Post-Session Screen Update, TGP Cycle Refresh Timeline, Training Reminder

Hi, everyone!

We hope you had an excellent week! It is hard to believe that it is already June! This week officially marks the end of the academic year for most schools. In the 2021-2022 school year we served 112 schools and had over 40,000 sessions! An amazing accomplishment and a tribute to the amazing work that our tutors do every single day! Please take some time to read the rest of this post to learn more about an update to the post-session screen, review the TGP cycle refresh timeline, and a training reminder. Thank you again for all that you do to empower our students to learn!

Post-Session Screen Update

An update to the Post-Session Screen was deployed today. For the “Please classify the type of session that you just had:” section, there will now be a “Topic Not Covered” option. This should be selected when a student brings a problem or topic that is outside of our Learning Objectives. When selected, please leave a comment that describes the topic that the student brought. An engagement score is not necessary for these sessions and therefore those radio buttons will not be accessible. 

Thank you to our engineering team for making this change so that the post-session comments are able to best represent what occurred in the session!

TGP Refresh Timeline

The end of May marks the close of another TGP cycle. We are currently manually reviewing sessions and metrics to prepare for the refresh for the next cycle. Please review the Yup Tutor Policies for more information regarding the tutor ranking system and TGP levels. The next TGP cycle is from June 1 – August 31. The following are dates and deadlines for information regarding May’s payment and TGP refresh.

  • June 6:
    • Payment for work completed in May sent via PayPal and direct deposit
    • Payment summary emails sent
    • June 1 – August 31 TGP levels sent in payment summary email
  • June 7:
    • Workbooks flip to the new TGP cycle. This will include all sessions starting June 1. Workbooks will display new TGP levels. If you do not see your new workbook, please do a hard refresh.
    • Direct deposit funds arrive in accounts

How to Engage Young Learners Training

A reminder for those of you who have not yet completed the How to Engage Young Learners training that the deadline is end of day Monday June 6. You can complete the training in 15-20 minutes while in shift but not in session. Please let Haddie know if you need an extension. Thank you for your time on this important task!

How to Engage Young Learners and Reminders

Hi, everyone!

We hope you had a great week! As we wrap up the month of May, many schools are finishing the academic year and most instruction has been completed. Because of this, we will continue to expect a drop in session volume over the next two months. We will post more next week about the way that we will adjust schedules to accommodate this expected drop in demand. As the school year draws to a close, it is an excellent time to reflect on the amazing work all our tutors have done to ensure that our students are empowered to learn. Thank you all so much for everything you do to help us be such an important resource for all of our learners!

How to Engage Young Learners

As we enter into the summer months, we want to refresh and revisit some key tools and topics that will help to improve session quality and efficiency for all learners. The first topic that we are focusing on is engaging young learners. While a lot of our students are in upper-middle grades and high school, we do have some younger students that come to Yup for help. While all fundamental best practices apply in these sessions, there are some areas (particularly vocabulary and solution strategies) that can differ with a younger student.

Some key things to keep in mind when starting a session with a student:

  • Check the grade level of the student.  Depending on how the student’s account is set up, the grade level should be displayed. If the grade level is not displayed, asking the student’s grade level at the beginning of a session can provide some helpful guidelines for how to most effectively engage with the student.
  • Use simple vocabulary
  • Break up long messages
  • Use the Live Whiteboard and encourage the student to do the same
  • Use a concept-driven approach
  • Ask about similar problems

To reinforce these strategies for engaging younger learners, we ask that you complete the How to Engage Young Learners training by Monday, June 6th. This training may be a refresher for some of you. The training should take about fifteen minutes and can be completed while you are in a shift but not in a session. Thank you in advance for your time on this task!

Reminders

Outstanding Student Feedback Award, Bug Avoidance Tips, and Reminders

Hi, everyone,

We hope you had a great week! Sessions this week were full of positive interactions and learning! In sessions where the student logged in using the WebApp, tutors are utilizing the live whiteboard with excellent results! Sessions are more efficient, explanations are clearer, and students are more actively engaged. If you have not used the live whiteboard yet, give it a try!

Outstanding Student Feedback Award

Congratulations to Sekhar Reddy K 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 Sekhar’s exceptional student feedback comments include:

  • “Thanks for helping me understand, I recently started online school and it’s been a struggle asking for help!!”
  • “Fastest help easy explanation and was in and out thank you Mr. K & YUP!!!
  • “Helpful, made things easier to understand”
  • ​​”Thank you so much for your help! You were super clear and to the point.”
  • “Thanks for helping me out today!!”
  • “Explained everything perfectly”
  • “At first I was confused, but Mr. K gave very helpful examples and that guided me to be able to figure out the problem for myself.”

