Hugh Schwyzer notes a correlation between the number of students e-mailing their professors and the number of students actually coming to their professors' office hours. I'd have to agree. My own office hours are generally populated by myself; some semesters go by without a single student visitor. There are ways of remedying the absence of student presence, of course; I require one-on-one conferences with all of my students in freshman comp, for example.
Of course, this becomes rather frustrating when students claim on their evaluations that I'm "not available," even though they've never shown up in my office!
I do all but put on a one-woman show about how much I'd love my students to come to office hours, they never come, and then I get the "not available" comment as well. I'm pretty sure it means "not in her office that random Sunday afternoon at 3 when I decided I wanted help with the paper due the next day."
Posted by: colyav | February 24, 2006 at 09:20 AM
I was worried about this on my evals, but seeing that other people get it too, I'm thinking that anyone reading my evals will know the score.
Posted by: Vito Prosciutto | February 24, 2006 at 11:15 AM