One of the most common complaints I see on faculty evaluations is that of office hours. Traditional students lament, “He's never there!” or “Her door is always closed!” I know for a fact that most of these faculty members are, in fact, there during mornings and early afternoons, it's just that these are the times when students are either in other classes or otherwise occupied. For faculty members, however, holding hours after three or four in the afternoon is neither practical nor realistic. Most faculty at my institution give out their home phone numbers or have started Facebook accounts or use our online platform to increase communication, but it's hard to accomplish some things in these media. I tell students with great frequency, “Make an appointment! Don't just pop in!” but they want spontaneity.
Do we all need to move into asynchronous online settings where office hours don't matter or are there other ways to meet these in-office responsibilities?
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One Response to Out of Sync
jon_margerumleys - July 30, 2009 at 3:52 pm
Why is it “neither practical nor realistic” to have office hours after three or four in the afternoon? Most of us work full time and while one of the benefits of being a professor is the flexibility in our schedule, it shouldn’t be the case that we expect to be done working by four in the afternoon every day. It’s a full time job: Unless a person is starting work at 8 in the morning and not taking a lunch break, it’s not at all unreasonable to expect that person to still be working after 4:00.
If a critical mass of students need us to be in during the late afternoon, we should be open to that. It’s not unreasonable at all.
Jon