Social office hours: all around conversations
Talitha van der Meulen
Description
Students are not always sure what a professor’s office hours are for and may feel intimidated to come and ask questions directly to a professor. I offered more social office hours that included serving of coffee, tea, and cookies, as well as the presence of learning assistants. I found that rather than facing a room of students across a large table to answer questions, I became engaged in many smaller conversations and so did students and learning assistants.
Link to the video [video.ucdavis.edu]
Access the presentation slides (PDF)
About the Presenter
Talitha has studied a wide range of topics: biomechanics during her graduate studies, biochemistry and in peptide biology during two postdocs. Then she helped set up a lab in diabetes research and worked closely with many undergraduate students. She joined the department of Neurobiology, Physiology, & Behavior as a Professor of Teaching right at the start of the Covid pandemic. This timing greatly influenced her teaching and research, and she focusses on making her classrooms more inclusive and welcoming, learning how students study, and detecting cheating in online coursework.
