Tag: productivity

Running a tutoring program is no easy task. There’s scheduling, interviews, background checks, helping with lessons, and so much more. But did you ever stop to think about the work that affects other departments? 

That’s one thing Derek Collins, Chair of Teaching and Learning at Lakeland College, noticed about their tutoring program before they decided to partner with Nimbus Learning. Not only did it take a ton of time for the person responsible with managing the program, but there was also support needed from their HR department and other members of the department.

Thankfully, Nimbus Learning provides an easy solution. We sat down with Derek to see how Lakeland used Nimbus Learning to cut back, big time, on the amount of time and effort it takes to run their tutoring program.

NL – How were you managing your peer tutoring program before Nimbus?

DC – We had a system that we used through our HR department to sign up tutors. Officially, they were done as individual contracts – you can imagine all the paperwork that involved.

Scheduling was managed through a spreadsheet. The person who looked after it just had a big sheet of paper and then would schedule tutors and match students with them. Eventually, we had to have a few more people on the team pick to up extra work because it was just too much.

Has Nimbus helped save your department time managing the Lakeland tutoring program?

Yeah, it was more than one person managing this program on top of what they were doing. It was quite a bit, and then you have to factor in the HR department doing all these contracts and then sending out checks once the hours were submitted.

Now we find maybe, at most, it takes one person a couple of hours a day – but that’s rare. Maybe at the start when there’s an influx of students and tutors.

I finished my duties in 20 minutes today.

Has the Nimbus platform helped your program be more efficient?

Oh, absolutely. Most of the students seem to be able to get onto the app no problem, whether they are a student or a tutor. Tutors take a little bit more work because we have to review their candidacy to be a tutor, so they’re waiting a little bit, but it’s still pretty good.

I like how the students can just connect with the tutor directly. That messaging is handled all within the system – we’re not sharing anything, so that privacy is maintained. That makes scheduling way easier.

There’s so many things I like about Nimbus. Being the chair of the department, I like being able to see the dashboard and track and see how it’s being used.

The funds are also managed through the app, which saves our HR department time too. The tutors have communicated they’re happy with how it’s deposited fairly quickly and easily. The way we do it is we front load: we give each student X amount of money. So that’s in the system already and most students aren’t paying anything; they can just book a tutor and are done.

What tips do you have for tutors using the Nimbus platform?

Making sure their availability is up to date. That’s probably the biggest one, remembering to make an updated schedule.

How do you intend to use the Nimbus platform to continue to grow your tutoring program?

There’s been a lot more demand for groups. I’ve noticed that some tutors are just spontaneously offering group sessions.

We have more of a demand for tutors than we have availability, so we end up with not enough tours generally. Encouraging more group sessions may be a way to facilitate more connections and support for students.

I’ve also taken a look at the mentorship platform. We could certainly see down the road expanding a mentorship program onto the platform.

About Nimbus Learning

Nimbus Learning works with the student success services at universities and colleges, to provide an end-to-end platform for easier access, more efficient management and receiving program insights for programs including tutoring, mentorship and study groups.

Organizations that have partnered with Nimbus Learning see on average 52% in time saved for administrators managing these programs and up to a two and half fold increase in student usage. 97% of students rate sessions booked and facilitated through the Nimbus platform 4.5 out of 5 stars or higher and report increases in grades.

The Nimbus platform can utilize anonymized data points such as current course grades, class attendance, demographics and more to develop a unique predictive score of academically at-risk students. This allows administrators to directly approach at-risk students instead of relying on them to seek help when it may be too late. This feature allows Nimbus to help schools better target at-risk students and significantly improve student retention.

Connecting faculty tutoring programs can be a huge benefit to the students and tutors, giving them more opportunities to find the resources they need to thrive. This is one of the reasons that two faculty associations at the University of Manitoba, the Engineering Society and the Science Students’ Association, connected with Nimbus. Now, both faculties are able to run their volunteer tutoring services independently, but students from each are easily able to see what is being offered across the board in one centralized platform.

These programs are also unique in the fact that they are run by volunteers. To understand the unique needs and challenges of these programs, Nimbus Learning sat down with Amy, Director of Academics with the Science Students’ Association, and Kassem, the Vice Stick Academic with the Engineering Society, to talk about staying efficient, juggling multiple roles, and how they motivate their peers.

