Teaching Tip: Online office hours just got easier

March 25, 2016

Marissa Carl

It's important to establish a way for students to reach you when teaching an online course. If it's not easy — for you or the students — it isn't likely to work. In this week's Teaching Tip, UAF instructors share their methods for connecting one-on-one with students.

Here's a breakdown of two free methods — Google Hangouts and Appear.in. All UAF students and instructors have access to Google Hangouts. To use Appear.in, you share a link with your students; they don’t need an account but will need to test it on their device and browser.

	Google Hangouts	Appear.in
BANDWIDTH	Audio-only option available for students with limitations	Audio-only option available for students with limitations
CONCURRENT USE	15 connections; 10 connections with https://hangouts.google.com/	8 connections
APP FOR THAT?	iOS & Android	iOS & Android
BROWSER	newer versions of Chrome, Firefox and Opera	newer versions of Chrome, Firefox and Opera

Read the full Teaching Tip at http://elearning.uaf.edu/go/tt-office-hours.

— Teaching Tip by Janene McMahan, a UAF eLearning instructional designer, programmer and adjunct faculty with 23 years of teaching experience.