Best Practices for Holding Virtual Office Hours

Last updated on September 16, 2026

Office hours are key resources for your students to seek additional help and instruction. In-person office hours are a time-tested system, and these benefits carry forward when you provide an equivalent virtual experience. For a small investment of time and effort to set up a virtual office meeting option, you can greatly enhance how you connect with your students, provide feedback, and meet your learners where they need you the most.

To help you get started, or improve your current virtual meeting practices, CTLD advises that you use Microsoft Teams to conduct virtual meetings with your students, and you have a few different options for how you structure your office hours when using Teams.

There are two main strategies. You can use a recurring meeting in Teams so students can drop into at will, or set up appointment groups in the Canvas Calendar that students will need to sign up for and you will need to monitor.

One other option is to simply open Teams during your scheduled office hours, and instruct your students to call you on Teams during those times. However, you might be overwhelmed by calls if many students try to reach you at the same time, so let them know in advance that they may need to wait for assistance, just like the queue that forms outside of your office on campus. Consider changing your lobby options in Teams to set up a waiting area.

Best Practices

• Hosting a single Teams meeting in which you wait for students to join through a shared link is the simplest way to conduct virtual office hours, but you may find it difficult to manage if several students join at once.
• Creating time slots and letting your students sign up on Canvas  can help prevent multiple students from joining your office hours simultaneously, but also requires more management on your part.
• If you instruct your students to call you directly on Teams, make sure you’re able to effectively manage the volume of calls.
• Make sure you’re comfortable using Teams (i.e. scheduling meetings, calling individuals, screen-sharing) before trying to hold virtual office hours. CTLD has a large collection of MS Teams tutorials that you can find in the Communication section of our Ready site.
  • If you need additional help or are feeling uncomfortable with setting MS Teams up, please visit our support hours to practice with us.
• Communicate office hours availability and policies clearly to your students through multiple avenues, such as in your syllabus, announcements, or modules.

Let’s walk through it together

[Length 9:16, CC Available]

Create an Office Hours Team and Schedule an Open Teams Meeting

Create a Class Team

1. Open the Microsoft Teams App on your computer.
   • If you don’t have the app installed, please view our Download and Install MS Teams tutorial.
2. Click Teams in the left-hand bar.
   • You should see a list of all the Teams you are a member of. If not, click Teams again.
3. Click Join or Create Team in the top right-hand corner of the page.
   • If you have selected the List Layout in Settings rather than Grid, Join or Create a Team will appear in the bottom left-hand corner instead.
4. Click Create a Team.
5. Click Class.
6. Click Use this template at the bottom right of the pop-up window.
7. Enter a Name for your Team.
   • We recommend naming this team with your course name and section number.
8. Optionally, enter a description for the team.
9. Click Create.
10. Click Skip in the bottom right-hand corner Add members pop-up window.
    1. For guidance on adding students to your Class Team, view our spotlight, Create a Class Team, add Students, and Set Up a Recurring Meeting.

Create Recurring Meeting for Office Hours

1. Click the Down Arrow to the right of the Meet now icon (Camera) at the top right of the screen.
2. Click Schedule a Meeting from the drop-down menu.
3. Enter a Title for the meeting.
   • We recommend naming this meeting “[Course Name] – Office Hours.”
4. Click the first Date Box and enter the date of the first office hours meeting you would like to conduct or select it from the pop-up calendar.
   1. Note: Leave the second Date Box as the same date as the first one. You will set up the meeting as recurring later.
5. Click the first Time Box to the right of the date and select the start time of your office hours meeting.
6. Click the second Time Box and select the end time of your office hours meeting.
7. Click the Repeating Drop-Down Menu. By default, this menu has “Does not repeat” selected.
8. Select Weekly from the options.
9. Enter a number for how often the meeting will repeat. By default it will repeat every 1 week.
10. Select the days of the week the meeting will be held on.
11. Select the End Date. This is the last day the meeting will be held.
12. Click Save.
13. Click Send in the top right-hand corner of the screen.
14. Click the Meeting that you just scheduled (it will appear in a purple bar in the General channel).
15. Click Copy link at the top left of the meeting details page.
16. Share the Link with your students.
    • You could paste it in an Announcement, an email, or somewhere in your Syllabus, for example. We recommend sharing it in multiple locations.
    • View our spotlight, Use the Rich Content Editor to Modify Text, Insert Links, Attach Files, and Connect Apps, for more guidance.

Create Appointment Groups in Canvas Calendar

1. Log in to your Canvas Account.
2. Click Calendar on the global navigation bar to the left.
3. Click  the + Icon in the upper right. The Edit Event window opens.
4. Select the Appointment Group tab at the top right of the Event window.
5. Type the Name of the Event or Meeting in the Name box.
6. Type the location of the event or meeting into the Location Box.
   • For virtual office hours, type Virtual as the location.
7. Click the Select Calendars button.
8. Check the boxes next to the courses you wish to add the appointment group to.
9. Click Done.
10. Select the Date of the first meeting.
    • Note: Another Date field will appear once you enter your first date. If you wish to set the appointment group for multiple dates, such as every Wednesday for the semester, enter each date.
11. Enter the Time Range for the appointment group to the right of each date. This should be the total duration you will be available for appointments.
12. Enter the duration in minutes that each individual appointment in the Divide into equal slots of [#] minutes field.
13. Click Go to automatically create individual events/appointments.
14. Select the appropriate Options  as you see fit:
    • Limit each time slot: Set the Number of Students to allow for each time slot.
      • If this is not selected, there will be no limit to how many students can attend each slot.
    • Allow students to see who has signed up for slots still available: If appointment slots allow more than one student/group, this option allows students to see who has already signed up for slots that they can join.
    • Limit participantsto attend: Set the Amount of appointments each student can attend.
      • If this is not selected, students can attend as many appointments as they want.
15. Type any additional details in the Details box.
    • If appointments are virtual, add the Teams Meeting Link in the Details box.
16. Click Publish.

---

Have Questions?

Need additional support on this or other teaching and learning topics? Please visit us for drop-in support or try one of our self-help tutorials. 

Ready to take your teaching to the next level? Opt into our Connections with CTLD newsletter!