Category: Scheduling

Scheduling Reminders + Achievements

SCHEDULING REMINDERS

As many of you know, the Yup Tutor Operations team recently welcomed a new member, Henry Grunzweig, to manage hiring and scheduling. Henry is delighted to be working with you all! As he takes on this new role, here are a few reminders to help make the scheduling system run smoothly for everyone:

  • Take care to click the “End Shift” button when finishing shift to ensure we are accurately logging your shift time. Refreshing the page after clicking will confirm if the shift is ended.
  • Whenever possible, please use the Scheduling Form to let us know about shift changes rather than emailing scheduling@yup.com directly. For shift takeovers, both tutors are expected to submit a form. Take care to ensure all the information in the form is correct to avoid confusion (AM vs. PM and Pacific Time zone for example.)
  • Avoid claiming new shifts unless you are confident you will be able to commit to covering them. For temporary available shifts, check the Claimed Shifts sheet to see which shifts you have claimed.

ACHIEVEMENTS ANALYSIS

We recently worked with a data analyst and PhD student out of Stanford University to learn more about how our new Achievements feature impacts student learning. Here are some of the findings from the session analysis that we are excited to share.

Students who receive an Achievement are more likely to:

  • Reach Gap Bridged
  • Give the session a ‘Thumbs Up’/5-Star rating
  • Tag a session as “Fast Teaching” or “Fast Typing“
  • Return to the app for another session

Overall, trends suggest that students have a more enjoyable experience when they earn achievements!

Here are our top Achievement senders since the feature launch:

  1. Mark Leibtog – 1560 achievements sent
  2. Usharani PV – 1444 achievements sent
  3. Kristine Dale Alcaide – 815 achievements sent

Great work, tutors! Going forward, let’s aim to not only send multiple achievements in every session, but to use authentic language when sending them. For example rather than saying “Here – take a Great Grit badge!“, explaining “Way to push through a tough problem – you earned a Great Grit achievement 🙂” will  make the experience more meaningful for the student.

Happy tutoring!

— Team Yup

Slack Tutor Chat + Shift Endings

SLACK TUTOR CHAT

If you are assigned a problem you are unsure about, please take a moment to upload the student’s image in the tutor-chat channel in Slack. Tagging all online tutors using the @here tag will alert your fellow tutors, along with any online TQMs, that you need assistance. If you need a moment to wait for another tutor to respond, politely let the student know that you are working on their problem, thanking them for their patience.

If you are online and receive a @here notification from a tutor struggling with a problem, please take a moment to provide assistance. If you are with a student when you’re tagged, the student takes precedence – however if you have any capacity to help please try your best to do so.


SHIFT ENDING POLICY UPDATE

Starting January 1, 2019, we are updating our policies surrounding ending your shift and overtime compensation. Here are the two changes to the policy:

  1. It will no longer be acceptable to pass sessions towards the end of a shift.
    1. Tutors will be expected to accept incoming requests throughout the entirety of their shifts. This will ensure students are connected in a reasonable time frame and have a great experience with Yup.
    2. Tutors should only claim temporary shifts or takeovers if they are available to extend into overtime. Due to the unpredictable nature of session length, please anticipate the possibility of needing to extend every shift you work by at least 30 minutes.
    3. If there are shifts in your existing weekly schedule that you cannot potentially extend into overtime, it is important to email scheduling@yup.com as soon as possible so we can adjust your schedule accordingly.
  2.  In order to reward and incentivize overtime, we will be increasing the overtime rate from 1.5x your normal hourly wage to 2x your hourly wage starting January 2019.


This policy change aims to address an issue we’ve been seeing with dropped (unclaimed) sessions. It also helps us avoid situations where tutors have to leave mid-solution due to their shift being over, a common area concern for students and parents.

Let us know what questions you have!


— Team Yup

Inactive Student Bug + Holiday Schedules

INACTIVE STUDENT BUG

As many of you may have noticed, we have recently seen an increase in sessions affected by a bug which triggers the inactive student auto-end feature, even when the student is active in the session.

