Walk-in Hours and Online Practice Session

Description

Online practice sessions are your offer to the students without an explicit request for help and shows that you care about providing structure and helping students understand. Usually, it is a 30-60 -minute synchronous online session where students can ask any kind of questions and/ or work on their assignments while the instructor is available to help if needed. You can offer to recap a topic in dialogue with the students.

Note
Use cases

Tutorials that are not teacher-centered

  • Schedule tool stud.IP: List the walk-in hours dates. Lecturers can add topics to dates that contain a short description of the content for better orientation and to let students know the topics in advance if there are any.
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MIDI: These tips are also suitable for current teaching situations, but require a little more preparation or time.

Time for the practice session (30-60 min.)

  1. Announce the walk-in hour (+ the topic) via email/ element. If you plan an open practice session in which you will simply be available for questions as students work on their assignments, let them know about it.
  2. Communicate how you conceptualize the walk-in hours: Will you figure out their questions/ uncertainties together or do they have to know what they don't know?
  3. Be present in the walk-in hours also if no one shows up because students could join later (A walk-in hour is not an appointment), meanwhile you can use the time for your own work.
  4. If students want to work on their assignments, set up break out rooms that they can use.

  • Send reminder for your Walk-in hour or Online Practice Session one or two days before via email or Element.
  • Let students know what to expect from these Walk-in hours: why should they come? What is the benefit?
  • Inform students about the modality: are they expected to prepare questions or bring materials/ results to work with?
  • You can even use the time with students to ask how the course is going for them, if they would need something else/ more of something.
  • Ask students on the first day of class if they understand the concept of online practice sessions and their opinion about it.