There will be times when a tutee wants to see you urgently outside of normal scheduled meeting times. If a student feels a need to consult you urgently you should endeavour to meet with them as soon as possible, but you need to balance your responsibility to support your students with the need to manage your own work without unacceptable interruption.
It is up to you how to manage unscheduled meetings, as long as you achieve a good balance between the time you dedicate to your tutees and your workload. Moreover, while you have to be supportive, students also need to learn to be autonomous. When deciding how to deal with unscheduled meetings you might want to consider:
- The usual length of individual meetings within your school
- The usual system used to book a meeting within your school
- The best way to contact you from outside of university (this can be especially helpful for part-time or long-distance students and for disabled students)
- How you prefer to be contacted (through email or office phone)
- How you feel when you have to say ‘not now’ to a tutee who needs to see you urgently
- If your tutee has a real emergency
- If you feel that students only come to see you when they have a problem
You can keep an open-door policy, use scheduled drop-in sessions, use Tutorial Booker or sign-up sheets outside of your office door, or simply expect students to email or telephone you to make an appointment. You decide what system works best for you, but always make sure that your tutees know about this arrangement. Consider that there are advantages and disadvantages to each system. If you decide to have drop-in sessions consider when to schedule them. You need to identify convenient times both for you and your tutees (take into consideration part-time or disabled students or those who have caring responsibilities).
It might also be helpful to discuss how to deal with unscheduled meetings with your colleagues to learn what works best for them.