Setting Availability as a Tutor: Tips & Tricks

Managing your availability on Upswing is essential for providing flexible and efficient tutoring sessions. However, due to the way that setting availability currently works in the Upswing platform, there are some occasional issues you might encounter as a tutor. This guide outlines strategies for setting up your availability as a tutor to allow for a more dynamic weekly schedule.

Background Information about Availability Setting

Before diving in, ensure you're familiar with the following availability features:

• Setting Availability as a Tutor on Upswing: A Quick Guide
• Tutors: How to Set Weekly Recurring Availability
• Tutors: How to Set a One-Time Availability
• Tutors: How to Add an Availability Exception
• Tutors: Setting a Buffer Period

This article will cover two common scenarios tutors may encounter working as a tutor and how they can build their availability in Upswing to support those scenarios:

• How to add your availability in Upswing to avoid back-to-back sessions
• How to add your availability to support drop-in tutoring sessions

How to Add Your Availability to Avoid Back-to-Back Sessions

Upswing's availability settings allow for tutors to set what we call a buffer period, however, buffer periods only prevent sessions from being scheduled within a set amount of time before the session is scheduled to begin. Buffer periods do not automatically build breaks into your schedule. To give yourself breaks between sessions, you'll want to follow the steps below:

Example Scenario:

A tutor would like to be available for sessions Monday - Friday from 12:30 PM - 4:00 PM with 15-minute breaks every 45 minutes.

1. Add a recurring availability time-block from 12:30 PM - 1:30 PM.
   
   
   
2. Add another recurring availability 15 minutes after the last time-block ends.
   
   
   
3. Continue this pattern, adding time blocks of availability 15 minutes after the previous block ends. The tutor's scheduled availability would be the time-blocks listed below:
   • 12:30 PM - 1:30 PM
   • 1:45 PM - 2:45 PM
   • 3:00 PM - 4:00 PM
     
     

This schedule set-up will allow you to prevent back-to-back sessions during the time you are available, while still maintaining a predictable schedule.

How to Add Your Availability to Support Drop-In Tutoring Sessions

If you are a campus tutor and you frequently meet with students in-person for drop-in tutoring, you can add your availability in Upswing to prevent students from requesting a session during your drop-in tutoring session. The approach is similar to the steps above, with a few differences, explained below.

Example Scenario:

A tutor would like to be available Monday - Friday from 8:00 AM - 11:00 AM. They often meet with students on campus for 30-minute drop-in tutoring sessions, but would still like to be available for online sessions. The tutor wants to build their availability to allow them to block their schedule when a student comes in for drop-in tutoring so other students don't request sessions at that time. The tutor also wants to be able to add that session to Upswing as a past session after the session is finished.

Part 1: Adding Your Availability

1. Add a 30-minute recurring availability time-block from 8:00 AM - 8:30 AM.
   
   
   
2. Add another 30-minute recurring availability time-block after the last one ends.
   
   
   
3. Continue adding 30-minute time-blocks until you reach the end of your availability.
   
   
   

Part 2: Adding a One-Time Availability Exception and Scheduling a Past Session for Drop-In Tutoring

One-Time Availability Exceptions allow tutors to make an adjustment to their recurring availability to prevent students from being able to schedule sessions during a specified time-period. To learn more about One-Time Availability Exceptions, please read this article: Tutors: How to Add an Availability Exception

Something tricky about availability exceptions is that there isn't a way to add an availability exception for a fraction of a time-block of recurring availability. Because of this, tutors will want to build their recurring availability using short blocks of time, as done in part 1 above. 

Continuing with the example scenario, a student arrives to the library for drop-in tutoring at 9:55 AM and would like to meet with the tutor for a 30-minute session from 10:00 AM - 10:30 AM. The tutor is available during that time, but wants to make sure other students aren't able to request to schedule sessions during that time. To prevent this, the tutor will add an availability exception.

1. Add an availability exception by selecting the 30-minute block of time when the drop-in tutoring session would take place.
   
2. Once the drop-in session is finished, schedule a past session with the student during that block of time. For step-by-step instructions on how to schedule a past-session with a student, read this article: Campus Tutors: How do I schedule a past tutoring session on Upswing?

One-Time Availability Exceptions allow for tutors to easily block off small chunks of time from their recurring availability in Upswing in the event of drop-in tutoring sessions. Please note: Adding a vacation time does not function the same way. If you add a vacation for this period of time instead of a one-time availability exception, you will not be able to schedule a past session during that time.

Related to

• Information for Upswing Tutors
• Information for Campus Tutors