Project Investigator(s): Pam Kalas, Senior Instructor, Department of Zoology and Botany; Sunita Chowrira, Professor of Teaching, Department of Botany
Project Description
In large university courses, office hours represent unique opportunities for students to receive individualized support from instructors. So much learning is thought to take place during office hours interactions that publishing companies have developed educational tools that supposedly “mimic” these interactions. Yet, typically only a very small proportion of students take advantage of office hours, an observation that was also reflected in the findings of a recently completed SoTL Seed project. Our objective is to identify perceived and actual barriers to attending office hours, so that instructors may take specific actions and develop specific practices to eliminate them.
Research Questions
- Why do such a small proportion of Biology students take advantage of office hours?
- What are the actual and perceived barriers?
Impact on teaching and learning at UBC
Identifying barriers to student participation in office hours should allow individual instructors, as well as the Biology Program as a whole, to implement practices that reduce or remove these barriers and maximize accessibility to this invaluable resource. Considering the number of Biology students (~2000 per year), the small proportion who typically attend office hours, and how office hours can be, the potential impact of this project for students’ teaching and learning could be massive.