Dean for the Humanities Maria Tatar says that at least 10 students e-mail her for every one who comes to her office hours.

“E-mail—and to me this is completely counter-intuitive—can be very effective when it comes to brainstorming for papers and exchanging ideas-—it is a medium that promotes a certain kind of intellectual focus that can be very productive,” she wrote in an e-mail.

Tarrant says that e-mail has encouraged students to speak up with their questions.

“I think it is now much more likely that a student who has a question or an idea will mention it in an e-mail rather than letting it drop,” he wrote in an e-mail.

Tatar says, however, that office hours and e-mail are not the only way for students and professors to communicate.

“What students seem to enjoy more than a visit to an office hour is lunch at the Faculty Club in groups of three or four, where we get a chance to talk about the course and about all kinds of other things going on in their lives,” Tatar says.

—Staff writer Sara E. Polsky can be reached at polsky@fas.harvard.edu.