to be in some physical place where they could help students out of class made sense. After all, how else were you to get a hold of your professor? At best, you could call the office, but even then, the professor would have to be there to answer the call.
Nowadays, we have email, texting, facebook, twitter, cell phones (I don’t give out my cell phone number to students generally, though I would if EMU was willing to supplement my bill– but that’s another story/post), etc. Every faculty person I know communicates with students outside of class via email, and often at rather odd times of the day. It is not at all uncommon for me to answer student email late at night, early in the morning, and on weekends or holidays; it’s also not at all uncommon for students to expect their professors to do this (“I emailed him last night at 2 am and my professor still hasn’t responded five hours later; he must be lazy”). Unless I require them to come and see me in person, my students almost never just “drop by” to see me.
With online courses, where the entire enterprise is held out of place and out of time, the idea of physical office hours seems even more ludicrous. And yet, faculty teaching online at EMU are supposed to hold on-campus office hours. I was reminded of this again this summer: even though I was teaching online, I was expected to hold office hours on campus. It wasn’t that big of a deal because I always have something to do on campus anyway, but to require it was, well, goofy.
Having said that, I’m not for the idea of eliminating on-campus office hours and/or availability of faculty entirely. Besides the fact that there obviously times in which meeting face-to-face is convenient or necessary, completely doing away with faculty office hours might make it difficult to conduct the other business of the university. After all, if I was teaching entirely online and there was no contractual expectation for me to ever be on campus, then why couldn’t I teach from Europe and just skip all those pesky department and committee meetings?
In any event, I realize this is a comparatively minor issue and it is not exactly a brutal hardship that professors are expected to, well, show up to work once in a while. But in a contract year where we’re not likely to get much, it might be worth revisiting the current out of date rules for office hours. Perhaps, for example, we can acknowledge that being available “via email” is pretty much the same as being available “by appointment.” And perhaps we can acknowledge that if a person is teaching completely online, there isn’t much of a need for physical office hours at all.
I agree 100%. However, when I mentioned this to the AAUP about having an MOI in place before contract negotiations, I was informed that it wasn’t needed. I still believe that it is needed. Why not let students Twitter us for “x” hours away from the office? I know folks at other schools who have a dedicated cell phone for students and the students love it. We need to change the contract language.
I’d be curious to hear more about why this contract language “wasn’t needed.” This is simply not true. Two short examples:
* The rule for office hours for spring/summer teaching (at least as it has been explained to me) is that faculty are expected to hold one office hour per class taught– the office hour requirement being less during spring/summer since there is dramatically less other business on campus during this time. When I asked about the need for office hours even though I was only teaching online, a) it took me a while to get an answer from an administrative type because the policy was unclear, and b) the answer I got, that I still needed to have on-campus office hours, didn’t make a lot of sense.
* Let’s play this out to the extreme and take the contract language literally. As I understand it, if I am available for 10 scheduled office hours a week, I don’t have to be available by appointment at all. Also, I don’t believe there is any language in the contract about being required to communicate with students via email or anything else.
So, hypothetically, couldn’t I as a faculty person refuse to answer student emails and insist that all communication with students– mine or potential advisees– take place in person? And couldn’t I do this even if the class was online? I don’t know the answers to these questions and I’m not going to test them anytime soon. But again, the idea that there is no need for clarity on this in the contract is not true.
I’d love it if my department bought me an unlimited texting/email phone for student interaction.
If as professors you would like to make your office hours more “virtual” than I believe that you better come up with a better method than simply email or twitter. A chatroom may provide a better format. The biggest problem I have, as a graduate student, is finding that my professors are not attending their office hours when posted. I have waited over and hour and a half for a professor to come to his office. The problem that your proposed methods lack is dialogue. I may begin to ask you a question, which may lead to another question and another question. This in person may only represent a five minute conversation and due to the interaction and non-verbal communication queues may be perfectly clear. A email tennis match may take place over multiple days and still not be satisfying. I have found the majority of the reason to attend office hours at all is due to the ambiguity of the instructors written or supplemental instruction that usually comes over email!
