Using Google Calendar for Office Hour Appointments

It is often considered best practice for faculty to set aside a couple of hours each week for office hours and then provide a note stating that students can reach out to the instructor to make an appointment if the times do not work for them. Why not cut out this first step and just have students make an appointment instead? Providing an easy means to make the appointment shows students that you really do want them to make an appointment. Moreover, using an appointment platform saves time for both you and your students. 

There are different platforms that can be used; this tutorial describes how to set up office hour appointments in Google Calendar. I have liked using it because it provides more flexibility; that is, I can set appointment slots to repeat but also easily adjust those times each week to better fit my schedule.

The following steps describe how to create a bookable appointment schedule in Google Appointment Schedules. 

1. Using your MSU account on a computer, open Google Calendar.
2. Make sure that you are in Week view or any Day view.
3. Click on “Create”, located in the upper-left corner of the window.
4. A drop-down menu will appear. Click on “Appointment schedule.” This allows you to create a new bookable appointment schedule. 

   

    
5. A new menu appears. The instructions below indicate what to enter and some tips for each part of the menu.
   1. Enter the title of your office hours, such as “Office Hours,” “Tutoring Sessions,” “Instructor-Student Meetings,” “Meet the Instructor,” etc.
   2. Appointment duration: Choose the duration of the slots. I choose 15-minute time slots because the meetings that I have with students are rarely longer than 10 minutes.
   3. General availability: Although your schedule may vary week-to-week, set up when you are generally available Monday thru Friday. Specific dates can be changed in a later step or in the calendar.
      1. If you are only setting this up for a few days, then change “repeat weekly” to “does not repeat.”
      2. The time zone will be what your calendar is already set up for, so it should be correct, but change it if needed.
   4. Scheduling window: Set up how soon in advance students can set up the meeting (I tend to keep this a long period but it is rare for students to set up a meeting more than a week in advance). Also select how close to the scheduled time they can set up the meeting (I do 12 hours so that I can look at it that morning to see what I have for the day but 24 hours is also a standard practice).
   5. Adjusted availability: Either change your specific availability here or do it after completing this booking form right in the calendar by dragging the start and end times.
   6. Booked appointment settings: Add a buffering time between meetings if needed. I don’t have a lot of meetings, so I never need this buffer, but you might find that you need this, especially right before exams.
   7. Calendars: Select which calendar will host your office hours (maybe have a calendar just for office hours). Then (this is one of my favorite options), check off which calendars you want it to check your availability. I like this because if I add a meeting to my calendar, it won’t allow for students to set up an appointment at the same time as my meeting. If it is a face-to-face meeting, though, add another time slot for traveling back to your office for your student appointment.
   8. Co-hosts: It’s unlikely that you will have a co-host for office hours, but if you are co-teaching and have a shared calendar, it might be helpful to have this and add a question later that asks the student who they would prefer to meet with.
6. After completing all of the steps described above, click “next.” Add the following on the next page:
   1. Book page photo and name: personalize your booking page by adding a photo to your Google account.
   2. Location and conferencing: If you are meeting in person, then add your room and building information here. Otherwise, select “none/to be specified later.”
   3. Description: Describe how students attend office hours. If it is online, provide the meeting information. Also consider adding information about office hours, such as your expectations on what can be discussed during office hours.
   4. Booking form: This contains the questions that students will answer when they set up a meeting. The default is their first name, last name, and email address. You can add a question, by selecting “add an item” and then “custom item.” Type in the question, such as “reason for the appointment.”
   5. Booking confirmations and reminders: I recommend keeping the default setting of sending an email reminder to the student a day before the meeting and a few hours before the meeting.
7. After answering the questions on that page, click “save.”
8. Now you should see the appointment schedule populate your calendar.
   1. If you need to change your availability for a specific date, you can edit the appointment schedule by dragging the boxes around or dragging the end time to make it shorter or longer on specific dates.
   2. You can also single-click on one of the appointment boxes and select the “edit” button, which is the shape of a pencil.
9. To share it, single-click on any appointment box, click on “share” and then “copy link.” 
10. To see what students see when they set up a meeting, single-click on any appointment box and click on “open booking page.”