Unsure about how to meet your academics?
Published on 28 June 13
Spending time with your lecturers is one of the best ways to improve both your marks and your experience of studying. Here's how to find them and get the most out of the experience.
Why should I go and see them?
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“Lecturers' office hours are a sadly underutilized resource. Students sometimes get into serious trouble as they try to cope all on their own with academic difficulties or personal circumstances. In many cases, having a quick word with a lecturer or seeing your academic advisor during their office hours can nip the problem in the bud.” Dr Ricardo Bermúdez-Otero (Linguistics and English Language) |
It’s useful to meet with your Academic advisor as early as possible as they are a useful resource. Their role is to over see your academic progress and to be a point of contact if you need help with anything. You may not have any mandatory meetings with them but you should make the effort to get to know your advisor.
Your Academic advisor in most cases is the person who will be writing your reference when you’re applying for jobs. This gives you the opportunity to tell your advisor about what you are involved with, whether it’s a part time job or extra curricular activities. The more your advisor knows about the extra things you do outside of lectures the better your reference may be.
It’s not just your academic advisor you need to get to know. If you are struggling with any aspect of your course, go and see the lecturer. They won’t judge you if you’re finding it difficult, they will have seen students struggle before and they’ll be pleased you’re asking for help.
Here are a few suggestions of what you could do before seeing your lecturer to make the most out of their office hours:
- You could do practice problems from the textbook and get some feedback on whether you're approaching the question in a productive way
- If there are discussion questions listed in a textbook you could think about these and see what the lecturer's response is, and get a discussion going that way, perhaps get some new ideas.
- You could also try to explain parts of the lecture to them as a way of seeing whether you understood it.
- If you are really struggling, despite studying the reading, share some ways in which you've tried to tackle the material, or explain as far as you can so the lecturer can maybe see where it is that you're getting stuck and help guide your studying.
How do I arrange a meeting?
Find out when their office hours are, in most cases you don’t need an appointment if you plan on visiting them during office hours, but it may be wise to give them notice. If you’re unavailable during their office hours they should be able to arrange an appointment with you at another time.
There are many different ways Lecturers' advertise their office hours to students; they may put them on the first lecture slide/handouts, they may be in your school handbook, they may have them posted on their doors and some lecturers may have their own personal webpage which includes office hours. If you can't find out when their office hours are, it may be best to send them an email to find out.
Dropping by their office outside of their office hours unannounced or trying to speak to them after a lecture are not the best ways of contacting your lecturers. You may find that they won’t have the time to deal with your concerns, so don’t be disheartened, make use of email and Blackboard discussion pages.
What should we discuss?
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“ Together, students and academics make the learning experience better. I was delighted with the enthusiasm of speech and language therapy students to discuss and learn more about specific language impairment (SLI) and encouraged them to get in touch “outside” the lecture room. And they did: I had a number of email discussions with them and face to face appointments about their interest in research and sharing their own experiences.” Professor Gina Conti-Ramsden (Psychological Sciences) |
When you are doing your reading keep some post it notes to hand, if there’s anything you don’t understand write your question down and then you can bring your questions with you, to ask your lecturer. You also need to make sure you’re up-to-date with the reading on the course. It’s no good asking for them to help you when you’ve not completed the work they’ve assigned as that could be why you’re struggling!
Making the most of your dissertation supervisor
If you’re writing a dissertation, or planning on doing so, your dissertation supervisor is a really useful resource if you use them correctly. If possible, seeing your potential supervisor before starting your dissertation should help. With your preliminary research, ideas and their advice you can plan your dissertation thoroughly and start thinking about what obstacles you will be challenged with.
Do some work and planning before each meeting with your supervisor, this will enable your discussions to be more in depth and therefore more useful. Making an action plan of what you need to do before your next meeting should help to keep you on track and your supervisor may be able to give you guidance about how long you should spend on research and background reading.
If you’re struggling to find relevant literature on your topic, ask for help. In most cases, supervisors will be happy to suggest articles, books and journals that should be useful.