Tutor Resources – Page 4 – Yup Tutor Community

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.

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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:

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.
Please make sure you are on time (@ 9:00AM PDT tomorrow, 4/19) – we don’t want you to miss any of it!
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.
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

Comment of the Week + Overtime Update

Update to Overtime Policy

Starting this week, any instance of overtime that takes you 5 minutes or more past the end of your shift is eligible for compensation. Simply use the Scheduling Matters Form to let us know the date and relevant Session Number, and we’ll see that you are compensated for you time. As a reminder, the previous policy was a 10 minute minimum.

Introducing: Comment of the Week

If you have been with us awhile, you may remember our Session of the Week newsfeed feature which highlighted outstanding sessions. Starting this month, we will be introducing a similar initiative – Comment of the Week, which will showcase sessions that were not only outstanding, but received outstanding student feedback. Comment of the Week will explore what makes a tutor awesome from our students’ perspective.

There are a few ways this new feature is different from Session of the Week. With Comment of the Week, we will be taking excerpts from the session that best exemplify the positive feedback left by the student rather than looking at the session in its entirety. This allows us to highlight only the most relevant parts of the session for you to review. As you may have noticed in our QA 3.0 updates, this honor also comes with a $50 bonus (versus SotW’s $25 award).

We are starting off our new initiative with a bang. This is the session that helped make Comment of the Week a reality. Congratulations to Comment of the Week winner Sejal Kothari for a session in which every positive feedback tag was applied by the student. The student’s written comment reads:

” Thanks for your help:) YOU ARE AN AMAZING TUTOR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! “

Please read through the session and annotations to see why this session warranted so many exclamation points, as well as how it exemplifies each student feedback tag that it received!

Comment of the Week #1

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Tutor Contribution + Solution Goals

Tips for Building Warmth

Have you ever been marked down on Standard 3.3: Encouraging Language or wondered how to create a learning environment that is more comfortable for the student? This is one of the trickier aspects of online tutoring – if it is an area you feel you can improve in, you are not alone!

Yup Tutor and TQM Helen Herring seems to have an innate ability to make students feel at ease during a session and has drawn upon this skill to compile Tips for Building Warmth to share with the team. These suggestions are all very simple to implement, but they come with a huge impact!

Tips for Building Warmth

Although there are quite a few ideas to consider, we would recommend reading through the list to see how many of these you already implement, then slowly starting to fold 2 or 3 of these suggestions at a time into your daily teaching. Once they become habits, start adding in more so that you, too, can master this skill.

Helen will be receiving a bonus for proactively writing this article – and you can too! If you have an idea for something that would benefit the tutor community, please let us know at tutor.support@yup.com. Maybe it is a skill you have like staying in-tune with the student’s perspective, or tricks you can share for an area in which other tutors struggle, like keeping the student involved. We hope that you will consider writing articles for us so we can bring tutor contributions back to newsfeed posts!

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Guiding Students with Solution Goals

When your student feels stuck, there are a few key factors like positive language that make a world of difference in whether they give up or persist. One of these factors, and one that we haven’t discussed much, is the student’s awareness of how the current step fits into the overall purpose of their problem.

If students don’t understand why your questions or explanations are necessary, then it’s common for them to become impatient or disengage from the learning process. Instead, give students a sense of direction and context throughout the session by making objectives clear all the way to the solution. This way, students will better understand how their own participation will bring them closer to the solution, and will feel more willing to participate.

The brief infographic below uses examples to illustrate the ideas above. Check it out before your next session!

Happy Tutoring!

— Team Yup

Discussion:

QA 3.0 Introduction

Introducing Quality Assurance System 3.0

After many hours of gathering tutor feedback, planning new policies, and tweaking our performance monitoring systems, we’re excited to introduce a number of significant changes to our Quality Assurance framework that will be taking effect today, April 2nd.

These changes do not affect our guidelines for conducting sessions, but rather will allow us to be fairer and more effective in holding tutors accountable for following those guidelines.

As of today, all relevant Tutor Documents from our Master Resource List have been updated to reflect the new policies. Check out the slideshow below to learn more about these changes!

[Open slideshow in new tab]

For your reference, here is the latest Yup Policy Breakdown, now aligned with QA 3.0:

As mentioned in the QA 3.0 Changes slideshow above, we will be holding a Webinar on Thursday, April 19th to discuss any questions you may have about the new system. If you have any urgent or time-sensitive concerns about it, please email tutor.support@yup.com.

— Team Yup

Create your own user feedback survey