Strategies for Office Hours and Review Sessions for TAs
This piece provides practical suggestions for how TAs can make office hours and review sessions as beneficial as possible for students. The authors offer general principles for effective office hours as well as concrete strategies for engaging students; they also outline differences in what effective office hours may look like across disciplines.
Define office hours and review sessions
Office hours and review sessions are additional meetings held outside of regular course meeting times where TAs provide guided support for students to review material and reinforce learning. Office hours tend to occur regularly throughout a quarter or semester. Review sessions typically occur shortly before an assessment and are explicitly dedicated to helping students prepare for the assessment.
The purpose of office hours and review sessions is to:
- Guide students to identify key concepts.
- Spend time with an individual student or in small groups to learn how you can assist and guide them.
- Facilitate deeper learning for students by sharing advanced resources and engaging in critical dialogue.