Stella Christie
Office hours have always been integral to my teaching. Tsinghua mandated that faculty publish their office hours onTsinghua Info, I have always put my office hours in the syllabus of every class that I teach. Here is a snippet of the syllabus from the very first class that I taught in Tsinghua (Spring 2019):
Students did take advantage of these 2 hours weekly office hours. In fact, for this particular class, every week these hours were always used to the full. It was especially helpful for both the students and I to have these office hours: as we were both new to each other, the time outside class helped us to navigate each other’s learning and teaching style. We had the extra challenge of crossing the cultural and language barriers—as the class was taught in English and I come from a different culture. But even without this challenge, every class is a new interaction for both teachers and students alike, making office hours essential. Here are some of my reflections on the functionality and usage of office hours.
Why office hours? Classes in universities are often very large, and it can be daunting for students to raise their hand in front of classmates to ask questions about the materials, or to ask for clarifications on things they do not understand. Some students approach the professor during break or after class, but often, this time is limited to a mere few minutes. Furthermore, some students need time before they can even raise questions—often they discover their questions after class time, when they are studying on their own. Of course, in principal, students can bring these questions to the next class, but again, this prospect of raising questions in front of everyone may just be too overwhelming for many of our students. Office hours present opportunities for students to approach the professor on a less intimidating setting, where they can be more at ease to ask questions and amplify their understanding of the materials. This benefits not only the students, but the professor too: we can teach our classes better having understood students’ difficulties and questions.
Classes also tend to deindividualize students. No matter how great a teacher you are, it is extremely difficult to give individual attention to every student when you are giving a lecture to some 60 or 100 students. Except for the few students who sit in the front row or ask question in every lecture, a class can become a mere sea of names and student ID’s. We recognize these names when we grade their exams, but we can’t even put faces to these names. Office hours help bridge this gap between mere names and personalities, giving us the opportunities to get to know the individuals whom we are teaching. Over the years of my teaching, I have gotten to know many amazing individuals—almost all of them I got to know from my office hours. The most memorable ones are often those students who I did not even notice during class—the shy ones who sat at the far back and never make eye contact during lectures. But then they came to office hours, and I got to hear their intriguing questions and amazing aspirations. I got to know them as persons, and it gives so much more joy and meaning to teach persons, rather than mere names.
How to use office hours effectively? Even given these opportunities, students do not always make use of office hours. This can be particularly true in Tsinghua, when the culture of office hours is relatively new—not all students feel at ease or have the need to come to office hours to meet with their professors. With the assumption that office hours make the class a better teaching and learning experience for all—students and teachers alike—here are some tips for effective office hours usage.
Let students know your office hours. This may seem obvious, but despite my office hours being written clearly on the syllabus, occasionally I still found that students do not know about it. To remedy this, usually in the first few classes I made special announcements telling students about my office hours, encouraging them to come with any questions they have. Timing of these announcements can matter too: I found it most effective to NOT make the announcement at the beginning of the class. In the beginning of class some students come late, they were just transitioning from other classes, or lunch ,or a myriad of other things, this kind of information tends to be forgotten or ignored. It’s actually best to make this announcement at the end of class—after students go through the class, and indeed may have some questions that make them more motivated to come to office hours. Most of all, let the students know that you, the professor, genuinely welcome their presence at office hours.
Build a structure in your office hours. Students may still be reluctant to come to office hours despite the encouragement from the professors. Of course, we should not require that students come to office hours—that would defeat the point casualness and non-intimidating aspect of office hours. But some built-in structures might help students overcome their reluctance. For example, in one of my seminar discussion class, a group of students have to lead the class discussion every week. To facilitate this, every week prior to the actual class I encourage the student discussion leaders to use the office hours to discuss their plan of discussion with me: what questions do they want to ask other students? what points do they want to highlight from the readings? what questions from other classmates should be discussed in class? Many students have said that these office hours times have been very useful in shaping their thinking and learning.
In a big lecture class, usually I tried to put extra office hours before exams or problem sets. This is usually the time when students have questions, and rather than simply sending emails, I encourage students to come to office hours instead. Often, it’s much easier to understand students’ questions and clarify their misunderstandings in persons than over emails. Office hours after students receive their graded exams can be useful too—so students can clarify things that they don’t understand.
Lastly, even though we largely think of office hours as a one-to-one meeting, it doesn’t have to be. If two or three students have the same questions and they both are comfortable discussing them at the same time, by all means. Sometimes, a small number of company makes the whole process less intimidating and even more effective—students get to hear each other’s questions.
My most recent office hour experience is one of the most challenging one to date: I was quarantined at home alone with my 3-year-old son. No one was around to take care of my son, but I decided to hold the office hours anyway because it was just before the midterm exam and students had lots of questions. So, on Tuesday evening last week, we met online for open office hours. There were plenty of questions from students, and plenty of interruptions from my toddler, who was active and curious and simply just loved talking to people. For example, one of my students asked, “Professor, can you explain again why categories are useful?” (The class is about concept and language acquisition—how the mind can acquire knowledge in the first place). I explained using examples, saying that if we knew that category “tigers” are dangerous, once told that there was something that sat in front of our door that looked like a tiger, we probably would not want to open the door. Category was useful as it allows us to infer properties of new things that we encounter. To this my son quickly interrupted: “tigers can eat people you know? But here’s a question for you (to my students): do tigers only live in the zoo?” My students were amused. It was disruptive, but at the same time a learning experience for all: here is a real-life example of what concept acquisition looks like. Indeed, how is a child, who only sees tigers in the zoo supposed to gain knowledge that they live somewhere else? Somehow that question bothers my 3-year-old. At the end of the office hours one of my students asked “Professor, does Milosz mean to be quiet in Indonesian” (I was speaking in a mix of Polish, English, and Indonesian to my son). This was really funny, because Milosz is my son’s name, but my students heard this word a lot and guessed, reasonably so given the context, that it meant to be quiet! It was a great learning experience for us all, as it illustrated how hard it is to learn the meaning of a word—the very topic of our class. It was a useful office hour after all.
Stella Christie Introduction:
Prof. Stella Christie is a tenured Associate Professor at Tsinghua University, Department of Psychology. Meanwhile, she is Research Chair at the Tsinghua Brain and Intelligence Laboratory. A native of Indonesia, she received her B.A. from Harvard University in 2004, and Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology from Northwestern University in 2010. Prior to moving to Tsinghua, she was a tenured Associate Professor at Swarthmore College, USA. At Tsinghua, she is the founder and director of the Child Cognition Center. Prof. Christie is a cognitive scientist, a world expert in the development of analogical reasoning. Her research investigates how humans acquire relational knowledge—including language learning, spatial intelligence, numerical concepts, social cognition, and creative problem solving. Her works have been published in numerous influential journals. In 2016 she was nominated for the James McDonnell Understanding Human Cognition Award, one of the most prestigious nominations for cognitive scientists.
