A Case Study of Adopting European Experience of Office Hours to Improve Off-class Instructor-student Interaction in Private Universities in China

University of Sanya, #191 Yinbin Ave, Sanya, Hainan Province 572022, P.R.China

Abstract

To integrate with international standards, the University of Sanya explores European experiences in teaching and management. In 2016, the university promoted a campus-wide office-hour policy to improve student-teacher communication after class. However, after four years of implementation, most teachers believe such a policy failed to achieve the goal. Therefore, the author delivers questionnaires and interviews to students and teachers from selected business majors. This paper finds that office hour was an inferior way to communicate as in China students are allowed to have teachers' personal contact information. And students learning behavior is key to off-class communication. Moreover, the working environment affects teachers attitudes towards office hour. Office hour is a small case but can be inspiring to the future adoption of foreign experience in education as pre-investigation and localization do matter.