Hi all,
My name is Haddie Lueddeke, and I am the new Academics Manager at Yup!
I am excited to dive into my work with you all at Yup! As the Academics Manager, I will interface with you regularly regarding: payroll, your user experience, quality assurance, and helping to ensure that the experience of students matches Yup’s pedagogical best practices. I am excited to bring a variety of experiences to this role, including 12 years as a middle school math teacher, being a dean of students, and developing high-stakes mathematics assessments. I love math and thinking about the best ways to help young people build confidence to tackle challenging problems with a variety of mathematical tools.
A little bit more about me: I live in Monterey, California with my husband, our three-year-old son, and our two dogs. Outside of work and school, we try to spend as much time together outside – hiking, biking, or going to the beach!
Today’s update is lengthy, but please do take the time to read all of it. Otherwise, please feel free to reach out with general questions via email (haddie@yup.com) or Slack (@haddie). I look forward to working with each of you in providing math tutoring that is rooted in research-based best practices with the goal of empowering every student to learn.
-Haddie
Hearing Your Feedback
Over the past week, I have had the opportunity to review some of your work and have even participated in a few tutoring sessions. I am so impressed with the care and knowledge that you bring to the work that you do with Yup. I would love to learn more about the tutor experience. To do so, I ask that you complete the Tutor Satisfaction Survey which will help guide immediate and long-term areas of focus. Your feedback is very important! Please note that we will pay you for 30 minutes of your time to complete this survey.
The survey is 10 questions long and should take between ten and thirty minutes. Your insights are vital, and your time is appreciated. Please complete the survey by 12:00 p.m. Pacific Time (PT) on Thursday, January 27.
In addition to the survey, I would like to have the opportunity to meet you and hear more about your experiences tutoring with Yup. Please join me for an informal chat via Zoom on Wednesday, January 26th. In order to accommodate different time zones, I will be available during the two sessions. Click either link to join via zoom at either 9:00 – 9:30 a.m. PT or 4:00 – 4:30 p.m. PT.
Retirement of Bug Reporting Channel in Slack
We know that there has been an increase in bugs on the platform recently, and we apologize for the frustration it may be causing. We are currently revamping our process for bug reporting and resolution. One issue we are facing is that tutors are reporting bugs to the #bug-reporting channel but not UserSnap. This makes it difficult for our engineers to see and prioritize issues. As a result, we are retiring the channel.
Moving forward, please use the 
button on the tutor dashboard whenever you experience an issue. Whenever you do this, our system automatically notifies Yup engineers in our internal Slack channel and gives them real-time information about the issues you’re facing. Please refer to the UserSnap Reporting guidelines for further details.
Algorithm for Tutor Session Assignments
A good question regarding how tutors are matched and with what frequency came up in the bug reporting chat. Some tutors were concerned about getting more sessions than others, so we thought it would be helpful to share how the algorithm for tutor prioritization works more widely.
Our algorithm prioritizes matching students with tutors who have strong recent performance. It does result in some folks tutoring a higher proportion of shift time than others. However, these are then also the tutors who earn higher bonuses and are given more hours on the schedule.
How many sessions a tutor gets in a given week depends on:
- The algorithm – as explained above.
- The number of hours the tutor works – for example, a Level 4 tutor with more scheduled hours will get more sessions than a new tutor with just a few hours scheduled.
- The hours of the day the tutor works – for example, peak homework hours (i.e. 4:00 – 7:00 p.m. PT) are busier than non-peak hours (i.e. 3:00 a.m. PT).
So in a given week, it is possible that:
- Tutor A gets a bunch of sessions due to:
- Strong recent performance
- High volume scheduled and claimed hours
- Working peak hours
- Tutor B gets few or no sessions due to:
- Being new to the platform and still developing
- Few scheduled or claimed hours
- Working non-peak hours
We do our best to allocate an even distribution of hours between peak and non-peak times to each tutor while also meeting their preferences. We hope this explanation adds some clarity to how we assign sessions.