by Yvonne Braun and Natascha Reich

Considering how to do office hours remotely is a new concern for most instructors across campus. Fortunately, Zoom and Canvas Conferences provide great ways for real-time interaction with students in various settings. If you are holding office hours by appointment, the Canvas Scheduler can help you manage your appointments. It is an easy to use tool that lets you choose time slots that students can sign up for in the Canvas CalendarFor your regular drop-in office hours at a set time every week, make sure to use the Zoom Waiting Room feature so students don’t accidentally drop in on another student’s conversation with you. 

Below are a series of short profiles of faculty and GE instructors from different disciplines highlighting how they are approaching their remote office hours this term as well as their one tip or piece of advice for other instructors. Not all ideas may work equally well for all courses and disciplinary considerations, but hopefully seeing how colleagues across campus are managing office hours remotely inspires you to find solutions that fit best for you and your students.  

Name: Habib Iddrisu
Unit: School of Music and Dance
Spring Courses: DAN 301: African Dance Aesthetics in Global Context, and co-teaching DAN 296: Contemporary Dance Lab 2 with Brad Gardner.

How I’m Handling Office Hours: I’m using Zoom to have my regular office for 1.5 hours on T/Th and also to be available for 30mins after class ends. I am also doing an additional hour on Mon/Wed/Fri and Im available by appointment for a Zoom meeting.

One piece of advice: This is an extraordinary time to be a teacher and adjusting and adapting can never be overemphasized. In my case, I decided to use part of the time I would have spent commuting from home to campus back and forth as additional office hours to make my students feel as comfortable, appreciated, and connected as possible.


Name: Diana Libuda 
Unit: Department of Biology, College of Arts and Sciences
Spring Course: Biology 320: Molecular Genetics

How I’m Handling Office Hours:  I’m using the “Conferences” (Big Blue Button) on the Canvas website, which has a simultaneous chat, video, audio, screening sharing, and recording functions (it’ll automatically post the recordings from the office hours onto the course website so students who couldn’t make it can watch later).  As each student enters the “virtual room,” I welcome each student by name using both the video feed and chat function and then invite them to either use their mic or the chat function to ask their questions.  Ive found that this creates a more personalized, engaging interaction with the students (even if they don’t have their video or mic feed on).

One piece of advice: There’s an interactive whiteboard in “Conferences” that you can use together with your students to work on problems together. 


Name: Krystale Littlejohn 
Unit: Department of Sociology, College of Arts and Sciences
Spring Course: SOC 610: Sociology of Health and Illness

How I’m Handling Office Hours: I’m conducting office hours via Zoom, with appointments scheduled via Calendly. I set up the time block and appointment length for my office hours in Calendly, which has Zoom integration. I’ve posted the Calendly link on my syllabus and course Canvas page. After students sign up, they get an auto-generated email confirmation with the link to the Zoom meeting.

One piece of advice: Calendly has several options for appointment confirmation but email confirmation has proved the most reliable.


Name: Sam Schwartz 
Unit: Computer and Information Science, College of Arts and Sciences
Spring Courses: three CIS 122 labs

How I’m Handling Office Hours: I’ve set fixed office hours (like I would normally), posted on Canvas a link to my personal Zoom meeting room, and told students to “knock on my door” by sending me an email if I’m not already online. If I get an email, I’ll jump on the Zoom meeting and chat with the student(s). That said, I plan on starting the Zoom meeting, and keeping it running in the background (with my webcam off) even during times I don’t have students “in my Zoom office.” The email “knock” is for the times when I inevitably will forget to start the office hours Zoom meeting. As always, I’m happy to work with students if my office hours don’t jive with their schedules to set up 1-on-1 times to meet.

One piece of advice: I’ve been using Zoom’s individual chat feature to reach out to quieter students during down time. For example, if I ask the class to take three minutes to ponder about (and write a response to) a prompt, I’ll use those three minutes to direct-message a handful of individual students about what they think, what questions they have, and so forth. This helps me gain insight into students on a personal level, but also helps me get a sense of when the class as a whole is ready to move on. 