How many volunteer hours do you dedicate to your tutoring programs a week?

Amy: The beginning of the semester is usually when I spend the most time on the program, just to review the tutors properly and to answer emails and stuff like that. That takes at least a couple of hours a week. Towards the end of the semester I only average an hour, maybe, a week.

Kassem: It’s the same for us. In the beginning of the semester, it was almost up to five hours a week, whereas now I’m barely making an hour per week.

What are the key objectives for your programs?

A: There are a lot of courses within the faculty of science that have a reputation for being difficult. A lot of the course material isn’t easy, so we recognize that there is a need for tutoring. Peer tutoring is great because students who have recently had success with the course can meet you at your level, right? There’s not that need to make a connection with someone who’s a lot older and is maybe more intimidating.

One of the objectives that is unique to this kind of programming, that other tutoring services might not be able to offer, is fostering relationships and building a sense of community within our faculty between people in different years.

K: The engineering program is also a very difficult field for a lot of students. We had a tutoring service before that wasn’t through Nimbus — it was just on our own type of thing. That was a lot less structured and we had some trouble with it. I agree with Amy on the fact that students want to be tutored by students that have taken the courses and who’ve been through the same pain with the same professors. It’s more relatable.

A: Oftentimes students will have the same teacher too, so the tutors know how the exams work and they can give that kind of personalized advice.

As student volunteers, the tutoring programs aren’t your only responsibility. How does Nimbus help you stay efficient?

K: Nimbus is super easy to use. Once you set someone up, they just free rein to do what they want in a controlled environment. When you sign up a tutor, it’s now their job to be available for the students. We don’t have to matchmake, which we used to do before we partnered with Nimbus. I think that’s how it makes it so much easier.

A: Also, the digitalization of the program is huge. Having an app format makes it so much more accessible for both students and for tutors. It’s a very familiar format for people and it’s available on both Samsung and Apple products. It’s just great.

From our administrative standpoint, it’s nice to have a list of all the tutors that use our platform, and then it’s also nice to see all the individual sessions. I can see who’s canceling sessions versus who’s re-booking sessions, so you can get an idea of who’s showing up to the sessions that they book.

As students yourselves, what are your relationships with the student tutors like?

K: Honestly, for tutors I met through Nimbus we now know each other on an acquaintance basis, and some of them actually became pretty good friends afterwards. It opened the door to a larger network.

How do you market to your student body?

A: Especially through COVID, we’ve moved almost all of our marketing online. So through social media, we have it on the Faculty of Science newsletter that goes out. We have monitors in the halls that are being put up, so we’ll have slides running through those continuously. Email services have been where we’ve had our biggest increase in users, but I think just word of mouth helps a lot.

We’ve done some in-person marketing — in the fall we had a lab event, which is just like a seminar with about a hundred or so students that are interested in pursuing research. We advertised it to the whole group, because these are people who are looking for academic, enriching opportunities, and we got some people who joined as tutors after that too.

K: We’re pretty similar. We’ve sent out a lot of emails and put notices in the weekly newsletters to the engineering department, both calling for tutors and advertising to tutees. On Instagram there’s weekly posts, stories and reels. And when Patrick came in, we did Nimbus pop-ins to lectures, which was really useful. A lot of people signed up from that.

At Nimbus, we’re not just rooting for you – we’re actively working to help your program succeed. If you have any questions or are looking for support for a tutoring program custom-designed to suit your campus, we want to help! Connect with us today to get started.

There’s nothing quite like a leader who came up through the ranks. Katarina Allan, President of the Mount Saint Vincent University Students Union (MSVUSU), knows first hand what it is like to be a tutor and having to spend a considerable amount of time connecting with students and setting up course work.

Allan first started her own company, Katarina Allan Tutoring, in 2016. Then, when the MSVUSU first started with Nimbus, Allan signed on. Overall, as a tutor, she says the platform made her more efficient. It got rid of the back and forth to book a session, and provided an easy way to advertise her services.

Now, as President of MSVUSU, Allan takes on a bird’s eye view of the tutoring program and Nimbus’ role within it. She sat down with Nimbus to talk about using the platform to improve tutoring in university and her advice for new peer tutors.

What was your first introduction to Nimbus Learning?

I’m actually a professional tutor. I run my own company in Halifax, Katarina Allan Tutoring. I’ve been tutoring professionally since 2016.

