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Office Hours

Pawtograder’s office hours feature allows students to request live help from course staff. Student requests go into a queue, and multiple staff members can work concurrently through that queue, assigning themselves to help students as they become available. Students are encouraged to make public requests for help so that other students can also benefit from the discussion.

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Get Help Button

A persistent Get Help button appears in the bottom-right corner of every page, making it easy to request assistance from anywhere in the course. Click it to:

• View the current office hours status
• See which queues are active (“Happening now”)
• Check the weekly queue schedule
• Submit a new help request
• Access your active help requests

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Help Drawer

Clicking Get Help opens a right-side drawer with a comprehensive view of office hours:

• Office Hours Status Card: Shows whether office hours are currently active and which queues are open and staffed
• Per-Queue Cards: Display each queue’s name, description, current number of students waiting, staff availability, and estimated wait times (when available)
• Weekly Schedule: Calendar view showing when each queue is typically available, with live “Happening now” highlights for currently active sessions
• Demo Queues: Practice queues for testing the system (if configured by your instructors)

Use the schedule to plan when to request help and choose the best queue for your needs.

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Office Hours Queues

Instructors can create multiple office hours queues to provide different types of help. For example, if a class is coordinated across multiple campuses, there may be in-person help queues per campus and a cross-network virtual help queue.

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Viewing Open and Solved Help Requests

Particularly when many students ask for help at once, it’s likely that multiple students have a sufficiently similar question that they could both benefit from the same answer. If someone else already asked a question similar to yours and you can see that they are about to be helped, you can join that discussion rather than asking your own question at the end of the queue. Use the tabs at the top to navigate:

• My Requests: View your current and past help requests
• Browse Queues: See all open requests and their status

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Requesting Help

Click the + New Request button to submit a help request.

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Before You Request Help

When your course has pinned discussion topics, you’ll see a “Before you request help…” section at the top of the form with relevant discussion topics that might answer your question. The system automatically suggests pinned posts and related discussions from your course. This helps you:

• Find answers without waiting in the queue
• Discover solutions that other students found helpful
• Browse all related posts with the Show All Related Posts expander

Click Browse All Discussion Posts to search the full discussion board.

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Request Form Fields

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After Submitting a Request

Once you submit a help request:

1. Queue Position: You’ll see your current position in the queue
2. Status Updates: The system notifies you when staff assigns themselves to help
3. Text Chat: Staff may begin helping via text chat. If you lose connection while typing a message, your message content is preserved so you don’t lose what you’ve written.
4. Video Chat: When a TA starts a video call, click Join Video Call to connect

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Active Help Request Widget

Your active help request follows you around the site. You’ll see status updates and video call notifications even while browsing the discussion board or other pages.

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Help Request Status

Your help request displays one of the following statuses:

• Waiting: You’re in the queue waiting for a TA
• In Progress: A staff member is actively helping you
• Resolved: Your request has been marked as complete

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Notifications

Pawtograder provides comprehensive notifications to ensure you never miss updates about your help request:

• Browser notifications: Desktop alerts when staff responds, assigns themselves to help you, sends messages, or starts a video call (requires browser permission)
• Title bar updates: Your browser tab title shows your queue position and unread message counts
• Sound alerts: Optional audio notifications for important updates
• Favicon badge: Visual indicator in your browser tab when you have an active request or unread messages

You can test notifications and manage permissions from the help request interface. If browser notifications are blocked, you’ll see a warning with instructions for enabling them in your browser settings.

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Resolving Your Help Request

When you’re ready to close your help request, you can resolve it yourself from either:

• The floating banner that appears at the top of the page while you have an active request
• The main chat view in your help request

Click Resolve and select a resolution status that best describes the outcome:

• I solved it myself: You figured out the solution on your own
• Staff helped me: A TA or instructor helped you
• A peer helped me: Another student helped you
• No time to wait: You don’t have time to wait for help
• Other: Another reason (you can add a note)

You can also optionally provide feedback on whether the help was useful. This feedback is visible only to instructors and helps improve the office hours experience.