Encourage students to use office hours (or those of your TA).
Your head will already be in the material. Your day will not be fragmented.
Fewer students will stop by your office just to chat.
Undergraduates have little understanding on the requirements on professors outside of class contact hours. They respond well if you cast the task you are doing (e.g. preparing for another class, writing a grant, working on research, performing university service) in terms of something that will improve the quality of their education.
Hide!
For uninterrupted time, work away from your office.
Reserve your time
Paperwork expands to fill all available time. Try to relegate it to a certain time of day.
Hold weekly optional study sessions in a classroom.
You can use it as your office hour.
Students who have previously been frustrated by their competitive pre-med peers particularly appreciate working together.
Let students know you will arrive by as much as 1/2 hour late to the study session and that they should use the time to work together.
Students will answer each other’s easy questions first.
Students do not passively wait to be fed answers as much.
Online threaded discussions
Many universities host websites that allow one student to ask a question and another to comment on the topic.
Students answer each other’s questions.
Bounce questions that come to you by e-mail to the website where either you or other students can provide an answer for the whole class to view.
The site needs to be monitored occasionally to stop the propagation of wrong answers, but not monitored so much that it is a time sink.
Publishers
Contact publishers for free copies of textbooks and CD-ROMs. Including images from the CD-ROM in your lecture may (or may not!) save preparation time.
Email
Turn off your computer’s audible e-mail notification.
Keep text files of
common responses to copy and paste. (e.g. what students should do when a class is missed, what you require for a letter of recommendation…)
Got TAs? Enlist their help! Forward appropriate student questions to your TA.
Letters of recommendation
Decide beforehand what your policy will be. Will you write a letter for every student who asks?
Astonishingly, students need to be told to fill out all forms, to give you addressed stamped envelopes, to tell you which term they took your class, etc. Send them a form letter.
Retain copies of letters of recommendation for easy modification when students ask for future letters.
Enlist aid from tas, staff and faculty
If you have TAs, have them keep track of hours spent.
Ask your TAs if there is something simple you can do to help them. In return, they can spend more time debugging your exams, writing exam questions, or covering office hours.
Nominate great TAs for awards, and they’ll want to work with you again.
You probably aren’t used to having a secretary. Think about how he can help you. I use the criterion that if it will take me just as long to do it myself as to explain it to him, then I should have him do it. Inevitably some snafu happens and the task takes longer than I expected.
Your assistant will appreciate it if you can give him a specific estimate of your deadline required on your job. ‘No rush’ means different things to different people. Try to be specific and to say “I need this in X weeks/months.”
Your faculty colleagues are often happy to share notes, syllabi, and exam questions. Ask them.