When the MSVUSU got the Nimbus tutoring platform in 2020, I thought it made a lot of sense to apply. I was approved, and I found the platform works really well. It increases the efficiency of connecting with students and takes away a lot of that extra time that goes into booking and rescheduling sessions and all that stuff.

** To avoid a conflict of interest when administering the Nimbus program on the MSVU campus, Katerina no longer operates as a tutor on the Nimbus platform.

Do you feel the Nimbus platform made it easier to connect with students?

It’s easy to connect with students because they can find you in the app and send you a message. Tutors also make their times available right on the app. It takes away a lot of the back and forth, emailing questions about pricing, availability, or what courses you teach. Nimbus just sort of deals with all of that and streamlines it. It’s much easier that way.

It also makes payment processing way simpler. When I’m working with students off the Nimbus platform, I’m generating invoices and sales receipts and working through all of that. So there’s a bit of paperwork on either end. Sometimes, there’s situations where you have to go and ask someone to pay you or remind them because they’ve forgotten. With the Nimbus platform, that’s all taken care of ahead of the session — you don’t have to have those awkward conversations.

Has Nimbus made your program more efficient?

It’s much more efficient through the platform than it is to connect with them through other means. And I think it’s also more efficient for the student because, when they look for the course, they can select from the tutors available. They don’t have to spend time on Kijiji or in a Facebook group, trying to track down tutors. They also don’t have to purchase their tutoring service from a larger company where the tutoring rates tend to be a bit higher, and the amount that actually goes to your tutor is lower.

What do you find are the most useful features of the Nimbus platform?

The tutor profile, the in app messaging, and the scheduling and payment processing are the most useful ones. The tutor profile is really useful because it saves time on questions like, Are you able to tutor this class? If I was available, I could turn it on and then the answer is evident through the app. And if I tutored a class, the class is available and that’s evident through the app.

The tutor profile is also more efficient for the student because they can get a pretty good picture of what the qualifications the tutor has and what their price point is going to be.

One thing that I also find works really well is providing feedback to the Nimbus team, and having new features in the app developed.

How do you intend to use the Nimbus platform to continue to grow your tutoring program?

For the university and for our students, I’m really looking forward to increasing the visibility of the Nimbus tutoring platform on campus and increasing our course coverage. I’m continuing to onboard more tutors so we have that support available.

What tips do you have for tutors using the Nimbus platform?

Create a really thoughtful tutor profile and apply to teach as many courses as possible, because you can always turn them off if you’re getting busy. You’re more likely to get a student if you have more course coverage and more availability. Even if you couldn’t spend a full 10 hours tutoring in a week, if you have 10 hours available, put them on your profile. Then, once you have however many hours filled, you can adjust your schedule.

What tips do you have for tutors in general?

Tutors need to be able to say when they don’t know something — it’s really important. It doesn’t mean that you’re not doing a good job as a tutor. Honesty is pretty key there.

You also need to listen to your student and to what their different learning needs are. Being able to explain the same concept in five different ways back-to-back is a skill that you’re going to want to have because you’ll get to know your student, and you’ll get a more efficient view of what types of explanation will work with that student. By just repeating the same explanation you heard in class, it is not going to work.

You’re there to help them work with their situation. Everyone is capable, they may just need different learning strategies, techniques, and different amounts of time. In the lessons, sometimes people struggle, and it’s definitely helpful when a tutor can say something as simple as you know what, I see a lot of people with this issue. It’s not just you. Then there’s a sense of relief and you can move forward in a problem solving way. A lot of tutoring can be managing student anxiety. You never want to pretend you’re a counselor, because you’re not, but you can help bring that anxiety level down and help them learn better.

Finally, take notes for yourself so you remember, when you go to tutor that same student again, what worked last time. Start with what worked, and each session will get more and more efficient.

At Nimbus, we’re not just rooting for you – we’re actively working to help your program succeed. If you have any questions or are looking for support while recruiting more tutors (help drafting email campaigns, marketing materials, et cetera) we want to help! Connect with us today to learn more.

