Resources for TAing Drop-in/Office Hours

Facilitating office hours and drop-in sessions provides you with the opportunity to support students in their learning and allows you to help students work through points of confusion or misunderstanding they may hold. To help you prepare for this role, below are several scenarios that you may encounter. We encourage you to to reflect on and discuss how you would approach each scenario with your fellow TAs and/or your professor during the early days of your work.

Scenario 1: You are a TA for Introductory Chemistry and you are holding drop-in office hours. Three students arrive together at your office hours. “We have questions about how to do the homework problems for this week,” one student says. “Yep,” another student says. “We don’t know where to start,” and she points to her notebook. “I’m really bad at science. I hated chemistry in high school, and this stuff is impossible,” she continues. The third student has not said anything and seems to refuse to make eye contact with you. As you begin to explain the problem, the first two students continue to ask questions while the third student silently copies down the answers. What, if anything, would you say to the student who says that they are “really bad at science.” What, if anything, would you say to the third student? How could you help this group of three learners work together more effectively?

Scenario 2: You are holding drop-in sessions for a course with a large number of students enrolled. For the first hour of your drop-in hours, no students show up. However, as you enter into the second hour, your session is suddenly overflowing with students. Now you find that there are too many students to work with individually without leaving the majority of the students sitting and waiting for your attention. They all seem to be stuck on two or three similar kinds of problems and want your guidance in order to move forward with their homework. One student in the group gets frustrated and impatient waiting for you to get to their table. The student said, “Come on! This is ridiculous. I can’t believe how slow you are. Don’t you know how to teach?! What a joke.” How would you handle this situation? And, how would you spend your time when no one comes to your office hours?

Scenario 3: You are a TA for an introductory course in which your roommate and best friend is currently enrolled. They are impressed with your ability to master this course material and are always giving you compliments about your science and math abilities. You hold office hours for four hours a week, but your roommate is unable to attend those sessions because they have extra-curricular obligations. There are other TA hours and professor office hours that do correspond with your roommate’s schedule. However, they say that they feel much more comfortable with you because you “don’t make them feel stupid,” so they ask you if they can schedule weekly appointments with you outside of your hourly TA schedule. How do you respond to this request? Would your response differ if it came from another student in the class who was not your roommate and best friend, and why?

Scenario 4: You are preparing to hold your Thursday evening office hours, as usual. The problem set in the class for which you are a TA is due tomorrow (Friday) at 9am. As you walk up to the room, you see the same two students who are at your office hours every night before a problem set is due. As you sit down to work with them, you realize that their class notes are disorganized and incomplete, and it is clear that they don’t understand some core concepts that have been covered in class (and that are essential for successfully completing the assignment). What do you do in that moment to help these students? What, if anything, do you do after this office hour session is complete?

Some common questions we hear from TAs related to office hours:

Q: No one is coming to my office hours. What should I do?

• How have you advertised your office hours to students? Are they aware of your role in the class? It may be helpful to give a brief presentation at the start of a class meeting to introduce yourself to students. During this session, you could also describe the kinds of questions or topics that students could bring to office hours for discussion, and the materials (e.g., notes, textbook) that would be helpful to bring to office hours. Additionally, sending a message (i.e., Slack) to let students know when you are currently holding office hours, and where, can also prompt attendance.
• Where are your office hours located, and when are they offered? The most common reasons that students provide for not attending office hours relate to the timing of office hours and whether they are conveniently located. You may want to consider creating a poll to identify the best times for your students to attend office hours, as well as considering a centralized and easily accessible location.

Q: When students ask a question in office hours, how can I stop myself from just telling them the answer?

• Remember that your role is to support students in developing their own solutions to problems and areas of confusion, not providing them with the answers. As you think about how you will coach students in their learning process, think about questions that might guide their thinking. These questions might include:
  • What is this question or problem asking you to do? What do you already know that will help you solve this problem? Where are you getting stuck?
  • Have you seen a simliar problem or question before, in class or on an assignment? Let's look at that problem to see what can transfer to this question.

Q: Sometimes, I get asked questions to which I do not know the answer or worry that I may be incorrect. How should I approach this situation so that students still see me as a valuable resource?

• You are a TA in this class because you have demonstrated an interest in supporting students in their learning. You are not expected to emember every piece of knowledge from a class. In these situations, take a deep breathe and think about how you can mentor the student through the problem. For instance, you may say, "I don't remember every aspect of this topic, but here is what I do know... and let's see if we can work through this together."
• It is also helpful to have regular meetings with the faculty in the class to review assignments and exams prior to your office hours. In these meetings, you can learn about the common questions and challenges that students are likely to bring to office hours, so that you can think ahead of time about how you might support them during office hours.