Tutoring 101: Do’s and Don’ts – Page 3

Schedules, Webinar + Canned Responses

RESUMING NORMAL SCHEDULES

Now that the new school year is growing near, we are excited to be resuming normal scheduling operations on Monday, August 20th.

We know many of you are hoping to revert back to your former schedules, but we also understand some of you have different scheduling needs going into autumn.

If you are happy to revert back to your pre-summer normal schedule:
- Please submit your name via the Resume Schedule Form
If you need to change your availability for autumn:
- Goto the Scheduling Form and choose “Update Availability”

We will then use this information to determine your weekly schedule going into the new school year. We’ll be in touch later this week to confirm your new shifts for August 20th onward.

UPCOMING WEBINAR

We are excited to announce that our next tutor webinar will be held on Thursday, August 23 at 9:00 AM PDT. We will be expanding on our recent newsfeed post about using positive language effectively. Specifically, we will talk more about growth mindset, what it is, and how to cultivate it within our students. We hope you can make it!

IMPORTANT NOTE ON CANNED RESPONSES

When using canned responses that incorporate a student’s name, you may notice that the name is followed by a number. We ask that you take a moment to review these messages before sending them to remove the number suffixes and ensure you are addressing students by their first names rather than their usernames. We hope to address this issue in the near future, but thanks for taking extra care with canned responses in the meantime!

Happy Tutoring!

— Team Yup

Updates: Bugs, Positive Language & Science

TUTOR DASHBOARD BUGS

As the Engineering team works towards making the newest version of the Tutor Dashboard bug-free, we want to extend a huge thank you for your patience and understanding during this process. A special thank you to everyone who has been following the Bug Reporting instructions to take screenshots of bugs with the Dev. Console and sending them our way!

Here are some tips for avoiding some common Whiteboard bugs:

Problem 1: The “Send” button is missing
- Solution: The send button will appear as soon as you start using the whiteboard. To send an image without editing it, make an inconspicuous marking to activate the send button.
Problem 2: Whiteboard error message: “Error loading the image. Reason Failed to fetch”
- Solution: The following instructions will allow you to use the whiteboard when you see the above message until we issue a fix:
Problem 3: The line tool is behaving erratically
- Solution: After using the line tool to draw a line, right-click to commit the line to the board OR continue to draw connected lines.
NEW FEATURE TIP: Click on the triangle tool and enter a number “n” in the provided box to drag out a polygon with “n” sides. (Try it now in the Whiteboard Practice Link!)

ENCOURAGING LANGUAGE REMINDER

Quick reminder for Standard 3.3: Please ensure you are always using encouraging language when interacting with students! We realize this may be a challenge when the student isn’t succeeding, but this is the most important time to praise the student’s efforts in order to keep them motivated.

Here are some phrases that are better than a simple “Not quite.”:

When the student gets something completely wrong:
- “Good effort, Mike, but not quite! Let’s take a look at this step together.”
- “Nice try, but not quite! Don’t worry, we will get there in no time 🙂 ”
When the student is wrong, but not far off:
- “I see where you are going with this! Let’s talk about this step a bit more.”
- “Very close, Mike 🙂 Let’s build off that idea!”
- “Nice effort! Let’s make a few minor fixes here.”

See the Yup Teaching Standards or the Tutoring Template slides on Standard 3.3 for more tips!

SCIENCE UPDATE

As some of you may be aware, in July we made the decision to stop offering assistance with Chemistry and Physics subjects. This change will allow us to focus all our energy on offering top-notch math homework help, which the overwhelming majority of users are coming to us for. We hope to bring back these subjects in future, however we do not currently have a concrete plan to do so.

Let us know what questions you have!

— Team Yup

Gave Answer Update + Dispute Survey

GAVE ANSWER TAG – UPDATE

Thank you all for being a part of our Gave Answer Tag Experiment and giving us great feedback!

Based on the results, we want to flag three updates to the Gave Answer Tag that aim to improve both the tutor and student experience:

1. New Gave Answer Scoring as of Monday, August 6:

The Gave Answer tag will no longer result in a score of 0
Instead, tutors will receive a “No” for standards 1.2 and 3.1

2. Infographic: Updated Guidelines for Pushing Information

3. Examples: Gave Answer Case Examples

Scenario #1
The student is willing to participate, but discouraged by how long it’s taking for them to solve
Scenario #2
The student has demonstrated the ability to complete a certain step earlier in the session
Scenario #3
The student is checking answers that were reached before the session

Please let us know if you have any questions or feedback about the Gave Answer Tag by reaching out to tutor.support@yup.com.

NEW DISPUTE POLICY SURVEY

What are your thoughts on the recent dispute policy change? Fill out this brief survey to let us know!

Dispute Policy Survey

Happy tutoring!

— Team Yup

Paid Training Video: Tutor Fault Tags

A few weeks ago, our Training Coordinator, Sharon Matsuoka, reached out to you with a brief survey to help us understand where your confusions were surrounding Tutor Fault Tags.

We used this information to create a new PlayPosit training video that focuses on how these tags are assigned, as well as how they can be avoided.

Using the image link below, please log in to PlayPosit, watch the video, and answer the interactive quiz questions. Complete this assignment before July 20th to earn 30 minutes of compensation. We have no doubt that you will find this webinar-style video informative!

If you have not yet received your PlayPosit credentials or need help logging in, please email tutor.support@yup.com.

— Team Yup

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