Office HoursOne of the most valuable resources available to a student is their instructor’s open office hours. Yet, most students do not take advantage of that time.

Sakai offers a tool that will show students when you are available and also allow students to register for a specific date/time you have office hours. One huge benefit is that students will get reminders for time slots that they sign up for. Also, instructors know who will be coming, what time, and also have the ability to read comments or questions a student has ahead of time.

ENABLE THE SIGN-UP TOOL

Click Site Info > Edit Tools and check the box next to Sign-up. Then click Continue and Finish. You'll see the tool listed on the left side of the page.

USING THE SIGN-UP TOOL

• schedule office hours, review sessions, and other events

• create signup sessions for groups

• take attendance

• receive reminders

• export schedule into your calendar

• have wait lists for events

GETTING STUDENTS TO USE THE SIGN-UP TOOL

There are options in the sign-up tool itself that will send out notifications that events have been created, create announcements, and add the dates to your course’s calendar. If you are having an online session, add the virtual “join” link in the description field to make it easier for students.

ELLUMINATE LIVE BRIDGE!Site Info>Edit tools and check the box next to Elluminate Live!. Then click Continue and Finish. You’ll see the tool listed on the left side of the page.

MICROSOFT LYNCis collaboration/communication software that allows a person to communicate with another person who is on the same Active Directory Domain (i. e. ad.unc.edu) or even meet with others outside of the University by creating an Online Meeting.

OFFICE HOURSOffice hours are a valuable resource to students on campus. They are an opportunity for students and instructors to meet face to face outside of the classroom.

“You’re the first professor I have met with one on

one”

“I have never been to any of my professors’ offices”

Getting StartedThere are three different types of events:

Open meetings, which do not require students to register. They serve more as an announcement for a specific event

Single slot events can be used for review sessions or online communication when there can be more than one student attending at a time. Students are required to register/sign-up and an attendance list is automatically created. There does not have to be a limit on how many can sign-up.

Multiple slots are when an event is divided into equal lengths of time. For example, if you have office hours for two hours and allow 30 minutes per student then the sign-up tool will create 4 possible events for students to register for. Alternatively, you can elect to see 6 students then Sakai will automatically estimate that each session will be 20 minutes long.

You can set up reoccurring events by changing the default setting of “Only Once” to an option more suitable. The frequency of events can be weekly, monthly, or daily and even then it can be managed based on an end date or by how many times you plan to have the session.

Another option is to control who can sign up for the session. By default all the members of the site can register, but you do have the option to make it available to specific groups or sections.

Events can be added to your Sakai course calendar, My Workspace calendar, and synced with external calendars such as google calendar or ical.

Some of the advanced options for the sign-up tool allows instructors to modify the default settings. Those include some of the following:

• Allow a wait list• Allow students to add comments

when signing up• Send out auto reminders• Publish event(s) to calendar

• Auto create groups for timeslots• Hide/show participants name to

others• Email updates when status

changes

Virtual ClassYou can also use these tools to have class online. By using the signup tool to schedule online

review sessions or class you have the potential to extend the learning environment beyond the classroom.

Some options include using the Elluminate Live Bridge in Sakai or Microsoft Lync which is available to all UNC staff, faculty, and students.

SIGN-UP TOOL

Signup tool helps with scheduling especially when you export the events to other digital calendars you use.

Using the sign-up tool in conjunction with other communication software allows you to network in new and innovative ways.