Encouraging Students to Seek Help: Supplementing Office Hours with a Course Center

. Too often students who obviously need help in a course choose not to seek help, with predictable consequences. In an effort to encourage our students to get help, we supplemented our regular office hours with a course center, a one- or two-hour block of time in which help was available from us away from our offices. Because students can be intimidated by meeting individually with instructors and because students cannot always articulate their questions "on the spot," we hoped that the course centers, held in a location where students could interact with each other in addition to the instructor, would promote interactions conducive to seeking help. We present results from a survey that compared and contrasted student views of course centers versus office hours, and discuss positive aspects of the course center as well as potential limitations.