Category: Tutor Surveys

Tutor Survey, Answer Checks + Inactivity

FEBRUARY SURVEY REMINDER: If you haven’t already done so, please take a moment to take the quick February Tutor Satisfaction Survey!

NEW ANSWER CHECK POLICY

Starting immediately, we will be taking a new approach for sessions in which students come to us with solutions to be checked rather than problems to be solved:

  • While most sessions are submitted by users who need help solving, some students have already solved and simply need their answer confirmed
  • This new policy gives tutors the go-ahead to confirm answers at face value, as long as they at least encourage the student to share work before confirming the answer

Read more in the infographic below:

Please don’t hesitate to reach out to tutor.support@yup.com with questions about this!

INACTIVE STUDENT REMINDERS

Late last year, we removed faulty automatic system timers that were (unreliably) ending sessions in which students were inactive for a set amount of time.

Since this change, it has been up to the tutor to end the session when a student becomes inactive – after sending the appropriate canned response. See below for reminders for inactive student procedure.

  • There are two situations in which you are expected to manually end the session due to inactivity so you can be rematched
    • 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
  • Once the session has concluded and the student confirms that they don’t have more problems/questions, it is acceptable to end the session before 5 minutes have passed
    • For example, if you have said goodbye to the student and they don’t end the session, end the session manually so you can be rematched.

 

Happy Tutoring!

— Team Yup

Referrals, Tutor Survey & Whiteboard

TUTOR REFERRAL PROGRAM

We’re excited to announce a new opportunity for tutors to invite their math-minded friends and colleagues to join us on the Yup team – and for both parties to get rewarded in the process!

  • TIMEFRAME: The referral program launches today, February 22, 2019. This initial referral window will be open until March 22.
  • INCENTIVES: You can earn up to $125 per new referral and your friend can earn up to $75 based on performance. You can also claim $25 for each past referral of a current Yup tutor performing to standard.
  • HOW TO REFER: Simply have your friend apply via the standard Yup application page. When prompted to answer “How did you hear about Yup,” they should select “From a friend.” – we’ll follow up from there.
  • HOW TO COLLECT: Yup will track new tutor referrals and award the bonus once eligibility is met. (To claim a past referral, please contact tutor.support@yup.com with the name of the tutor(s) you referred.)


Check out the Tutor Policies slide & FAQ page for more details!

FEBRUARY TUTOR SATISFACTION SURVEY

This month’s survey will ask for thoughts on the Achievements feature. How often are you sending Achievements? How can the feature be improved? Take the survey to let us know!

> > February Tutor Satisfaction Survey < <

WHITEBOARD UPDATES

This week, the engineering team released a new feature that makes the whiteboard touch-screen friendly! If you have a laptop with a touchscreen, you can now draw directly on the whiteboard. Engineering also released a fix for a common bug that was creating issues with rotating and horizontal images.

Happy tutoring!

— Team Yup

Tutor Dashboard Performance Tips + Tutor Bios

TIPS FOR OPTIMIZING TUTOR DASHBOARD PERFORMANCE

Image result for lightbulb flat png

A common concern we hear from tutors is that the Tutor Dashboard is slow, unstable or failing to perform as expected. Often these issues can be due to technical bugs which the Engineering team must investigate and resolve. Other issues however, may be related to your computer, operating system/browser settings, or internet connection.

The following is a list of guidelines that will ensure both tutors and students are having the best possible experience using the platform. As we work towards a more stable Tutor Dashboard, we ask that you adhere to these guidelines until further notice – this will increase the likelihood that any bugs being reported are an issue on our end rather than yours:

