Tag: partner

This week we have a special guest blog post from Patrick Arevalo, the Peer Tutoring Coordinator for the University of Manitoba’s Student Union. Patrick was responsible for launching the campus-wide tutoring service for UMSU and not only set up the program and hired the tutors, but also marketed it to the student body.

Patrick found that the most effective advertisement strategy for the tutoring program was sending email blasts to the student listserv during midterm and final exam season, rather than relying on posters, TV spots, or social media advertisements.

Patrick also used Nimbus’s booking and payment system to hit the ground running, and made a few tweaks to the system to allow a more personalized, hands-on management style.

I held the position as UMSU’s Peer Tutoring Coordinator from October 2018 until May 2020. Before I took on this role, the University of Manitoba did not have any tutoring services that offered campus-wide courses; certain faculties only ran volunteer-based peer tutoring for courses in that same faculty. The UMSU Peer Tutoring Program, therefore, was envisioned to be a campus-wide, course-specific tutoring service that allows peer tutors to be incentivized for providing top-quality tutoring while remaining relatively affordable for students that benefit from the program.

Establishing a system that meets these requirements was not going to be an easy task in the administrative level. With Nimbus’ help, we had a head start in how the payment and booking system works – students can search up the course they need help on in the app, and if they see a tutor they want to book, they can do it themselves. This process relieved much of the stress I would have when it comes to peer tutor and student pairing, allowing myself to focus on other administrative tasks.

However, a few things still needed tweaking in order for Nimbus to fit UMSU’s needs. One particular feature is the tutor application process. The app originally allows tutors to apply directly to the program using the app, but I asked this to be removed so that tutors can apply by e-mailing me directly. This is because I wanted to have a more hands-on approach when it came to tutor application and interviews just so that I get to meet them in person, as well as vet them in the standard that I expect them to uphold when they become approved tutors in the program. This also allows them an opportunity to clear up any questions they may have about the Peer Tutoring Program.

When the program launched in Winter 2019, the next biggest hurdle we faced was trying to promote this service to a campus of 25,000 students in different buildings and campuses. Posters, social media advertisements, and campus TV advertisements only resulted to limited awareness. The most effective advertisement strategy that we found was utilizing the student union’s e-mail blasts to students as long as we properly time it around midterm and finals season. The first month of launch also revolved largely around bug fixes and quality-of-life improvements when using the app, but we started to see the potential of the program under the Nimbus App.

The second year of my term focused on program awareness and building user trust, and with the help of the VP Student Life and my Services Manager at the time, we saw significant improvements from the first year in terms of awareness, usage and trust. Working as the Peer Tutoring Coordinator ultimately made me see the importance of a tutoring service that not only exists as a service that students can use, but also one that strives to integrate itself in the campus community as something that students can repeatedly rely on throughout their undergraduate career, and perhaps one day give back to by becoming a tutor.

Keeping up with the demand for your tutoring program can be difficult – Nimbus can help. With our help, program administrators reduce their workload by 52%, which has allowed 60% of our partners to expand current or add new student success programs. Our dedicated team can help inform you (and your student interns) on where to focus your marketing efforts, and can even provide custom materials and strategies to ensure your program success.

Get in touch with us to learn how we can help!

Education A-Z is a tutoring company offering a variety of educational services to students of all ages in the greater Montreal area, from elementary school through university level. They offer one-on-one, private tutoring, specifically tailored to each student’s unique learning style and needs.

Their goal is not only to improve school grades, but to foster confidence, independence and life skills to better the lives of their students.

This week, we spoke to Alysha Zackon, the co-founder of Education A-Z and a tutoring savant about the importance of pairing the right tutor to students in need and her goals for this year.

What is your role in this company?

I am the co-founder of Education A-Z, as well as one of its tutors. My main job is finding, introducing potential instructors into our philosophy and approach to tutoring and learning, and ultimately matching the right tutor for each student. We are looking for tutors who have the right blend of domain knowledge, social skills, reliability, adaptability and love of teaching.

Why were you interested in working with us?

When I first heard about Nimbus, I immediately recognized its potential to benefit our clients and our business. Nimbus offers an outstanding platform that provides a much-needed service in Montreal. It is especially important today for teachers to be able to give students the full range of available sources for help in learning. This includes access to the best extra help that many students need. Nimbus is an excellent platform for the type of partnership needed between Education A-Z, our clients and our tutors.

What are your program’s goals for this school year?

