By Devon Coutts
Ph.D. Candidate, Philosophy
CELT Graduate Student Assistant
devon.coutts@stonybrook.edu

In my previous post, I outlined the problem that many undergraduate students do not take full advantage of faculty office hours, and gave a few suggestions for how instructors can encourage more students to attend. In this post, I want to take a look at another aspect of the problem: many instructors do not believe that it is their responsibility to encourage students to attend. The question guiding this post is: Why not? What assumptions underlie how instructors view their responsibilities around office hours?

To try to answer this question, I visited three instructors during their office hours and asked each of them what they were doing to encourage students to attend. Two said they included on the syllabus when and where office hours would be held. The third not only included when and where they would be, but invited students to drop by if they have specific questions, need extra help with the assignments, or if they simply want to talk. Of the three, he was the only one who had any students attend office hours within the first six weeks of the semester. 

The first two instructors gave revealing answers about why they do not explicitly encourage students to attend. One explained that she expected students would attend if they had specific questions or wanted to discuss their grades on significant assignments. The other expected students to be able to monitor their own progress and assess for themselves whether to seek extra help in office hours. In other words, both assumed that students already know what office hours are for, and thought that there was no need to explain that asking specific questions, discussing assignments, or seeking extra help are reasons to attend. 

However, recent research brings to light how these assumptions put certain students at a disadvantage. Assumptions around the proper use of office hours are part of the “hidden curriculum” of a university: those unspoken rules and expectations about how to interact socially with instructors and how to take advantage of institutional resources. As Anthony Abraham Jack notes, students rely on “cultural competencies developed before college” to navigate the hidden curriculum, but not all high schools have the resources to support students in developing such competencies (Jack, 2016). For instance, the “doubly disadvantaged” – students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds who enter college without any kind of prep or private school experience – tend to “lack the skill set or desire to engage faculty, even as they perceive their peers reaping the benefits of forging relationships” (Jack, 2016). These so-called “doubly disadvantaged” students experience higher degrees of disengagement, to the extent that some feel unable to reach out to professors even when they are at risk of failing a class. One student reports that she did not realize that she needed to contact her professor until he reached out to her first: “Even though he said if you don’t turn in this paper you’ll fail, it wasn’t until I received that email that I realized I needed to email him” (Jack, 2016). While many students eventually learn the skills to engage with faculty and to advocate for themselves academically over time, they may also miss out on access to institutional resources and opportunities to build relationships until sophomore or for some, even the junior year. That could mean missed opportunities to apply for summer jobs, internships, grants, and other experiences that enrich the curriculum and lead to careers after graduation.

Jack’s research highlights the importance of meeting students where they are, rather than where we expect them to be. It is not fair to assume that all of our students know how to seek support when they are struggling. Since very simple things like explaining what office hours are for or emailing students who are falling behind can contribute significantly to creating an accessible and inclusive learning environment, we as instructors ought to do more to normalize this practice in our institutions.  

Reference

Jack, A. A. (2016). (No) harm in asking: Class, acquired cultural capital, and academic engagement at an elite university. Sociology of Education, 89(1), 1-19.