Announcing New Tutor Slack Guidelines

Hi Yup Tutors!

Based on your feedback, we’re excited to announce new guidelines for how Yup will engage with Tutor Slack effectively.

Standard Guidelines

Yup will engage with Tutor Slack based on the following guidelines. We ask that Tutors exhaust other resources before reaching out to us directly, such as checking Policy Guides in our Resources Page or reaching out to other Yup Tutors.

Channel Owner Response Frequency
Announcements Ops (Henry) As needed
Bug Reporting Ops (Henry) Emergencies; Update Posts
Emergency Response Ops (Henry) As needed
General Ops (Sharon) As needed
Math Help Ops (Sharon) As needed
New Ideas Ops (Henry) Once per week (Friday EOD)
Scheduling Ops (Henry) As needed
Student Feedback CS (Jayda) Emergencies; Update Posts
Yup Chat Ops Once per day (EOD)
Direct Messages NA Once per day (EOD)

Bug Reporting

We’ve updated our Bug Reporting Instructions to create a more streamlined way to track and fix bugs. While we encourage all tutors to review in detail, here are the most important commitments:

Yup HQ

  • Provide clear guidelines on how to report bugs through a Tutor Guide
  • Offer a simple, quick-to-complete process for tutors to submit bugs
  • Post ad-hoc updates in the #bug-reporting channel that cover:
    • Bug diagnosis, prioritization, and completed fixes
    • Recommended quick-fix tips for specific bugs (e.g., cache clearing)

Yup Tutors

  • Agree to report all bugs using the designated reporting tools
  • Include all relevant detail – the more information, the easier to fix!
  • Understand that Yup cannot respond to each report, but is aggregating information to prioritize and fix bugs as quickly as possible

Student Feedback

We’ve also updated our Student Feedback Reporting Instructions to create a more streamlined way to track behavioral gaps and reach out to students. While we encourage all tutors to review in detail, here are the most important commitments:

Yup HQ

  • Customer Success (CS) team will use submissions to the Student Behavior form to aggregate information and prioritize to resolve the most prominent student behavior issues
  • When an incident warrants outreach to the student, parent, or teacher a CS Team member will be assigned to the case.  They will notify the #student_feedback slack channel our outreach plan and update accordingly

Yup Tutors

  • Become familiar with the Levels of Student Behavior chart (in document)
    • Any Level 3 behavior should be submitted to the #student_feedback channel immediately.  Please tag @nicole and @jayda in the channel. 
  • Use Student Behavior form for all feedback (Level 1 through 3) to submit a request for CS to investigate a student.  
  • Use #student_feedback slack channel to notify other tutors about the student

Thank You

Last but not least, a huge thank you to Yup Tutors. We think what we’re all doing together with UPSCR is completely revolutionary for online tutoring and a true move in the right direction to making sure students come out of a tutoring session having learned, not just gotten to an answer. And we’re excited for what the future holds!

As always, please reach out to tutor.support@yup.com with any questions and Happy Tutoring!

Learning Standards Announcements

Thank you for joining us for our overview webinar and for all the feedback! Please make sure that you join the Learning Standards Slack channel to ask any questions about implementation.

As we roll out our the Learning Standards, tutors should expect policy updates. We have two policy announcements today:

Overtime Announcement

From now on, we’ll ask tutors to limit their OT work to completing the problem at hand. If you are already in OT and the student would like to start a new and unique problem, please use the Shift Ending canned response and end the session after the student has acknowledged it! If the student pushes back, apologize once more saying that you have to go, and then end the session. However, if you feel the next problem builds upon the previous problem, feel free to continue working and we’ll trust tutor discretion.

Student Ratings Announcement

We will no longer use student ratings in any tutor performance metrics starting with our new Learning Standards rollout in June! We’ll still use ratings until then, per current policy. But, if we notice ratings drop as tutors test our new Learning Standards, we will determine alternative measures. So don’t feel afraid to implement and experiment with these new standards!

We look forward to seeing you next week at our Understand webinar on our normal schedule!

Learning Standards Soft Rollout

Hi tutors! We hope you’re well. Thanks for helping with another iteration of the TGP refresh!

Learning Standards Soft Rollout

Our mission at Yup is to empower every student to learn. As a result of tutor feedback and input from math learning experts, we are excited to announce that we’re revamping our pedagogy

What does this mean?

We’re updating our teaching standards and developed a series of trainings to explain how this impacts tutors. Our TQMs are already using this new framework and students are learning more than ever! 

