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:
  • If you need to change your availability for autumn:

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

Updated Canned Responses

NEW: UPDATED CANNED RESPONSES

As some of you may have noticed, our collection of canned responses, available below the chat bar in Tutor Chat, have been updated to accommodate to an even wider range of common student situations.

Along with changes to the response messages, you may notice changes in the labeling, appearance and order of these buttons. Any feedback on these changes would be appreciated!

As a refresher, canned responses are a handy way to:

  • Speed up the session introductions
  • React quickly when students answer questions or take steps on their own
  • Deal with cheating, poor engagement or inappropriate behavior


A few tips for making the best use of canned responses:

  • You can modify these responses before sending by editing them within the chat box
  • You can cycle through different versions of the same message by continuously clicking that canned response button
  • Please refrain from re-using canned responses multiple times in a session as it may seem robotic to the student


Have any feedback, suggestions or concerns about canned responses? Please don’t hesitate to contact tutor.support@yup.com!

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
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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

Professional Development + Dashboard Update

Introducing: Professional Development Program

We are excited to announce our new tutor Professional Development program! This program aims to help tutors improve on the rubric standards they struggle with most by providing concise video training.

Starting Monday, July 23rd, we will begin tracking rubric standard scores to identify tutors who earned a “No” on 30% or more of scored sessions for a given rubric standard over a 4-week period. If you are flagged for training, you will receive an email with further instructions.

Program Overview:

  • The program will involve watching a 3 – 5 minute video on an individual rubric standard and completing the associated quiz via PlayPosit
  • Each training exercise should take no more than 10 minutes, however, you will be compensated for 30 minutes of your time for passing the quiz
  • To pass you must complete the exercise within 1 week and score 100%, though you may rewatch the videos and retake the quiz as needed

Please let us know if you have any questions by contacting tutor.support@yup.com. We look forward to using this program to help you better understand Yup’s standards and expectations and grow as educators!

Tutor Dashboard Updates

Starting later today, July 18th, you will notice some structural changes to the Tutor Dashboard that we hope will improve your experience on the platform.  If you notice any issues or bugs, please send a screenshot as per the Bug Reporting instructions so we can pass on the issue to our engineering team. Please note the step that explains the Dev Console screenshot – this is the most important step for diagnosing a problem.

Happy Tutoring!

— Team Yup