We aim at matching students with the best educators to help them learn content in an enjoyable and relatable manner. We also help them prepare for tests and examinations by teaching both context and test-taking strategies that minimize test stress. We want our students to gain a strong grasp of content that will carry over to their more advanced classes and different contexts. Most importantly, we believe that we can teach our students effective learning strategies that they can adapt and use their entire life.

While these goals have not changed, the current pandemic has educational and social impact on the way students learn, and the ways we can assist their learning; Education A-Z has adapted to this new challenge.

What role do you hope Nimbus can play in helping you reach your goals?

The importance of matching the student with the right tutor cannot be underestimated.

Nimbus will make it easier for students to find the specialized educational services they need. It will help us pair students with their most suitable tutor based on a variety of factors.

Nimbus also facilitates the scheduling process; both the client and the tutor can spend less time scheduling and more time on education.

Have you changed your approach to tutoring/teaching due to COVID?

While our teaching philosophy and goals have not changed, we will be leveraging technology more than ever to adapt to these unprecedented times. As many of our students are opting for online learning, environment, we will be strategically using various features of video calling platforms. We will also be adapting our methods to make the tutor/student interaction as engaging on-line as it would be face-to-face. This way, we will be able to provide a safe solution without compromising the quality of teaching and learning.

What advice do you have for tutors as they navigate the pandemic?

Tutors should avail themselves of the latest technological solutions and online learning tools. They should also be aware of, and adapt to, the particular limitations of not learning in face-to-face interactions. If they are tutoring students in person, they should adhere to social distancing guidelines.

What advice do you have for students as they begin school with COVID in mind?

First and foremost, follow your school’s safety regulations closely. This is your time be super-heroes and heroines and protect those around you. Take pride in the fact that your actions will contribute to our society’s success.

Keeping up with the demand for your tutoring program can be difficult – Nimbus can help. With our help, program administrators reduce their workload by 52%, which has allowed 60% of our partners to expand current or add new student success programs. Our dedicated team can help inform you (and your student interns) on where to focus your marketing efforts, and can even provide custom materials and strategies to ensure your program success.

Get in touch with us to learn how we can help!

This week we sat down with Ann-Majella McKelvie, the President of the Trent Central Student Association, about launching Trent’s new tutoring program in the midst of a pandemic and how outsourcing the tutor hiring and on-boarding to Nimbus is helping the program get started.

What is the Trent Central Student’s Association?

We are the Student Union at Trent university that represents all the undergraduate students on the Peterborough campus.

Our biggest role is to represent our membership. We do this through advocating to our university’s administration on different campus issues, and to different levels of government.

We also work with the Canadian Federation of Students to communicate with all levels of government and to advocate for student needs and issues.

We also provide services for our members – Our biggest services are transit as well as health benefits. We work very closely with the city to be able to provide an affordable universal bus pass and we also have the privilege of being able to actually plan the routes and things like that.

We also do lots of different events, and campaigns around different things that students are really passionate about.

What is the Trent Central Students Association connection to the tutoring program?

It is a new program that we are launching this September.

With online learning and students voicing their concern of needing extra support while they’re navigating their education online, we felt that this was a really good opportunity to pick up on and provide for students. After doing a feedback survey, students shared that they would love to see tutoring more widely available on campus – with the ability to do tutoring [virtually] with the Nimbus app, that was a huge desire for us.

We also don’t have the capacity to do the hiring and vetting and all that stuff and so that was another piece that was really attractive for us as well. To have that partnership [with Nimbus], to be able to launch something and also provide capacity that we don’t have is really great.

What are your goals for the school year with the tutoring program?

Definitely the biggest goal for me right now is to get it out there and share this new app with the students. Also to really gain feedback on if this is a beneficial tool for students.

I think really sharing those benefits and not only being able to provide a tutoring service but also to be able to provide job opportunities for students was really attractive as well. We know students are struggling in terms of finances and trying to find work and stuff and so to be able to provide that with this app was attractive as well. Being able to provide both support as well as opportunities for students was definitely a big goal for me and I think the Nimbus app is really great and providing that opportunity for students.

Has your organization changed his approach to Student Services this year because of the pandemic?

Absolutely. Everything for the summer was moved all remote, all online and communication was definitely a new thing to navigate. Obviously we’ve used social media for communication and such, but in person stuff was a huge part of what we do and to not have that was very challenging, especially at the beginning. A really valuable learning curve for us was to adapt and learn what students need in order to get the information that they require to be able to be successful in the upcoming year

Definitely some big challenges but we’re learning a lot and how to provide better service for students.