Learn more

In this article:

  • A global survey of 2,000 knowledge workers found 68 per cent of workers toggle between apps up to 10 times in an hour
  • 31 per cent of workers say this constant switching of apps can cause them to lose concentration.
  • A look at how Nimbus centralizes everything you need to run your tutoring or mentorship programs
  • Thanks to the time saved with the Nimbus platform, 60% of our partners were able to expand current or launch new success services since partnering with Nimbus

Apps are great. From data collection to managing the schedules of many different people at once, apps consistently promise to make our lives easier – and for most of our needs, they do just that. However, each app that solves a problem adds to the litany of programs that we must keep track of and integrate into our work ecosphere. Information produced by each app also needs to be integrated with the information produced by other programs which can be a time consuming process.

Surveys have shown that the constant switching between apps costs us valuable time and risks knocking us off track. Instead, institutions looking for ways to increase productivity should consider centralizing apps and programs onto one platform.

Data show the constant switching between apps costs valuable time

A global survey of 2,000 knowledge workers found 68 per cent of workers toggle between apps up to 10 times in an hour, with 31 per cent admitting this constant switching of apps can cause them to lose concentration.

This constant switching between apps and other programs is also annoying, with 52 per cent of respondents saying they found it more annoying than paying bills.

But all is not lost. A majority of respondents (67 per cent) said bringing most of their apps onto one platform would help them develop a better workflow, with 65 per cent also saying it would help them become more productive.

Read more at “App Overload is Creating Chaos at Work and Costing Businesses Billions” by Ring Central.

Nimbus centralizes recruitment, scheduling, program tracking & analytics and reporting

The Nimbus Learning platform offers a seamless experience for administrators, with everything needed to run your tutoring or mentorship program in one spot.

The Nimbus platform carries the following features:

  • Recruitment: Tutor Vetting and Interviewing
  • Scheduling: Making schedules around tutors class and work schedules
  • Program Tracking: Timesheets, Hour tracking
  • Program Analytics
  • Surveying and reporting

The Nimbus team also follows a software as a service model, where we continue to work with and support our partners even after the Nimbus platform is up and running at their institution. Depending on the institutions needs, Nimbus offers tutor management support, including recruitment, interviewing, vetting and training.

We also offer marketing support and customized branding, to ensure your program hits the ground running.

The results of centralizing your program with Nimbus

Our results speak for themselves – interviews with our partners show the Nimbus Platform allows them to:

  • Improve data collection processes so staff have access to more data, while spending less time collecting it.
  • Reduced the day-to-day administrative process, and reduced staff workload by 53%
  • With this time saved 60% of our partners were able to expand current or launch new success services since partnering with Nimbus (ex. Mentorship programs, group facilitated study etc.)

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

Between reviewing lecture notes after every class, making time to connect with your peers and instructors, getting your 5 servings of fruits and veggies every day and limiting your caffeine intake, the concept of fitting in the recommended 30 minutes of exercise every day can seem laughable. There’s just not enough hours in the day to fit it all in.

But what if we said it didn’t have to be as arduous as setting aside a chunk of time to go to the gym? What if you just had to find a few moments every day where you carved out 5, 10 minutes of your time to exercise?

According to a study published in the Journal of the American Heart Association “The key message based on the results presented is that total physical activity (ie, of any bout duration) provides important health benefits.” (Saint‐Maurice et al., 2018)

That means that working out in small chunks may be just as beneficial to your health as working out in one long segment.

Researchers compared data from the U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2003–2006 with available death records to determine if there was any correlation between all-cause mortality rate and how people worked out. They found that both working out for a longer period every day and working out in smaller chunks of time throughout the day were correlated with a lower mortality rate.

A separate study conducted with volunteers who had hypertension found that three 10 minute bouts of brisk walking throughout the day were associated with a greater decrease in blood pressure than one 30 minute session.

Working it into your day

We’ve already discussed the pomodoro method on the Nimbus blog, which recommends you set periodic break periods where you get away from your desk. Try fitting in a quick little workout during these breaks – there are plenty of apps or youTube videos that can walk you through a 5- 7- or 10- minute workout. If you don’t have much room to move around, there are even workouts that can be done right at your desk – we’re sure your cubicle mate won’t mind 😉

Using this method also has the added benefit of giving your mind and eyes a break from your computer – critical to protecting you from negative effects of stress and eye strain.

If you’ve used this method to get some more work outs in, we’d love to hear your thoughts. Comment below or send us a DM – we can’t wait to hear what you’re doing to keep yourselves healthy!