Does It Really Matter? Using Virtual Office Hours to Enhance Student-Faculty Interaction

Abstract

The use of Web-based learning technologies has increased dramatically over the past decade providing new opportunities and avenues for students to interact with their professors virtually using computer-mediated communication (CMC) technologies. In this article, the authors share their experiences and findings with the use of virtual office hours as a medium for students to communicate with their professors using a Web 2.0 technology, namely Facebook’s instant messaging (IM) client. Participants in the study included both traditional and nontraditional undergraduate students enrolled in on-campus MIS courses at a public U.S. university in the southeast. The findings suggest that students’ use of virtual office hours is not significantly different from their use of traditional office hours; however, participants in classes that offered virtual office hours reported higher levels of satisfaction with office hours than students in classes that offered only traditional face-to-face office hours. Implications for faculty designing courses using virtual office hours as a teaching and learning tool are discussed.

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