Way to go, Sekhar!

Bug Avoidance Tips

With a recent update to the platform, a few bugs were introduced to the system. For the time being, please do a hard refresh whenever you finish the post-session screen. This is a workaround that will ensure future session matches. 

If you decide to make a change on Humanity to either your name or your email could you please email us at tutor.support@yup.com. We will need to make the change in the backend as well in order to ensure no login issues.

Thank you as always for your patience and communication whenever you encounter a bug!

Reminders:

Whiteboard Tools Feedback, Statistics Resources, Platform Updates, and Reminders

Hi, everyone!

We hope you had a wonderful week! We are very excited about the updates to the whiteboard toolbar! Please take a few moments to provide your feedback on the Live Whiteboard. A couple of additional updates that will be deployed next week are outlined in this post. We are excited about the updates that have been deployed and are in the works and are grateful for all of the helpful feedback that tutors have provided. It helps us improve the student experience, the tutor experience, and the quality of the overall platform. Thank you for your continued dedication to ensuring that every student is empowered to learn!

Statistics Resource!

It has been a while since we have reviewed the topics we cover generally and statistics in particular. You can review all of the learning objectives that we cover at Yup through this helpful document. While these are the topics tutors are expected to cover if a student brings a topic that is not on this list and you are confident in your content knowledge to successfully help the student, feel free to do so. In such a case, you can let the student know that the topic is not typically covered but you are able to move forward with them. 

Take a look at the subtopics of statistics that tutors are expected to cover with students. If you need to brush up on any of these content areas, please DM Haddie on Slack, and she will share some excellent resources. 

Platform Updates

We have two updates that will be deployed next week! Thank you to everyone who has already provided feedback that continues to help shape the tutor and student experience! We will let you know through the #announcements channel in Slack a day before these changes will be deployed but they are expected sometime next week.

Pages

The organization of whiteboard pages will be moved to the top of the whiteboard. The ability to switch between live and static boards should be more seamless with this design. 

 

 

Session Transcripts and the Live Whiteboard

Transcripts of sessions with the live whiteboard will now have recordings of the live whiteboard work stored at the top of the chat window. This will allow students and teachers to review completed work and the TQM’s a clearer understanding of the interaction and instruction.

 

Nominate Yourself for the Tutor Spotlight!

We want to see your highlights! Please nominate yourself so we have the opportunity to view and celebrate your achievements and incredible interactions with students!

Please fill out the Tutor Spotlight Nomination form so we can continue to celebrate the amazing interactions you have with students! A reminder that there is a $25 reward for being featured! 

We are looking for sessions where:

  • The student has a positive experience which is shown by the student:
    • being very willing to do the work.
    • leaving a positive rating.
    • being positive throughout the session.
    • finding solutions to problems that were challenging them.
  • You earned a high rubric score.

Reminders

Whiteboard Updates — Coming Friday, May 6!

Hi, everyone,

We are excited to announce some improvements to the whiteboard toolbar! A lot of the great ideas that our engineers implemented came from tutor feedback. In addition to the features below on the tutor whiteboard, students will now have an “undo” button on the live whiteboard. Thank you so much for helping us improve the platform and we hope that these changes will help increase the ease with which you are able to teach math and empower our students to learn!

Below are the major changes to the layout and functionality of the whiteboard toolbar. Please review them carefully. These changes will be deployed on Friday (May 6)!

Location of the toolbar:

The toolbar is now fixed in the middle panel of the session window.

Nesting of commonly used tools:

The tool options have been simplified. Each of the tools with an arrow icon can be expanded to show a variety of options within the category. For example, if you click the pencil icon you will see three options: a pencil, a highlighter, and an eraser. Additional options for each tool will appear at the bottom of the toolbar. You can see this in action in the video clips below.

Pencil Options:

With the pencil option, you are able to change the color and thickness of the line. The options for all tools have been simplified to the six most commonly used colors.

 

Line Options:

We are particularly excited about the dashed line option! You will notice in the clip below, that a small message with instructions for how to use the tool appears when it is selected.

 

Highlighter Options:

In this clip, pay close attention to the transparency option. This can come in handy with many other tools (particularly with shapes).

 

Shapes Options:

All of the shape options have remained the same. They are now nested together. You can change the line color and thickness and the fill color and transparency level using the options that will appear at the bottom of the toolbar.

 

Change Colors etc. for Entire Board at once:

You can select everything that you have done on a board and change the color and transparency at one time.

 

Add new pages and clear entire whiteboards:

You can add new pages (including those that are not live) and clear all drawings from a board with one click. Please remember to send completed problems or concepts done on the whiteboard to the chat.

 

Upload images, session images, and concept cards:

The ability to upload images, access session images, and concept cards have been maintained.