Work in progress: Analysis of the impact of office hours on graded course assessments

In this work, we used log files gathered from an online queueing system and combined those logs with the scores students earned on graded assessments. With data from four sections across two semesters of a large sophomore-level computer science course, this work is the largest known observational analysis of the impact of office hour attendance on graded assessments. This work in progress begins this analysis by exploring the relationship between office hour attendance and graded assessments over a full academic year in a large Data Structures course (n=1,238 students). Our initial findings suggest that there are several relationships that warrant further exploration. The first major finding is that office hour attendance provides a significant increase to a student's score on upcoming graded homework; however, it does not provide a significant boost to a student's score on upcoming exams. The second major finding is that the overall impact on a student's course grade by attending office hours decreases the closer that student attended office hours relative to an assignment due date or exam date. Our work outlines the statistical techniques used in our analysis, explores differences between various sections of a course across two semesters, and provides an outline of recommended changes for how office hours are run based on lessons learned from this analysis. In the future, we hope that this will lead to improved learning, which will improve students' mastery of the material and problem-solving abilities.