Tutor Update for June 2020
Hi [simplenews-subscriber:user:profile-fullname]!
A school year like no other has just ended. With summer here and Canada Day just around the corner, I look forward to the summer season, but again it’s going to be different from the usual. We’ve gotten used to our new groove, and look forward to a laid back summer taking it easy locally. I hope all of you have means to enjoy your summer in a healthy and safe way.
Here's what's in this month's update:
1. Update your listing.
2. How the "on-line" feature works in listings.
3. Bonus listing time still available.
4. New features in development.
5. Stay connected!
1. Update your listing.
As we move into summer time, this generally marks a time when demand for tutoring naturally drops off. Of course many of us have already had an abrupt drop off in tutoring. Local news has reported that there are record number of students enrolling in summer school courses. I rarely get summer school students, but when I do it's very intensive and they usually have multiple sessions every week, so who knows how much demand for tutoring there will be this summer.
When someone needs a tutor in the summer, they don't have the luxury of time like during the school year, so it's important when they contact a tutor, they are available. It's always important, but especially now, that you make sure your listing is up today and accurate, here's some things to consider when updating your listing:
Won't be tutoring over the summer? PLEASE use the "not accepting" option (instructions below). This helps your fellow tutors get more easily found, and also prevents parent frustration. Trust me, I get e-mails from parents complaining that they try contacting tutors that either don't reply, or say "sorry, I'm not taking students right now" and it makes them mad. So mad they e-mail me.
Say in your listing what extra precautions you are taking to keep students safe. Restrictions are easing, but that doesn't mean it's back to business as usual. If you meet in person, include what procedures you include/expect from student. For example, mask wearing, maintaining distance, extra cleaning/sanitizing etc. Parents want to be reassured their children and families are safe, and much more likely to contact someone that has shown they've taken that into consideration and mentioned it in their listing.
Remember that updating your listing places a big “updated” tag in your listing. This makes your listing stand out more in the list and lets prospective clients know that the information is recent and up to date.
Take a couple minutes to update your listing now!
Login to your account, by going to findAtutor.ca and clicking on "login" in the menu. If you are on a cel phone, you may have to shrink the screen to get to “Log in” at the bottom of the menu list. Remember that your user name is "Anonymous" (do NOT include the quotes). If you can't remember your password, click on "Request new password", enter your e-mail address, and you will be sent a link to give you access to your account. NOTE: to login you must type both your username and password in exactly. Many tutors are convinced that their new passwords aren't being saved properly when it's the username they are entering in wrong. Remember that the "password reset" feature will give you access to your account using your e-mail address instead.
Update your listing after you login by clicking on the tab labelled "my listings." Scroll down to the “listing information” box below your listing, and click on the “confirm listing as accurate” button. If you need to make changes, edit your listing by clicking on the “edit listing” link also located in the listing information box.
Change your listing to say "not accepting" by removing the check mark next to "accepting students" and then clicking on "confirm listing as accurate". If you want to remove the "not accepting" tag from your listing, do the same thing, except click to add the check mark next to "accepting students."
Check who e-mailed you by clicking on your listing title. This places your listing in a screen by itself and you will see a tab above it labelled "who e-mailed." Click on this tab to check out who has e-mailed you in the past. You can check this list any time in case you may have missed noticing a message, or accidentally deleted an e-mail you wanted to follow up on.
2. How the "on-line" feature works in listings.
As most tutors have transitioned to working on-line, I'm getting lots of questions about how exactly the "on-line" option works in listings.
Back when we first added on-line tutor listings as an option (this was a very long time ago) tutors had to create a separate listing that was designated for on-line tutoring. We then added a special case of "on-line" to appear at the very bottom of the area list.
When we did a major overhaul and update of the entire system, we changed to what it is currently, you can select a tick box in your listing that adds "on-line tutor" in bold letters to your listing. The listing then appears in both the area search results, and also an on-line tutor search.
The option to search for on-line tutors is still at the bottom of the area list, we did expand it so that it always appears at the bottom of the area list no matter what province is selected. The search results then returns all listings designated as on-line from all across Canada.
Because of how search results are done, we only allow one listing to have the "on-line" designation if you have multiple listings. If it could be added to all listings, then the on-line search results would be showing multiple nearly identical listings from the same tutor. Frustrating for those searching, also frustrating for other on-line tutors that are getting pushed further down the list.
The thought was that someone looking specifically for an on-line tutor does not care about the tutor's location. Also, typically there were very few on-line tutors that listed on findAtutor.ca, so it didn't justify the amount of work needed to change things for less than a couple dozen tutors.
Of course now that just about everyone is moving to tutoring on-line, everyone wants all their listings to say "on-line tutor." I recognize that it's not ideal for the current situation, and the shortfalls are really apparent.
The good thing is that the general expectation is that tutoring is taking place on-line, so people are still searching for tutors locally. Even without the "on-line tutor" designation in your listing, you can add information to your listing that you are offering on-line tutoring. Even those listings that have the designation I have always recommended adding information about the type of technology used, so it's more important to include the information in your listing than to have the designation.
3. Bonus listing time continues.
We are continuing with including extra listing time with renewals (it's also available for new listings as well). We add on an extra 2 months for each 6 month or 1 year renewal. Renew for 2 years and get an extra 4 months!
The plan right now is to continue the extra listing time until the end of July. I'll make sure to give everyone warning when it goes away so you can take a last minute advantage of the bonus time if you haven't renewed before then.
4. New features in development!
Did you get an e-mail from findAtutor.ca about the status of your listing that wasn't relevant? Umm, oops, that was our fault.
We're developing something new and hope to release it over the summer in time for back to school in September. In doing that, we take a copy of all the data on findAtutor.ca, and set up a test website. This way we have a rich set of data to work with, but can test things out without fear of loosing anyone's data as we are working from a copy.
As it happens, something catastrophic did happen, so James had to delete the whole test site and reinstall the copy that is now a few weeks old. The one thing he forgot to do was disable the automatic e-mail function. I was working in the kitchen and started getting a large number of notifications of e-mails being sent out at a time when it isn't scheduled to do that. I ran to the office to ask James what is going on, and he reassured me "it won't be sending out any more e-mails!"
So, rest assured, if you got an e-mail notifying your that your listing expired when you renewed recently, or that you ran out of side ad bidding credits or listing points when you just purchased more, it was based on a copy of the data that was a few weeks old, and does not affect the current status of your account on findAtutor.ca.
I can't promise that something like this won't happen again, but we learned the last time doing a major update where we deleted all the users data by accident and had to recover all the changes from the previous week (it was amazing how many changes occur in only 1 week), we develop and test everything on a completely separate website. It's still connected to the internet though, and sometimes e-mails get sent unintentionally.
If you ever get an e-mail and it doesn't make sense why you got it, feel free to reply to it to ask for clarification. I'll let you know whether it was a mistake.
As for what's in development? Well, hopefully it'll be coming soon, and we are so excited about it!
5. Stay connected!
Social circles are growing, but for safety and healthy of everyone, they need to stay small. Social media is a great way to stay connected. All the latest news on findAtutor.ca will be announced on social media, you'll hear it there first!
So follow, post or @ us here:
Twitter: @findatutor
Facebook: @findatutor.ca
Thank you as always for listing on findAtutor.ca!
Stay safe and healthy,
Johanna