Name: Lori Shontz 
Unit: School of Journalism and Communication
Spring Courses: J361: Reporting I and J463/563: Track Bureau

How I’m Handling Office Hours: I am teaching both of my classes asynchronously; I feel like there’s enough stress this term without adding in technical difficulties. But I am using our previously scheduled time for Virtual Office Hours on Zoom or by phone, whatever works for the students. (I’m offering email, too.) Anyone who shows up can visit together in the main room, and I do breakouts to have private conversations. 

One piece of advice: I’m working to listen more than I talk. I’m asking a lot of questions about how students are feeling, where they’re working, what their situation is like. And I’m asking for suggestions about tweaking the class, too. We’re all in this together, and I want to make sure I’m hearing student voices. I’ve already got some good ideas!  


Name: Emily Simnitt
Unit: Department of English, College of Arts and Sciences
Spring Course: ENG 413: theories of literacy

How I’m Handling Office Hours:  Students can reach me three ways: 

1) Drop-In Zoom for 1.5 hours on Mondays [Students click on my Personal Room link. The waiting room is enabled so I can control who comes in.]  

2) Canvas Chat/Email for one hour on Wednesdays [Students know I’ll answer quickly during this time.]  

3) Optional Lecture Recording Sessions for a half hour on Wednesdays [Students are invited to drop in to select lecture recording sessions on Zoom.]

Students can also email to set up Zoom consultations at other times. I am also sending small groups of students an invitation to short introductory meetings during my office hours. I record the sessions with students’ permission and make them available to the full class so the students can have an opportunity to meet each other. 

One piece of advice: Experiment! Any interaction with others is especially important during social distancing. 


Name: Jack Snell-Ryan
Unit: Department of Art, College of Design
Spring Courses: I am teaching two Spring sections of Drawing 233 – I am fortunate that my load this term is a repeating course section. But, I am also collaborating with myCoreSTUDIO colleague, Associate Professor Christopher Michlig, to streamline visual design curriculum while we mentor and collaborate with eleven instructors and graduate educators preparing 15 additional course sections for roughly 300 students this Spring term.

How I’m Handling Office Hours: While I am in position on Zoom during normal office hours I wear a red Team Zissou hat so I can’t be missed – plus I give them my cell phone number. Additionally, all of us in CoreSTUDIO are meeting on Zoom with “pods” through the term – each pod is comprised of five students. Pods are social mammals that interact with one another, swim together, protect each other, and hunt for food as a team. When instructors meet with pods some students will naturally ask questions that other students might only voice with echolocation clicks.  Pods help create a communal sensibility, a collaborative atmosphere, sharpen instincts, and build a collective body of knowledge. Tech Note: Pods can be assigned using the Canvas tool People > “+ Group Set”  >  then in the pop up window let Canvas create groups of 5 students randomly from your class enrollment. 

 One piece of advice: Since Canvas is now one of our important points of intersection with students I ask them what they need there in terms of architecture and clarity and I make those adjustments quickly.


Name: Philip Speranza
Unit: Department of Architecture, College of Design
Spring Course:  ARCH 222: Intro to Computing 

How I’m Handling Office Hours:  I will be available by Zoom but also phone, Hangouts, Skype and certainly UO email. Via Zoom I would be available to not only share screen but also remote access to a students computer (great for teaching computing). ARCH 222 has a Canvas site but also a UO WordPress site. We record my lectures, have our lab sections notes in written form and also with 5 minute recordings. I have also agreed to make GEs available for some office hours with similar access via Zoom. I also poll the students to ask their opinion about better office hours for them. 

One piece of advice Pick up the phone. Put out little fires before they become big fires – i.e., quick responses better than waiting. 

Have a question about remote office hours?  

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