In order to address this issue, we have removed the trigger altogether – this means it will be up to tutors to end sessions in which the student stops responding. Here are the two situations for which you would need to manually end the session:

  • The student does not send a message to the chatroom within 2 minutes of the session beginning
  • The student does not respond to a question for 5 minutes and is unresponsive when checked on

We have added new Canned Responses to the Session Ending category to accomodate to the above situations. Please be sure to send the appropriate Canned Response before ending the session.


HOLIDAY SCHEDULES

As the end of the year grows near, preparations have begun for the upcoming holiday break during which schools will be closed and traffic will be greatly reduced.
 
  • If you are hoping to take time off in the coming weeks, please fill out the Scheduling Form using the “Time off Request” option as soon as possible so we can plan accordingly.
  • Note that even if you do not request time off, you will likely see a temporary reduction in your weekly hours to adapt to the expected decline in traffic. If there are certain shifts you would prefer to give up, please use the Time off option in the Scheduling Form to let us know.
  • We will be in touch in the coming week to share your temporary holiday schedule, which will likely go into effect for the period of 12/24 – 1/6.

 

Have a great weekend, tutors!

— Team Yup

Outstanding Student Feedback + Daylight Savings

NEW: Outstanding Student Feedback Award

The school season is in full swing and the Yup Team has been seeing some fantastic positive feedback from students! Starting this week, we are launching the Outstanding Student Feedback Award to celebrate our tutors who make students’ Yup experiences awesome.

This award will be given to tutors who conduct sessions that elicit outstanding written feedback from students. The Yup team will recognize recipients in a newsfeed post along with a $75 bonus included in their next payment. To be eligible for this award you must also demonstrate outstanding overall performance including a strong composite score and overall student ratings – as such, earning it is a special and challenging achievement!

Our First Winner

Congratulations to Usharani PV for earning the Outstanding Student Feedback Award! Some of Usha’s exceptional student feedback comments include:

  • “Thank you so much, Ms. PV! 🙂 You’ve legitimately SAVED me on numerous occasions and always made me feel like I could freely ask you anything without judgment! You’re always willing to take multiple steps back to fill in knowledge gaps, and help me understand the concepts, rather than just giving me the answers. You’re so nice, and you’re honestly one of the many people who have influenced me to become a tutor (Algebra 1 and Physics) at my school! Thanks for EVERYTHING, and remember that you’ve certainly changed at least one student’s life! :)”
  • “You worked with me twice today, and I learned so much both times. You took so much time out of your day to help me, and I appreciate that. The concepts are definitely more clear and I’m so grateful for your assistance! Thanks again :)”
  • “Ms. Usha, thank you so much for the help today! You ensured that I understood the concepts, and when I didn’t understand them, you helped me. Despite my slow pace, you taught me step by step, and you even explicated the steps through an example problem. Thanks again for your time and help :)”

Way to go Usha! ⭐

UPCOMING DAYLIGHT SAVINGS

On Sunday, November 4th we will be observing Daylight Savings in America. If you reside in an area that doesn’tobserve Daylight Saving Time, we will be reaching out via email in the coming days with important instructions about how this will affect your Yup shifts.

Have a great weekend!

— Team Yup

Autumn Schedules + Satisfaction Survey

AUTUMN SCHEDULES STARTING

Starting tomorrow, Monday August 20th, we will begin transitioning towards normal operations in preparation for the new school year. All tutors should have received their new schedules, but if you have issues with your assigned shifts or did not receive an email, please let us know ASAP.

TUTOR SATISFACTION SURVEY

This week, we are launching the Yup Tutor Experience Survey (link below)! The goal is to give our tutor community the ability to simply and anonymously provide feedback to the Yup Team on a regular basis to let us know how we are doing and what is working (or not working).

Take the Tutor Satisfaction Survey

Survey Highlights:

  • Less than 1-2 minutes to complete
  • Free response for submitting longer ideas
  • New survey every 2-3 weeks

Thanks for your time! Your honest feedback helps us improve the Yup experience for both students and tutors.

— Team Yup