Running your SkillX marketplace

Summary

SkillX is your institution’s own tutoring marketplace. Your learners already pay private tutors; SkillX keeps that activity inside your governance, lets your staff earn from their expertise, and shows you which support actually helped.

It lives on the Exchange tab: Marketplace Overview, Educators, Sessions, Demand & Quality, Support & Payouts, Safeguarding and Marketplace Settings.

The operating principle: open for learning, controlled for assessment. A marketplace session never changes a mark, an attendance register or any other academic record.

1. Before you switch it on

Open Marketplace Settings. The readiness checklist at the top tells you what is missing.

• Who may teach — your own staff (on by default), peer tutors (approved learners), and external experts.
• Scope — Closed shows learners only your own educators. Institution first also shows external experts, but only when fewer than a set number of your own educators are available. (Network and open scopes can be selected but cross-institution matching is not available yet.)
• Your share — the percentage your institution keeps, per kind of educator. skillSYMS’s own platform fee is shown alongside; educators always keep at least half.
• Pricing band — the minimum and maximum hourly rate educators may set.
• Cancellation — the free, part-charge and no-show rules. The defaults are free more than 12 hours before, 25% from 12 to 2 hours, 50% under 2 hours, 100% for a no-show.
• Learners under 18 — require a current child-safe clearance (default), allow only your staff, or do not serve minors.

Then switch Marketplace enabled on.

Demo and live money

The Exchange starts in demo money: every flow works, learners can top up demo credit, and nobody can ever be paid. Move to live money only when FinServeOS is set up and out of test mode; the change needs the Exchange finance permission and a recorded reason.

In live money, a learner’s top-up is a FinServeOS payment request on your own collection account, and educator withdrawals are paid in your FinServeOS payout runs. A learner’s balance is prepaid learning credit with your institution. If you allow external experts with live money, you are collecting money on their behalf — confirm your FinServeOS operating mode with skillSYMS and take advice first.

2. Educators

Staff and learners build profiles themselves and submit them for approval. In Educators:

• Approve a profile, or return it with a note saying what to change. You cannot approve your own.
• An external expert needs a verified identity credential before approval.
• Suspend an educator immediately if needed (they go offline and stop receiving requests). Their existing sessions still stand — review them under Sessions.

The Credentials tab is the verification queue. For each credential, record the decision and how you checked it (“sighted original”, “SAQA register”, “issuer confirmed by e-mail”). A verified credential gets an expiry date — from what you enter, or the type’s standard validity — and the Expiring view shows what lapses in the next 45 days. You cannot verify your own credential.

3. Supporting learners

In Support & Payouts:

1. Fund the support pool — record money your institution sets aside, with its reference in live mode.
2. Create support rules. For example: “First remedial session up to R100, for learners whose latest result on the module is below 50%.” Rules can cap the amount per session, per learner per month and per month overall. A rule never spends more than the pool holds.
3. Grant SkillCredits to specific learners — for a bursary, a programme allowance or a catch-up plan. Credits are spendable only on sessions.

Remediation ROI shows what you spent, how many learners you supported, the cost per learner, and — once enough sessions have a later result — the observed change in results. It is not a controlled comparison and is labelled as such.

Withdrawals from educators wait here. Pay them in a FinServeOS payout run (purpose facilitator payment), then mark each paid with its FIN reference. You cannot process your own.

4. Sessions and disputes

Sessions lists every Learning Service Record: who, what, when, the money split and the full money trail. A learner can dispute a delivered session during the review window; the educator is not paid until it is resolved. Resolve it by releasing the payment, refunding part, or refunding in full — with your reasons recorded. You cannot decide a dispute you are party to.

5. Safeguarding

Learners can report a concern from any session. Safeguarding reports are marked urgent and listed first. Move each to investigating, record what was done, and close it. You can suspend the educator from the same form.

All contact stays on skillSYMS: profiles cannot contain contact details, and contact details in notes or requests involving a learner under 18 are refused.

6. Demand & Quality

• Demand heatmap — when learners ask for help, by day and hour.
• Modules — where learners ask for help, how much was booked, how much went unmet, and how many educators teach each. A module with demand and no educators is a staffing gap.
• Learners below the line — modules where several learners’ latest result is below your threshold. Educators who teach those modules see the same count (never names) as an opportunity.
• Quality — ratings, educators with low completion or no-shows, what the integrity screen redirected or refused, and sessions where contact details were detected.