I attended Monday’s Talking Teaching on “Office Hours and Email: Connecting with Students Outside of Class.” We mentioned two time-saving tools that faculty might find useful in managing their calendars and email: calendar appointment slots and email canned responses. Below are instructions for using both, pulled from our archives.
Appointment Slots in the Google Calendar
Although Google Calendar has changed slightly since our original post, the process for creating and using appointment slots is similar. One major difference is where to find the link to share with your students. Here are instructions.
1. Begin to create an event on your calendar, but select “Appointment Slot” instead of “Event.” You can then edit the duration of the appointment slots. Save (or if you want to add location and other details, edit that in “More Options”).
2. Share the link to your appointments. To find the link, open the event on your calendar and copy/paste the link for “This calendar’s appointment page” by right-clicking on the link and copying it, or opening it in another tab and copying the URL from the address bar.
Using Canned Responses in Gmail
Do you find yourself typing the same email response over and over again? Use a canned response! Simply, canned responses allow you to write text one time, save it and insert it over and over within Gmail. Canned responses are very easy to set up and use, take a look!
- Enable canned responses in your email. This 45 second video shows you how.
- Create and insert canned responses. Here’s the video showing you how.
- Use the time you just gained on more meaningful communication and projects!