Office hours by appointment:

I have noticed some tendency among students in my Distance Learning classes to ask for special appointments to see me and use that to replace frequent communication by email.

While I always enjoy meeting my Distance Learning students, I have found that most of the students who ask for these meetings are not using the course materials and email appropriately and, consequently, are falling behind in the course. If a meeting helps such students start working more effectively, I am more than happy to meet.

One of the things I will require before we make an appointment outside of my usual hours is that you communicate with me, by email, about some of the questions you are having. In particular, I will insist that you send me specific questions you have about homework problems, where you show me your work and ask me about what makes you feel uncertain. When we can have at least one email exchange about this before our meeting, I can give you much more useful advice and help when we do meet.

If our appointment is made several days in advance then we need to have several such email exchanges, because there is quite a lot of material covered every week in the course and it is not acceptable for you to postpone learning all new material until our appointment. That would put you too far behind in the course.

If you need to make an appointment to see me for some other reason than to discuss the material/homework in the course, then please tell me what you need to discuss when you ask for the appointment.

Please notice that I will always respond to your email questions within one business day and most of the time much more frequently than that. I respond to them basically whenever I read my email and I do that frequently.

Last updated July 3, 2003. Mary Parker