28th January 2024

Intro to Up Learn webinar: Q&A Overview

That’s a wrap for our first webinar for 2025. It was an honour to host so many educational leaders who were keen to find out more about Up Learn. If you’d like to see the webinar, it’s available here.

With over 40 questions coming thick and fast during the question time we’ve summarised the key points and provided detailed answers and next steps.

Student Experience

1. How long does it take to get an answer from Up Learn tutors?

We offer 24/7 live tutoring at Up Learn by a team of subject experts from some of the top universities in the world. Response times vary from a few seconds to a few hours, depending on how long it’ll take our tutor to look into your question and the time of day. You can read more here.

2. How is time spent calculated?

Our productive hours measure is based on student engagement, rather than time spent on the platform. Students are awarded time for answering questions, watching videos, and actively engaging with our content, meaning that they can’t game their homework by sitting idly. 

3. Do students mark the exam questions they complete by themselves?

Students are provided with a detailed mark scheme to self-mark their exam papers, whilst exam question walkthroughs also provide video lessons that explain the answer in further detail. All exam papers are handwritten, so you should encourage your students to show you their marked work in class.

4. Will there ever be transcripts or subtitles?

We plan to add subtitles to all videos later this year. There are no plans to add transcripts but if this would be of value to you please get in touch with us with more details so we can consider it for the future roadmap.

Course Content

1. Will Edexcel biology, physics, and chemistry come to Up Learn?

We don’t currently have plans to add these to Up Learn. Our up to date list of courses covered is here.

2. Biology videos – what is the latest news?

We recently released loads of additional content for our Biology course, and are in the process of releasing more! This will mean that a third of topics is taught by video-led sections, whilst the remaining content is taught by quiz-led sections, ensuring that students are able to cover the entirety of the course in the most efficient way possible. Students can find specific videos by typing in the search bar.

3. I have noticed some spec missing for certain topics in Psychology. Who do i contact about this?

As well as covering the entirety of the AQA Papers 1&2 specification, our psychology course also includes the following optional paper 3 topics:

• Issues & Debates
• Gender
• Schizophrenia
• Aggression

Bonus summary content for the following popular topics can also be found:

• Relationships
• Eating Behaviour
• Forensic Psychology

If you have any questions about any of our courses or would like to provide some feedback, please do not hesitate to contact [email protected] or get in touch with us via messenger.

3. Sections starting with a quiz

Biology sections don’t start with quizzes to help students skip content they already know. Most of our subjects do, and we are considering adding this to biology in the future too.

Biology does still have many quizzes to test student knowledge throughout the course – they just don’t result in students skipping content.

4. Incorrect answers

Students can be boundlessly creative with their phrasing and sometimes they can provide a correct answer that our system isn’t expecting. If this occurs, students can click ‘report a problem’, and their answers will be reviewed and their marks updated. We’re constantly iterating and improving our marking system to reduce these occurrences and meet the needs of our imaginative students.

5. Students tell me they have completed the whole assignment but it is showing as incomplete because they skipped videos. Is there any way to check on what they have done and what they have skipped?

Students can answer questions at the start of the maths assignment to demonstrate prior knowledge. If they do this then the content they already know will be skipped and the activities will be marked as complete in the assignment. See the screenshot below for what the student will see when starting the assignment.

Exam questions

1. If students do exam questions, does it add up to the total time spent on Up Learn?

Our consortium of exam papers, exam questions by topic, and exam walkthroughs allow students to refine and practice their exam technique. These all contribute to the time spent on Up Learn.

2. Is it possible to get more topic wise exam questions? Also more exam papers.

Each course has at least six exam papers available for students to attempt. These are predominantly located within the primary year 13 module of each course (e.g. Pure Mathematics Year 13). Endless exam questions are available at the top of the page for all courses, apart from Economics, Psychology, and Biology, which have additional exam questions within the course. 

3. Displaying exam questions

When attempting exam questions on Up Learn, students will write their answers before the system guides them through marking them. A video will then walk them through the answer in detail, so students can identify exactly where they went right or wrong. For the subjects where the answers are handwritten, you should encourage them to show you their marked work in class.

Teacher experience

1. Is it possible to see what responses students have given in their quizzes?

Teachers can drill down into their student’s performance on their assignments by tapping on their names. Here you’ll be able to see which individual activities they have and haven’t completed and the questions the student made mistakes on. We’re also working on displaying their exact answers, so you can drill further into their performance. You can read more here.

