You and your students can easily message each other at any time directly through our internal messaging system here on Tutorful, which you can access through your Messages tab!
Once you open up this tab, you’ll be able to see a preview of all the recent messages that have been sent between you and your students, with the most recent message first:
To open up a message thread with a particular student, you’ll just need to click on the conversation with them, and this will take you through to your messages. Here, you’ll be able to see all of the messages that have been sent between you and that student, as well as view and respond to lesson requests, send files, and directly book lessons!
Sending a message
To send a message to your student, all you need to do is type it in the bar at the bottom and hit ‘Enter’ to send (or click on the paper plane icon on the right-hand side). If you’d like to start a new line in your message, you’ll just need to hold down the Shift key while pressing Enter.
On the left-hand side of the message bar, you’ll see two icons. The paperclip icon allows you to attach and send files to your students directly through the messaging system! When you click the icon, it’ll open up the file manager on your computer, where you can browse and select files to send. This is a great option if you have homework you’d like to set your student, or any important resources that you’ve used during a lesson that you’d like to share! Similarly, your students will be able to send files back to you.
Files will appear in the message thread just like normal messages do, and can be downloaded straight from here.
It’s worth noting that before your first lesson with a new student, you won’t be able to send any files across to them. However, they’ll still have the ability to share documents with you, which is useful for if they have any work that you’d like to look over ahead of time!
Clicking the smiley face icon will allow you to insert emojis into your messages.
Can I contact my students offsite?
We ask that you keep all communication with a new student onsite through our messaging system, up until your first lesson together has been booked in and confirmed by the student. After this point, you’ll be able to see each other’s contact details by clicking on the icon in the top right corner of your message thread! This will allow you to get in touch with each other more easily if you ever need to, for example to contact your student if they’ve not turned up for a lesson.
Can’t help a student?
If you receive an enquiry from a student that you can’t help with for whatever reason, you can use the ‘I can’t help’ button to quickly and easily let them know! You can find this option by clicking the icon.
Clicking ‘I can’t help’ will bring up a form, where you can select the reason that you’re unable to help the student (for example your schedule is too full). You’ll then just need to click ‘Send’ to send across an automated message to the student to let them know.
Lesson Requests
Students can request lessons with you directly through your profile, and these requests will appear in your message thread just like a normal message:
Clicking ‘View request’ will let you see the time and date that the lesson has been requested for, and will give you the option to either book the lesson, tell the student that you can’t help, or message them back to ask for some more information.