General Announcements – Page 20 – Yup Tutor Community

Whiteboard Image Templates + Pre-Session Review Update

Hello Tutors! Two items of business:

1. The post from two days ago regarding the new chat bot (released last night with version 5.2.0!) mentioned that you should greet the student with your name. Specifically, since our app will now refer to you as [Mr./Ms.] [your last name] to emphasize your roles as teachers, we ask that you refer to yourself this way and not by your first name when introducing yourself.

2. One clear result of last week’s survey was that investigating student progress and bringing in external resources are generally considered the two most time-intensive tasks. We fully expect the pre-session review period to streamline the first of these and we hope to eventually give you detailed information about students’ prior knowledge. For the second task, we’ve started to create a library of images that we strongly encourage you to drag from your computer onto your whiteboard and send to students whenever appropriate. You can download the first batch from this Dropbox folder. Feel free to use the whiteboard to cover any parts of them that you feel would give away too much information. We’ll release more of these in the coming weeks for other common topics like PEMDAS, probability, 3D solids, exponential functions, rational expressions, and the chain rule for derivatives. We also hope to let you access these images directly from within your tutor dashboard in the not-too-distant future. Do not hesitate to let us know if there are any topics that you strongly feel we need to add.

-Team Yup

New Feature: Pre-Session Review

Hello Tutors,

We’re excited to tell you about one of our biggest product changes yet, which will go live early this week. Please read the following carefully!

The next version of our mobile app contains a chat program (or “bot”) that sends a series of messages to each student before connecting him or her to a tutor.

These messages welcome them to Yup, prompt them to submit additional images of their progress, and remind them that participation and questions make their sessions more effective.

When the change goes live (we’ll let you all know when it does) you’ll begin to see the following screen upon claiming sessions:
Note: not all students will have downloaded the new version of the app the instant it comes out, so if you do not see this new screen and are thrown directly into a session, conduct it normally and ask the student for his or her progress as usual.

For sessions submitted by students who have the new version, your dashboard will look like the image above, and you will be able to spend time reviewing the student’s initial image(s). These are collected by the bot as it “talks” to the student so that you can enter the conversation much more prepared. Your new instructions for beginning these sessions (not yet reflected by the Tutoring Template) are as follows:

1. Thoroughly and carefully study any materials you receive from the student. The moment you are unable to make any more preparation (whether because you’re fully aware of how the problem should be solved, or because the student submitted a single blank image) you must connect to the session and start helping the student, no matter how much time is left in your countdown. Waiting any longer than this is a waste of your time as well as the student’s.
2. Connect to the session and send a brief (1-message) introduction. Introducing yourself will make it clear to the student that he or she is now chatting with you rather than the bot. Something like: Hi [student’s name]! I’m [Mr./Mrs./Ms.] [your last name] and I’ll be your tutor for this session.
3. Continue the session. As usual, investigate your student’s familiarity with the concepts and procedures necessary for moving forward and provide a straightforward and customized overview.

Please discuss this with your fellow tutors or email the operations team if you have questions. We can’t wait to see how your sessions go!

Best,
Team Yup

P.S. Some of you mentioned in the survey that you would like to see an equation editor integrated into your chat box. This is not yet a high-priority feature for two reasons. One is that your whiteboard has a math typing feature built into it (see the whiteboard tutorial from an earlier post). Also, most of the math symbols you need can be copied and pasted as normal characters: ⁻⁰¹²³⁴⁵⁶⁷⁸⁹⁽⁾√∛∜×·÷±∓≈≠≤≥°∠⊥→∞ƒ≅ǁ₀₁₂₃₄₅₆₇₈₉π αβθΔλµσγρδεωΦƩ½⅓⅔ ¼¾⅕⅖ ⅗⅘⅙⅚⅐⅛⅜⅝⅞⅑⅒ʃ∬∭∮∯∰″ ‴∂∇⊕⊗∀∃∈∉∩∪∴∵⊂⊃Øℇℕℝx̄x̂✔¢⇒⇄〈〉

Weekly Updates

Student Sent No Messages [REMINDER] – If the student does not send you any messages during a session, then you will not get the opportunity to fill out a post-session categorization page. The session will automatically be categorized as Student Sent No Messages. Please stop submitting bug reports when this happens.

Stop Emailing kate@yup.com – Kate stopped working at Yup a few weeks back, so if you email kate@yup.com you will not get a response. If you have any questions about who to contact for a particular issue, please refer to the Team Communication section of the Yup Policies document.

Incorrect Time Stamps in Sessions – We have noticed several sessions where the time stamps of the student’s messages are obviously incorrect, and we are trying to resolve this issue. In the meantime here is a trick for dealing with this issue. If you notice that the session started time stamp displays a time after the time stamp of your first message, then you will need to refresh the page continuously throughout the session to see the conversation in the correct order.

-Team Yup

Session Introduction Issues and Whiteboard Tutorial

Hello Tutors,

Rubric 2.1 is officially out. If you haven’t given it a close read, please do so now! (Template 2.1 is in its final stages of development and will be out by the end of the week.)

There is one issue not directly discussed in the Rubric that we need to highlight, as it’s potentially the most significant point of friction between our users and our service right now. The issue we’re talking about is illustrated in the annotated session snippet below.

It’s crucial that you stay up-to-date with our rules on how to start off sessions as we learn more about our users and their tendencies. Students often enter sessions at their most frustrated state, and may become (rightfully) upset if your messages are too numerous, do not convey a sense of immediate progress, or fail to provide new information.

Unnecessary messages highlighted in red; explanations in red text

We ask only two things from you in Rubric 2.1 with respect to the introduction: (a) Find out the extent of what the student has already tried and/or understood. (b) Give a concise overview of the student’s primary issue and how the two of you will fix it. This second part can be done in one brief message like so: “Looks like solving systems by elimination is giving you trouble. We’ll walk through the process and you’ll have it down in no time.” As always, respond to any student concerns or comments that pop up before continuing.

While we have your attention, please watch our new whiteboard manual, now in short-and-sweet video form.

Thanks and keep up the great teaching! If you have any concerns, please comment on this post.

-Team Yup

New: Feedback Grade Dispute Form

Along with the new Rubric and Tutor Dashboard, we have created a revised Feedback Grade Dispute Form to be utilized going forward in the case that significant errors have been made during the grading process of one of your completed sessions.

Use this form wisely!
Before using this form, you must first review Rubric 2.0 and Tutoring Template 2.0 to gain a better understanding of your received scores. Only when an overall score graded under Rubric 2.0 directly contradicts Yup Teaching Standards by more than 2 points should this form be used. For example, if you received a score of 5 points when Yup Teaching Standards dictate that you should have received a score of 8 points, then it would be appropriate to use this form.

It is very important to understand that the purpose of this form is not to express frustration over a poor grade or attempt to claim back points that have not been earned. Spamming this form with frequent requests not only clogs the system and delays your requests from being attended to, but it also creates a delay for other tutors with genuine concerns. Abusing this form could result in your privileges being revoked.

New Feedback Grade Dispute Form

Thanks!
— Team Yup