What do I do if a student abandons or repeatedly abandons sessions?

We are aware that sometimes students can have difficulty scheduling sessions that work with their schedule and/or may have trouble and for one reason or another abandons one or more sessions they schedule with you. We want to stress that this does not reflect on your professionalism, it's simply something that happens sometimes since students live busy lives or may be struggling. 

We have some policies in place to support you when this happens:

Student-Abandoned Session

If the student is not present at the beginning of a session, we expect you to wait for 15 minutes. If the tutor joins the session late or does not wait for the entire 15 minutes, then payment may not calculate, and the tutor may be ineligible for abandoned session wait time compensation. If the student joins a session late, the tutor will be compensated for the time they waited as well as the time spent in the session after the student joined.

If the student doesn’t come to the session after you've waited 15 minutes, make sure to end the session properly by clicking the “Complete" button. Please note that you still have to complete the session properly in order for the session to be correctly logged and counted towards your compensation.

If the student does not come to the session, there should be a pop-up explaining that there is no feedback needed. You can close this and move on. If you see a feedback form, you should reach out to [e-mail] to let us know, and simply write “student didn’t attend” in the feedback box. You will be compensated for the 15 minutes spent waiting.

To properly complete a session, click the Complete button in the top right corner in the VLC.

Student Repeatedly Abandons Sessions ('no shows')

If a student abandons a session once, please treat this as a fluke but politely address the issue with the student. However, if a student develops a pattern of session abandonment (2 or more), please politely and professionally address this matter with the student. Tutor Management recommends you use this pre-scripted message:

Hello __________, I wanted to touch base because you have abandoned ________ sessions in the previous ________ days. I enjoy working with you and look forward to our meetings, but when a student abandons a session, it means that my other students miss out. Going forward I would greatly appreciate it if you would cancel our sessions with at least 12 hours' notice and only schedule sessions that you are confident that you can keep. Otherwise, I may not be able to continue accepting your session requests.

Also, one student cancelling with you is an opportunity to set immediate availability for meeting with another student, particularly during peak usage (Sunday-Thursday between 6pm-10pm CST/EST). There is a good chance you will receive a request for a session and perhaps even build a long term routine with a new student.

If you need further assistance with this matter, please send an email to Tutor Management, at [e-mail].

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