2. Can I modify the names of classes imported through our MIS? These students have given in their quizzes?

Via a Wonde connection, Up Learn syncs with your MIS data to replicate what you see in your classroom on the platform. If you’d like to edit your class name or your class membership, you must do this from within your MIS. If you’d like to see only the assignments relevant to you, as well as student progress on them, head to the assignments page, which shows only the assignments that have been set by you! Read more.

3. If a student does only the quizzes and gets most of them correct, would the total time be added automatically?

Yes, time for quizzes is tracked as well as time watching videos.

4. How do you work out how long a section should take?

Our section estimates are based on a combination of combined video length, quantity of quiz questions, and real-life student completion data.

5. If I do not set up assignments and ask students to complete 1 hour of work on Up Learn – can I see what they do?

If you don’t set an assignment, visit the overview page of the Departments page – this will show you what sections have been completed, the student’s scores, and time spent in the last two weeks. However, we do recommend setting assignments to give students the clearest direction on what to do and to gather richer insights about the work they completed.

6. Can I set up classes within a group of students eg 40 students in 2 separate classes?

Yes we can automatically pull class data from your MIS. This enables you to set and monitor work for individual classes. If integration with your MIS hasn’t already been set up please contact [email protected] to set this up for you.

7. Can you set assignments for specific students?

You can’t set assignments for particular students using the assignment-setting feature, though we are looking at adding this functionality in the future. 

But you can click on the link button next to each section (see screenshot below) and share that with the student e.g. through Google Classroom. In the overview tab, you will then be able to monitor whether they’ve completed the section and their score.

8. Can you set assignments for specific students?

You can’t set assignments for particular students using the assignment-setting feature, though we are looking at adding this functionality in the future. 

But you can click on the link button next to each section (see screenshot below) and share that with the student e.g. through Google Classroom. In the overview tab, you will then be able to monitor whether they’ve completed the section and their score.

9. Students are saying that once they’ve watched the videos they are not always able to move on to the next sections. Any advice?

Upon completing videos or quizzes within a section, the algorithm will automatically take students to the next activity. Once the section has been completed, students should then return to their assignments tab to complete their next assignment. If this is not working – please flag with customer support.

10. Is it possible to see who set the task as we have more than one teacher for each class?

It isn’t possible right now to see which teacher set an assignment, but we’re considering it for the future product roadmap. Any additional feedback on why it would be useful would be helpful to inform how we prioritise it on the roadmap – please schedule a call with our product team here.

11. Is there a better way to see progress on a class-by-class basis?

We recommend you set assignments for each class. If you do this then for all past and current assignments you will be able to see the completion status of each activity within a section, scores, and the questions each student got incorrect.

For hours completed before the last fortnight, the best place to go is the Students page, including the CSV download of class data.

11. What do you recommend around the assignment setting?

We recommend that schools set an average of two assignments per week. However assignments do vary in length, and this should be factored into the decision of what to set in a given week. On the screen where you set assignments we provide an estimated completion time – so please consider this when deciding how many to set.

Tech queries

Every school is different and we’re committed to creating the very best customer experience. Our streamlined support service means that whether it’s your school’s dedicated Customer Success Manager or our superstar support team who’s best placed to answer your question, simply email [email protected], or open the messenger on the website, and your query will be picked up by the appropriate expert.

Dashboard updates

As Max, our Head of Customer Success mentioned in the webinar, the teacher dashboards update with the latest data every hour. We recommend that you flag this to your students so that they don’t leave Up Learn until the last minute!

New functionality & prioritisation

Many great suggestions came through about what to improve and design. Up Learn is committed to delivering a product that adds value for students and teachers – so all of these ideas are really appreciated. We want to make sure that we’re building new features that really make an improvement to the Up Learn experience and the impact we deliver,  so all feedback is valuable.

Some of the ideas for tech improvements are already being planned. Upcoming features include further improvements to quiz marking accuracy, an improved scorecard showing insights about a class or year’s overall performance, and subtitles for all videos.

Our product team is committed to making the product as perfect as possible for schools and would be delighted to hear from you. If you’d like to get involved with user testing, or to be interviewed by our product team – please schedule a call.

Who do I contact if I want to find out more about Up Learn?

That’s easy, simply fill in this form, and a member of our team will be in touch