Office hours were a pilot community call that was trialed from Sept 2022 to March 2023.
This meeting space was trialled after the need was established to create a space where newcomers to the project could learn more about the community (before joining a collaboration cafe or coworking call - two other types of community calls within The Turing Way community). Two hour slots were scheduled weekly on Friday afternoons (UK time), which were advertised as spaces that community members or newcomers could attend to learn more about the project or ask any question they might have.
This space was created as an informal space to ask questions about the project, join other beginnings in the project, or as a space for informal coffee chats. They were modeled to be one-on-one online help sessions to directly help new community members as they learn more about The Turing Way project. No booking or prior planning was required, and no attendence was tracked to ensure psychological safety and informality of the call.
In 2022 and 2023, these calls were hosted by The Turing Way Community Manager, Anne Lee Steele.
Similar to other community calls in 2023, the information for this call was hosted on HackMD: https://hackmd.io/turingway/office-hours
About “office” or “drop-in” hours¶
Many academic institutions host office hours or drop-in hours to help students in a one-on-one learning environment. Professors, teaching assistants and/or tutors may host office hours outside of normal class hours to give support about an assignment, discuss topics or questions, and/or answer questions. While they are not limited to students or those specifically seeking help, these sessions generally reach these personas due to the one-on-one question style.
Within the open source community, “office hours” or “drop-in hours” have played a similar role.
Reasons for retiring¶
Last updated: February 2024
After trialing office hours between the months of September 2022 and March 2023, these calls were retired. This was due to the following reasons:
Low attendence: In the 6 months that the cals were organised, they were not well-attended. While the calls were advertised across the Slack workspace and social media websites, there was usually no more than one attendee in each office hour, with some office hours not being attended by any community member at all. In these cases, the space was re-organised for meetings (or alternatively: the space was re-organsed)
Unclear purpose: Existing documentation around office hours and/or drop-in hours suggest that such calls are usually better attended if there is a clear purpose for attendence, such as a specific question (see: Think Student, Small Pond Science). Because of the ‘question-and-answer’ format, they are not
Need for structured space: During the May 2023 and November 2023 Book Dashes that followed this trial, the team received positive feedback about the “Github workshops” that were organised around the event (which were open to all to attend) worked well as a hands-on jumping off point for the project.
While additional factors such as the time that the calls were organised, as well as the communication of the call’s purpose could have been improved, the broader need for a more structured space overrode the micro-adjustments that could have improved this call’s scope without addressing broader needs.