  • Avoid watching videos or using applications in full screen
    For many operating systems this will cause notifications to fail and sessions to be unknowingly passed 
  • Avoid streaming media or downloading large files
    Because these activities require more bandwidth and memory, they may reduce dashboard performance 
  • Disable Chrome’s ‘background timer throttling’ 
    This feature was introduced to prevent backgrounded tabs from using up system memory. For apps like Yup’s Tutor Dashboard, this setting has a negative impact on performance and may cause passed sessions. To disable the setting, copy and paste chrome://flags/#expensive-background-timer-throttling into your Chrome address bar and disable “Throttle expensive background timers” – as shown below:
    .
  • Limit open tabs and applications during a shift
    Keep your Chrome tabs to a bare minimum during shifts to avoid using up memory. Running programs in the background along with Chrome may also have negative consequences for the Tutor Dashboard. We recommend  a computer with 4 GB of memory at the very least.     
  • Ensure reliable internet connection (5- 10 mbps min.)
    See our latest post for more information: Practice Dashboard + Internet Connectivity

 

TUTOR BIOGRAPHIES FOR NEW TUTORS

If you are newer to the Tutor Team and have not been asked to complete a Tutor Biography, please take a moment to do so:

UPDATE YOUR TUTOR BIO   › 

Read more about Tutor Biographies in our post from last Autumn:
Tutor Biographies (2018/10/09)

 

Happy Tutoring!

— Team Yup

Practice Dashboard + Internet Connectivity

NEW: PRACTICE SESSION DASHBOARD

Introducing the Practice Session dashboard! The Engineering team created this invaluable training tool for both new and veteran tutors alike – a mock tutor dashboard that allows you to interact with all the features of a real session chatroom, but with a training “bot” rather than a student.

The Practice Session dashboard can be accessed from the dashboard menu at your convenience (see image) or by going to yup.com/tutor_dashboard/chat_practice. The bot will then guide you through various exercises that show off all that the dashboard has to offer. Practice your whiteboard skills, check out the content card library, or simply make yourself more comfortable using the Yup platform to teach!

INTERNET CONNECTIVITY POLICY + SURVEY

Another recent feature Engineering has developed for Tutor Operations is a system allowing us to monitor the quality of tutors’ network connections while in a shift. Now that this feature is up and running, we are concerned to see that many Yup tutors do not have sufficient bandwidth to reliably connect to the Tutor Dashboard, often leading to session issues, high pass rates for tutors and high drop rates for students.

It should go without saying that having a reliable internet connection is fundamental to working for Yup. In the coming weeks, we will be rolling out a new policy surrounding internet quality – this will likely involve bonus incentives for tutors who improve their poor speed, along with negative consequences for those who fail to do so.

If your internet speed is not consistently at or above 5 – 10 mbps, we strongly recommend that you reach out to your internet service provider ASAP to upgrade your network plan, or explore other options for internet connection.

In order to give us a better understanding of any internet or Tutor Dashboard issues you may be facing, we ask that you complete the following mandatory survey before Wednesday, January 16th.


> > INTERNET SURVEY < <

 

Thank you for your participation – have a great week, all!

— Team Yup

 

Features Survey + Outstanding Feedback

NEW FEATURES SURVEY

Recently, we released two significant features that enhance they way tutors interact with students in-session. The following survey will give you the chance to share your thoughts and feedback on both the new Achievements feature, which was released last week, and the Concept Cards whiteboard enhancement which was released earlier this month.

Now that you all have had the chance to try these features out, we would love to hear your thoughts based on your first-hand experiences with the features. Your feedback is extremely valuable and will be shared with the product and engineering teams to make sure we are improving and evolving these features as needed!


NOVEMBER OUTSTANDING STUDENT FEEDBACK

Congratulations to Kathleen Kasper 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 Kathleen’s exceptional student feedback comments include:

  • “You helped me so much today, and I’m beyond grateful for it. I came in not knowing any concepts, and now I know so many… Your humor, teaching style, and elaborations are some things I definitely enjoyed in our session. Thanks again for all your time and guidance :)”
  • “Thank you for helping me with this problem you helped me realize that the big problems aren’t always as hard as they seem Thanks!”
  • “I liked how fast the tutoring went by. I would love it if I were paired with you again.”
  • “Thank you for helping me with this problem you helped me realize that the big problems aren’t always as hard as they seem Thanks!”


Way to go Kathleen!

Have a great weekend, tutors!

— Team Yup