I agree with the previous comment about chatroom and /or face to face. However, I can state from my experience that most of my undergraduate students never come to office hours (maybe 1 per semester) and prefer to email me or ask me questions before/after class. Graduate students tend to want to ask questions, etc. Frankly, I have gotten many manuscripts written during office hours because no one shows up.
I think it’s important to note that office hours aren’t just important so that our students know when to find us. There is something to be said for having co-workers who are present once in a while! There is nothing worse than trying to work with someone who comes to campus only when they teach. Not every task occurs in a predictable fashion that can be dealt with in meetings and by e-mail. Additionally, the task of working with those without appointments (such as potential students) always falls on those who are in their office.
I agree with the comment above — having colleagues who are physically present on campus according to a predictable timetable is important for other faculty members as well as students. I’ve had one colleague who was teaching from California, and another who taught from Florida. As far as I know, their classes went well. But guess who their students and advisees came to see when email wasn’t appropriate? And the number of faculty members in the department available to share in committee and department “housework” was down by 2.
“Colleagues being around” and “required office hours” seem like two different things to me, at least potentially. I suppose it varies from department to department and even between individuals, but my office hours tend to be on the days I am on campus teaching, and the meetings I go to tend to be on days I’m not teaching. Besides that, I often think that there are better ways to handle meetings– fewer of them, and/or some virtual meetings might not be such a bad idea.
In any event, I am not saying we should get rid of office hours entirely. I just think folks should be able to include responding to emails, etc., in the “by appointment” category.
I do not like being misquoted so I will post my exact response to sport sociology regarding the inquiry about online office hours and the suggestion for an MOU (not MOI) prior to contract negotiations.
“As far as online office hours, I tend to agree with you that if a course if fully online it makes sense to have office hours for that course online as well. However, I am not sure that this is something that can be/should be inserted into the contract. You may want to discuss this with your curriculum committee and provide your head with input. One way you could go about this is to document the amount of advising you do via email and phone for these courses (I know that I do more of that than face to face, at least with graduate students). Hope this helps you out. Keep the suggestions coming and thanks for the insight!”
Does this translate into “not needed”? I don’t think so.
I didn’t mean to misquote, so let me apologize over this list. I don’t think the contract needs to state every possibility, but I would like to see wording that allows for flexibility without confusion….because many faculty and chairs are confused.
And just to piggy-back on to what sport sociology said: I personally have experienced this confusion, and I personally was told by the academic HR office that I had to have at least some physical office hours in the spring/summer even though I was teaching only online. So again, what I’d like to see is some accounting for time spent online, including the work all of us do in answering student emails.
I do not disagree with the point that we need some accounting for time spent online advising. My point is that we need to put this to our curriculum committees and department chairs. That would be the path of least resistance. In addition, bargaining council is about to start up–if some of you would like to see this part of the contract changed, come to bargaining council, lead a sub committee, do the research and provide the data needed to convince the admin that this is a warranted addition.
First off, the curriculum committee in my department has nothing to do with office hours or any “rules of work.” Perhaps personnel. Second, I did go to my department head, and she said “I don’t know, let’s see what Academic HR says.” And Academic HR said I had to have office hours.
And keep in mind that office hours actually is language explicitly in the contract. This is not a departmental policy nor is it in the DID; rather, office hours are part of the labor agreement the administration and the union negotiate. By definition then, the real path for this is the bargaining process.
Again, come on out to bargaining council. Like I said before I too would like to see some accounting for the time spent advising online. Just like the law, policies have yet to catch up with the ever changing technology. I am trying to imagine how such language in the contract would look and then what would be the unforeseen consequences. One thing that instantly comes to mind is how would one ‘prove’ if ever asked to, the amount of time spent advising online? Printed emails I suppose–or snap shots of chats? Does this raise any privacy issues? I think this is a good discussion and needs to be explored. What are your thoughts/ideas?