What advice do you have for students as they begin school this year?

The biggest advice I always give, COVID or not, is to be open minded to new opportunities that may come your way. Being able to go to university is a privilege, and I think it’s important to take advantage of the opportunities that are there for you when you’re at school. To not just go to classes, but something like joining a club or applying for a job. Being open minded, trying new things and stepping out of your comfort zone a little bit – you don’t know where that’s going to take you.

For me that definitely applied when I started at Trent. I decided to join my college cabinet; definitely a huge step out of my comfort zone. If I didn’t make that choice in first year there’s no way I’d be where I am today. So, take the opportunities that come your way and don’t be afraid to step out of your comfort zone because you don’t know where that may take you in the future

Another piece of advice I’d like to get for folks is treat people with kindness; be nice. A lot of people are feeling a lot of like frustration and a lot of like negative feelings at this time.

Keeping up with the demand for your tutoring program can be difficult – Nimbus can help. With our help, program administrators reduce their workload by 52%, which has allowed 60% of our partners to expand current or add new student success programs. Our dedicated team can help inform you (and your student interns) on where to focus your marketing efforts, and can even provide custom materials and strategies to ensure your program success.

Get in touch with us to learn more about how we can help!

We recently sat down with Mark Leeming, the Learning Skills Coordinator at St. Francis Xavier University, to talk about the University’s transition to the Nimbus platform and how their tutoring programs intend to use Nimbus to assist students throughout the era of social distancing.

StFX connected with Nimbus in Fall of 2019. Leeming found the Nimbus platform allowed him to keep better track of the tutors, creating a more precise registry and a better understanding of what types of tutors are needed. Moving forwards, Leeming is excited about continuing to unify the StFX online tutoring presence via the Nimbus platform and reaching more students with easier marketing tools. The online tutoring presence will also prove useful if social distancing measures need to be enforced next fall.

What sorts of barriers were you experiencing with your tutoring program before you moved to Nimbus?

Well, there used to be a central tutoring program at this university, but it expired many years ago and it was sort of the tutoring wild west when I showed up. Every department had different policies – some had a close hand on things and others had a deliberate hands off policy.

I started by simply maintaining a registry and vetting tutors and my registry at first was on paper and then was just a document on a website, which served its purpose for a while, but it’s very limited. People didn’t know it existed and it was very hard to keep it up to date and, of course, in the end it’s just nothing more than a list.

I was looking for solutions and just as I happened to be looking for improvements the Students Union came along and said, ‘we’re interested in this thing, Nimbus. Do you think the university would be interested in participating?’

We created a partnership [with Nimbus] fairly quickly there and we drew in the Schwartz school of business as well. We’re setting up a branch office of my Student Success Center over there called success Schwartz Success. And the business school has also attempted to maintain their own tutor registry through the Schwartz business society, which was about as successful as my own, but it was inconsistent.

So, you were looking to kind of bring everything under one umbrella?

Exactly. It was easier to manage.

We spent some time investigating providers, there are a couple of main providers in Canada, and we decided that Nimbus was the way to go

How did the transition go, from no platform to integrating it fully into several different programs?

It hasn’t been that difficult to transition [since] I was developing a kind of registry before this. I’ve been spending a couple of years conditioning people to know that if they want to be tutors, they should come talk to me. So that wasn’t too difficult. There were some challenges convincing some people to move to an online database and scheduling system. A lot of people don’t want to include their financial details in an app, or scheduling details, they just want their name on a list to have people find them offline. But otherwise a fairly simple changeover…

The biggest change has been trying to expand it and convince more people to come online and away from the strict offline tutoring business; Convincing them that there’s enough utility to commit to the process of having a profile.

And how have you been able to convince them to do this?

It’s more or less a process of attrition. In that the more people who join the more isolated the ones who don’t. The better it works, the more people will join it.

Now that you have been working with it for a while, how has Nimbus helped your tutoring program?

It’s helped me to know what’s going on. Knowing which courses people are searching for. It’s a lot better than the blackbox method of trying to have a tutor for everything but not knowing who’s working on what.

Being able to keep up with updating the list is so much easier, rather than sending out emails every term. My list always had a number of tutors who weren’t really active, but they were on there anyway. So that’s easier.

I can’t say whether or not it’s really expanded the number of people giving and receiving tutoring, because I really don’t know what the numbers were before. And I don’t know fully what the numbers are now, because there have been still a lot of people who remained offline. Our process of incorporating was interrupted by a certain pandemic.

