Helping Students Opt Out, More Hours, and New Whiteboard Guide

Helping Students Opt Out

Since we just changed our canned responses, we wanted to take the time to highlight how some of these have changed. You may recall a couple of our earlier newsfeed posts about how tutors may have inadvertently caused students to feel pressured to stay in a session. Thus, we wanted to create some canned responses that would empower students to answer more honestly if, for example, they have limited time or need to prioritize working through other problems. The following shows the comparison between old canned responses and their updated versions: 

Old New
Just to make sure that we got it down really well, do you have time to try this similar example? Would you like to try a similar question to see if you can complete it on your own? No problem if you have to go!
Can you summarize your new understanding of ________? Do you have time to quickly summarize your new understanding of ________? No worries if you need to go, though!

More Hours

As Henry posted in Slack, we will be adding more hours to tutor schedules starting next week. Please email Tutor Support if you would like to change availability from last Spring. As a reminder, the hours we need tutors the most tend to be 11 AM – 5 PM PT, so if you can work those hours, let us know!

New Whiteboard Guide

A huge thank you to Bharathi Vavilakolanu, who created our new Whiteboard Guide! Check out slide 4 in particular, which is a quick way to navigate to particular features! The new guide is also found on slide 14 of the Tutor Dashboard Manual.

New Canned Responses, Updates to the Tutor Dashboard Manual, and Reminders for September

New Canned Responses

Since we are no longer basing our tutoring off of the UPSCR framework, we are changing our canned responses to better align with the new rubric. This way, we can better support your sessions. A huge thank you to Bryan Rock and Madhumathi Raman for helping with this project! Please let Sharon know if you have any feedback on the responses, which should be updated early next week!

Updates to the Tutor Dashboard Manual

Another thank you to Madhumathi Raman, who revamped our Tutor Dashboard Manual. This should now have screenshots that match the new tutor dashboard. We will also be adding a new whiteboard guide in the coming weeks! 

Reminders for September

We wanted to remind you of a couple of announcements we made during our webinar introducing the new rubric. Just as was done for July’s payroll, you will get a 5% bonus regardless of your August performance. Going into September, your TGP level will not change. We made the above decisions because we wanted the last 6 weeks to be about you getting used to the new rubric without the pressure of your performance impacting your pay.

Rubric Updates, Rubric Trainings, and Tutor Spotlight

Rubric Updates

Thanks to receiving feedback that there seemed to be overlap between E3 and PD3, we made some changes to the rubric. These changes should eliminate that overlap and clarify the essence of each of these strands. Please see the full changes highlighted in yellow in the rubric. Below is a summary of the changes we made.

E3 will be marked “No” for any of the following:

  • Not asking the student whether or not they want to try another problem
  • Failing to prioritize existing assignment problems

PD3 will be marked “No” for any of the following:

  • Asking poor CFUs or failing to ask CFUs throughout a problem
  • Choosing a poor follow-up problem for the student’s level of understanding (once the student has given consent)

Please continue to provide feedback and ask questions to ensure that our rubric is as clear and fair as possible!

Rubric Trainings

Since we have switched over from UPSCR to Rubric 5.0, we’ve made a couple trainings. Please be sure to take both the PD1 and PD2 trainings to familiarize yourself with the rubric!

Tutor Spotlight

Congratulations to our tutor spotlight: Partha Sarathi Reddy Kamireddy! We were able to share this session with the whole team last Wednesday.

The student came in with a problem on graphing a polynomial. Although the student seemed to understand what to do with the roots, they seemed confused about end behavior. Partha skillfully weaved PD2 and PD3 together, giving a bit of information and a quick CFU to ensure the student understood. After carefully building the student’s understanding of end behavior, the student solved the problem nearly on their own after just 10 minutes. While explaining the concept up front and asking several checks for understanding may take some time up front, the student gains a much deeper understanding and confidence in the topic. Way to go, Partha!

In 2 weeks, we will pick our next tutor spotlight. Please fill out the Tutor Spotlight Nomination form so we can continue to celebrate the amazing interactions you have with students! Reminder that there is a $25 reward for being featured!

Rubric Changes and Tutor Spotlight

Rubric Changes

One of our priorities in creating the new rubric was ensuring that students ended the session feeling positive and motivated.  This includes feeling heard throughout the session as they express their preferences.  And after two weeks, the preliminary results are promising! We have seen a 4-5% increase in student ratings since the day we introduced the rubric. Thank you for applying any feedback you’ve received!

As we dug deeper into the data, we still saw transcripts that looked like the following:

In this snippet, the student stated that he was in a rush, but in an effort to satisfy rubric criteria for “Check” and “Reflect”, the tutor was reluctant to move onto the next problem. This put both the student and the tutor in a situation where an otherwise great session might end awkwardly (at best) and negatively (at worst). 

The second empathy strand, E2, on the new rubric seeks to address this challenge. The more that the tutor responds to the student’s cues and preferences, the more likely they are to return to Yup and the more likely they are to benefit from the support that you do such great work to provide.  

Pillar Strand Indicators Common Mistakes
Empathy E2 – Does the student feel heard? Respond to questions, emotional cues, and signs of confusion Ignore questions, emotional cues, signs of confusion, or student priorities

Tutor Spotlight

Next week, we will pick our next tutor spotlight. Please fill out the Tutor Spotlight Nomination form so we can continue to celebrate the amazing support you all are providing to Yup students. Reminder that there is a $25 reward for being featured!

Grading Changes, Outstanding Student Feedback Award, and Tutor Spotlight

Grading Changes

We are excited to share that our grading page for TQMs has been updated to reflect the new rubric! Since your sessions are now being scored on the new rubric, please be sure that you are regularly referencing it when tutoring. Finally, please join the #new-rubric-feedback channel to post questions and provide feedback so that we can leverage the group’s collective brain-power to ensure Yup tutoring is a model of excellence.

Outstanding Student Feedback Award

Congratulations to Prabhat Kumar Kushwaha for earning the Outstanding Student Feedback Award! This award is given to tutors who receive consistent, outstanding written feedback from students over several weeks along with demonstrating excellent overall performance.

Some of Prabhat’s exceptional student feedback comments include:

  • “…I was able to solve the extra problems he gave me with little or no difficulty after I had finished my initial problem, and he was very nice and explained in a very clear and concise way!”
  • “Thank you for your guidance Mr. Kushwaha. I feel like my head is a lot clearer now!”
  • “thank you so much for helping me even though I know it must’ve been tough since I got confused a lot also thank you for staying longer than you had to just to make sure I understood I really do appreciate it!”
  • “Thanks again, you explained very clearly and made sure to see if i was caught up and you went over many things which helped me look back on my work :)”

Way to go Prabhat! Thank you for everything you are doing to guide and support Yup students! 

Tutor Spotlight

Next week, we will pick our next tutor spotlight. Please fill out the Tutor Spotlight Nomination form so we can continue to celebrate the amazing support you all are providing to Yup students. Reminder that there is a $25 reward for being featured!