Category: Announcements

New Overtime Policy + CotW #4

Overtime Policy UPDATE (as of 5/14)

Starting Monday 5/14, we will be putting new policies into effect to address a point of frustration for users and tutors alike: tutors’ shifts ending during a session. The following policies aim to reduce the frequency of this situation occurring:

#1. Don’t claim a session you can’t take
Don’t claim a session in the final minutes of your shift if you know you can’t work overtime. (“Welcome! Sorry can you submit a new request? My shift is ending now.”) This may decrease the student’s wait time temporarily, but they will be frustrated in the long run when they have to resubmit the problem.

#2. Earn more for working overtime
Tutors who work past the end of their shift by 5 or more minutes will earn time-and-a-half (1.5 times your hourly rate) for overtime minutes. This rate will only apply to sessions that were claimed within the timeframe of your shift.

#3. Anticipate the need to extend your shift
Please avoid taking a shift if you know you will need to leave directly at the end. Ideally, you should be free up to 30 mins after a given shift in case of a longer session. This applies to shift takeovers, shift additions (from Available Shifts sheet), and your Normal Weekly Schedule.

COMMENT OF THE WEEK #4

Congratulations to Comment of the Week winner, Sekhar Reddy! For this session, 4 out of 5 positive feedback tags were applied by the student, who left the following comment:

“Thank you so much for your help. I feel better on this topic and I really appreciate it!”

Please read through the session and annotations to see why this session helped the student feel better about finding the vertex.

Comment of the Week #4   ›   

Create your own user feedback survey

April QA Drawing + Detailed Session Feedback Form

APRIL COMPOSITE QA SCORE DRAWING WINNER

Congratulations to our winner of the $250 QA Score bonus drawing for the month of April, Carina Seah!

Every month we will be drawing a winner at random to win this bonus prize – you can be entered up to 4 times per month for every week your composite score is greater than or equal to 9.0.


DETAILED SESSION FEEDBACK FORM

In our first webinar, a number of you mentioned the need for more detailed session feedback.  Based on this suggestion, we have developed the new Detailed Session Feedback Form! This form is very similar to submitting a session dispute – however with this form rather than disputing a grade, you are submitting sessions in order to get more detailed feedback on how you can improve.

Maybe there is a specific tag that you continue to be baffled by, a rubric standard for which you often lose points, or maybe there is a particular student that you can never seem to connect well with. Whatever the issue, simply submit the form and we will get back to you. A few things to keep in mind:

  • The discussion will revolve around the session you submit.
  • We can only accept 1 session per tutor per week due to time constraints.
  • This initiative is on a two week trial and, as such, we can only guarantee a response to the first 50 submissions.

Happy Tutoring!

— Team Yup

Tutor Fault Tag Examples

As many of you know, we had a great suggestion during our inaugural webinar last month proposing that we provide examples for Tutor Fault tags. It is our hope that these examples will not only provide more clarity for the tags, but increase your understanding of how to avoid them and decrease any feelings of subjectivity in our grading system:

(Open slides in new window)

Please use the Check for Understanding survey below to express any confusion or comments you may have.

Create your own user feedback survey

Happy tutoring!

— Team Yup

QA 3.0 Tag Changes + Building Warmth Examples

Upcoming Tag Changes

Earlier this month, we announced a number of improvements to our Quality Assurance System that have changed how your performance is assessed and how you are rewarded for high-quality performance. Another aspect of QA 3.0 that has not yet gone into effect will change how certain tags are applied.

Starting next Monday, April 30th, TQMs will be grading sessions according to the following updated tag definitions for Gave Answer and Wrong Answer. We will also be introducing a new tag – Wrong Format:

1. GAVE ANSWER:

  • ? Old Definition:
    Tutor directly gives the answer to the student OR fails to involve the student in fundamental steps.
  • ✨ New Definition (starting 4/30)
    Tutor carries out a full step OR confirms a final answer without any participation from student.


2. WRONG ANSWER:

  • ? Old Definition:
    Student leaves the session with an incorrect solution to their problem.
  • ✨ New Definition (starting 4/30)
    Student leaves the session with an incorrect solution to their problem due to a major incorrect step, calculation, concept, or method.


3. WRONG FORMAT (New):

  • ✨ Definition (starting 4/30)
    Final answer contained minor issues with notation, units, rounding, or format.
  • ✨ Wrong Format Transition:
    • Starting Monday, April 30th TQMs will tag these sessions as “Other (tutor)” and share their rationale in the comments.
    • In mid-May, “Wrong Format” tag will become available.

Create your own user feedback survey

Building Warmth Annotatations

Based on the Tips for Building Warmth post survey results, an overwhelming majority of you expressed interest in seeing concrete examples of Helen’s tips for building warmth. Helen has created the following annotations from her own real Yup sessions to exemplify these tips:

Tips for Building Warmth – Annotated Snippets

 

Happy Tutoring!

— Team Yup

Webinar #2 + Student Bugs

TUTOR WEBINAR: Thursday 4/19 @ 9am PDT

We’re really excited to be hosting our second Tutor Webinar tomorrow to go over QA 3.0 and the recent changes that have come with it!  Many thanks to those of you who filled out Sharon’s survey and took the time to share questions or confusions you had.

Webinar #2 will be held tomorrow – Thursday, April 19 at 9:00 AM PDT. The following instructions need to be followed closely in order for your attendance to go smoothly:

  1. Please visit the Webinar Link well before the start time tomorrow so you can download Zoom (the webinar service we are using). While you are there, please also test your computer speakers.
  2. Please make sure you are on time (@ 9:00AM PDT tomorrow, 4/19) – we don’t want you to miss any of it!
  3. During the webinar, if you think of a question or  comment, please send a message to the chat. If it is a longer question that will take some time to type up, simply type “question” so Sharon is made aware.
  4. The following is a link to the questions we will be answering in the webinar. We recommend having this open as you tune in so it is easier to follow along: Webinar Questions

Last Months Webinar: We apologize for the delay in getting the March webinar video to you, but here it is! Keep in mind that since this webinar we have disabled refunds, so the information on refunds is no longer applicable.

Student Bug Protocol

Sometimes, students are affected by bugs that adversely impact their sessions. For example, tutors have recently encountered a bug that causes a student’s message to repeat many times over. While this issue may appear like the student is spamming you, it is essential for you to handle these situations with care and not assume that it is deliberate:

  • Just like we hope students are understanding when bugs affect us, we too must exhibit that level of understanding. We request that you calmly explain what is happening on your end and respectfully ask the student to close the app and submit a new session request.
  • An example of a line you can send the student is, “I’m sorry, but there seems to be a bug that’s significantly affecting my ability to read your messages. Can you please try closing the app and connecting again?” Please then tag the session as “Potential Bug”.
  • While it is important to block students from our service that are behaving inappropriately, sessions where there is likely a bug on the student’s end should not be tagged in this manner.

Happy tutoring! As always, please let us know what questions you have.

— Team Yup