What I’m most optimistic about is the student union, the Schwarts Success Center are all working on unifying the online presence and approaching students marketing, more so even than last year. This year we get to start with students before they get to campus, or to our virtual campus, or whatever happens.

What do your tutors think of the app?

I’ve spoken to some of them, not a huge number, because I don’t actually employ tutors – they’re privately employed. The platform registers scheduling and payment system. When I talk to the tutors it’s often either they’re new and haven’t used it yet, and going through the vetting process, or they have a problem. If it’s working well people tend not to speak up.

I’ve talked people who have trouble with payment system or have trouble with the scheduling system, whatever their troubles were, they were all very pleased with how well the Nimbus team responded. I mean if you’re used to seeking tech support for apps and programs hardware or software, you’re probably used to asking questions and not getting answers for a long time. You guys are quick.

Is there anything else you would like to mention that I haven’t asked in regard to what you’re looking at this summer?

You guys are working hard on providing an online tutoring platform, which you did, and now working on providing something for group tutoring. Very useful departments at the University are going to be interested in providing some group tutoring options, even at the department level.

Most people are generally aware that things are going to be different. And when things are different, inevitably, some students are going to suffer from that because we have to deal with the full range of humans.

Every situation will be better for some than others, and the ones that it’s bad for are going to need help. It’s good to have something like Nimbus to help that group of people get what they need.

Keeping up with the demand for your tutoring program can be difficult – Nimbus can help. With our help, program administrators reduce their workload by 52%, which has allowed 60% of our partners to expand current or add new student success programs. Our dedicated team can help inform you (and your student interns) on where to focus your marketing efforts, and can even provide custom materials and strategies to ensure your program success.

Get in touch with us to learn how we can help!

Nimbus began working with the St. FX Student Union in the Fall of 2019 to assist in streamlining their tutoring platform. Representatives of the Student Union say the system has made it much easier for the tutors to connect with their clients. Rather than having to track the various communication methods and messaging systems that clutter up modern life, both tutors and students knew exactly how to get in contact with each other through the app. The platform also allows the administrators of the program to set up specific sites approved for tutoring – increasing the safety for both students and tutors. Finally, since they are now able to track what subjects students are requesting, the tutoring program knows which subjects they need to recruit tutors for, better supporting their students.

Here, we spoke to a representative of the student union to see how Nimbus is fitting into their tutoring program.

When did the St. FX Student Union start using Nimbus?

We implemented the system in November.

What made you look for a platform like Nimbus?

We were struggling a lot with our past system for peer tutoring and a lot of tutors sounded very frustrated to us. It wasn’t really accurate. And so, when Nimbus came to us suggesting them as a peer tutoring app, we began to look into other options and ended up going with Nimbus because we thought they were the best option.

What sorts of barriers were you experiencing with your tutoring program before implementing Nimbus?

I couldn’t speak to all of the barriers, but from what I’ve understood from listening to students, the main barrier was the technology and getting in contact with their own tutor. Rather than the apps facilitating all of it, which it does now, they would have to ask and email each other and a lot of other barriers to entry. The vetting system was complicated, and the software in general was pretty dated.

What were you looking for in this sort of app?

[When] we started looking, we began to realize that what we were looking for is an app that facilitated everything: messaging, calendar invites, the whole ten yards.

Like a one stop shop – so students don’t have to navigate away from the app in order to get this sorted out?

Exactly. A lot of tutors, what I found, were using their Facebook messaging for some students, emails for other students. They would have trouble remembering where they were meeting up.

How did Nimbus help your tutoring program?

We’re still in the midst of really making it go, but so far the safety of [the program] because all of it’s in house and we get to pick the locations that tutors tutor at. The fact that we’re able to now monitor how many happen, where we need more tutors, or what subjects we need more tutors for and things – that’s really excellent. It organized it, to give you a short answer.

So, it helped you not just with scheduling but also to kind of streamline the entire program?

Yeah, absolutely.

Is there anything else that you’d like us to know about Nimbus or how you’re implementing it?

Everybody that I’ve worked with in Nimbus and in the implementation process have been incredible to work with. And the speed at which Ben and Will work at, also, how they’ve helped us in our marketing troubles and creating marketing materials and creating classroom announcements scripts has been superb. From a customer service perspective, they’ve been absolutely great to work with.

The Nimbus App can make connecting students with tutors easy and flexible. Let us show you how.