When can I join the training?

We are offering trainings 3 times a week. All tutors are welcome. We ask for attendance for only 1 of these sessions per week.

  • Mondays 10 – 11 PM PDT (starting 4/20)
  • Wednesdays 8 – 9 AM PDT (starting 4/22)
  • Fridays 1 – 2 PM PDT (starting 4/24)

Are the trainings paid?

You will be paid for these trainings at your hourly rate + multi-subject bonus. 

Are trainings mandatory / what if I can’t make it?

Trainings are highly recommended to help you understand the new standards and train to implement them. This is effectively preparing you to succeed on our future evaluative rubric! If you cannot attend, you may watch the recordings afterwards and try the exercises on your own. Unfortunately, this unofficial training time would be unpaid.

What are my next steps?

Please fill out this survey  to let us know which training sessions you will attend so that we can send you more information! If you have any other questions, there will be time for Q&A in the trainings. 

As always, reach out to tutor.support@yup.com with any questions (except please hold pedagogy questions until the trainings). Happy tutoring!

Policy Updates and March Outstanding Student Feedback Winner

Hi tutors! We hope you’re well. A few quick reminders of new policy and procedures.

Break Policy

Official break time will now be unpaid. Taking official breaks will not hurt your attendance metric unless breaktime exceeds policy. Taking a quick bathroom break or similar during sessions as needed is OK! Please give students a warning if you’ll be unable to respond for a few minutes.

Inactive Student Policy

Based on tutor input in the #student-feedback Slack channel, we’ve implemented an official policy for ending sessions with inactive or disengaged students. Please see here for details. 

Scheduling

We’ve seen demand rebound from the initial drop due to COVID-19. However, we will continue to monitor need to remove scheduled hours based on decreased demand due to school breaks or otherwise. A quick reminder to join the #emergency_response_alerts Slack channel if you’re pursuing additional paid session time.

Student Feedback Award!

Congratulations to Patrick Chung 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 Patrick’s exceptional student feedback comments include:

  • “You did a very good job helping me. Thank you for teaching me that trick, it will come in handy in the future!”
  • “Thank you so much! Your questions helped me understand the question rather than memorize a certain procedure”
  • “Thank you so much that was very helpful and I now understand the lateral area and the surface area of a prism. Hope to work with you again soon.”
  • “Dear Mr. Chung, you are the best and I hope i have you again thanks and you make it so clear and understanding i wish you were my math teacher”

Way to go Patrick

As always, please reach out to tutor.support@yup.com with any questions and happy tutoring!

COVID Updates, Policy Updates, TGP Refresh

Hi Yup Tutors. We hope you’re all doing well in these tumultuous times.

COVID-19 Update

There are still fewer sessions than normal. While Monday-Friday volume remains high for most hours, Saturday and Sunday volume has dropped considerably. 

In light of the new circumstances, we will unfortunately need to remove some scheduled hours. The overall impact should be minimal. Henry will reach out to tutors directly with any schedule changes. We will work to ensure tutors are not disproportionately impacted by changes. 

Policy Updates

The impact of COVID-19 sparked a need to review our financial situation. Accordingly, we’ve determined two major policy changes that will take effect starting with April 2020 payroll and continuing indefinitely

OT and ERT reduced to 1.25x hourly rate: We will maintain our current policy that tutors must be available for 30 minutes after shift end. If you are able to continue the OT session, you should still ask the student if they have more questions. 

Breaks will now be unpaid: Taking a break remains at the tutor’s discretion. As a reminder, the post-session page is not intended as a break. We will continue to enforce our policy of taking <2 minutes on this page.

We want to assure you that considerable thought has been given to these policy changes and decisions were not made lightly. In order for Yup to succeed, we understand that our tutors need to be motivated and compensated. We also need to ensure our product is positioned competitively in the marketplace.

We anticipate you may have questions about these policy changes. Kreg and Henry will host a thread in the #announcements Tutor Slack channel. 

TGP Refresh Update

Key dates for Q1 TGP cycle refresh:

  • April 2: session disputes due by end of day
  • April 6: final metrics and cycle levels confirmed via email 
    • Tutors moving down levels must remove hours as needed
    • March payroll goes out per standard policy
  • April 7: new level 2 tutors and all level 4 tutors may add hours
  • April 8: returning level 2 tutors and level 3 tutors may add hours
  • April 9: new schedules confirmed for upcoming shift releases