The Quandary: How Available Should Faculty Members Be to Students Online? – The Chronicle of Higher Education
How available should faculty members be to students?
Virtual office hours can help struggling students but shouldn’t be 24/7.
Online instruction raises new challenges, one being how much time an instructor should be accessible. Students may need more support during the pandemic, but instructors also have personal lives and other work to manage. From extending virtual office hours to fielding calls, texts, and emails on weekends, it can be hard to figure out where and how to draw boundaries.
Adam G. Sanford, a lecturer in the California State University system, makes himself available to his students on Zoom for 20 hours a week, the time he normally would have been on campus, holding office hours and teaching his three in-person sociology classes. “I find that having this many open hours — even if the students don’t use them much — soothes my conscience a little bit,” he says, “that I’m at least doing the best I can to put myself out there and say, ‘Hey, the door is open,’ metaphorically speaking. ‘Come and talk to me.’” While he waits, he grades papers, does crafts, or watches TV.