Description
The Yale University Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning culture is characterized by teamwork and respect. Together we are stronger than any one of us alone, and each individual brings valuable skills and experiences to advance our collective mission. We welcome individuals from all backgrounds and want everyone to feel that they belong in our organization and in our institution. We also recognize that these values require a long-term commitment to implement inclusive practices in our daily work.
The Educational Technology team is looking for a self-motivated, team-oriented individual to work with our community of faculty, teaching fellows, students and support partners in their use of our learning management system, Canvas, and related external applications. An ideal candidate will have experience administering a learning management system and instructional design. They will have a patient, service-oriented approach to helping others with technology.
The Educational Technology team acts as the service owner of our Canvas based learning environment and shares technical ownership and responsibility with ITS and the University Registrar’s Office. Our group primarily supports faculty and teaching fellows who teach and support courses through Yale College, Yale Graduate School of Arts & Sciences, and offers both direct and indirect support to our professional schools that use Canvas as their primary learning management system (LMS). The Assistant Director of Educational Technology will provide technical and pedagogical support to help faculty accomplish their teaching and learning objectives within an approved set of educational technologies.
As part of the larger Poorvu Center, additional opportunities include collaborative support for other teams at the Poorvu Center as needed; this includes the teams supporting Zoom, Panopto, our Digital Education team in support of online degree, non-degree and certificate programs, and Teaching Development and Initiatives with programming for workshops and course redesign institutes.
This position will report to the Senior Director of Educational Technology
Requirements
Required Education and Experience:
Bachelor’s Degree and at least three years of related work experience or an equivalent combination of education and experience.
Preferred Education and Experience:
- Masters in Instructional Technology, Instructional Design, or related field;
- 3+ years related work experience in higher education and/or supporting and administering an LMS;
- Technical experience or interest in leveraging data through an applications API;
- Any programming / development / UX or Data Analytics / Data Visualization experience.
Skills &Abilities:
- Experience supporting instructors and/or learners on a learning management system or content management system, and troubleshooting challenges and problems encountered with using such systems.
- Strong technical documentation / help documentation writing skills. Ability to explain educational technology applications in clear terms, leveraging web publishing / content management platforms, including familiarity with HTML for formatting and embedding content.
- Demonstrated experience managing distributed work through a ticketing system, such as ServiceNow or Salesforce.
- Passion and excitement for supporting the most widely used academic applications at Yale with a goal oriented, collaborative, and problem solving mindset. Ability to research, vet, test, support and document educational technologies.
- Service oriented attitude, self-motivated to stretch and learn. Enthusiasm, interest, and flexibility in acquiring new or emerging technology skills.
Responsibilities
- Provide support on the technical use of and effective implementation methods for the learning management system (Canvas) and integrated external applications (Gradescope, Turnitin, Playposit, Panopto, Zoom, and more), includes responding to cases, email, phone/zoom, in person support, and occasional in-classroom support.
- Respond to support tickets on Salesforce / Service now (familiarity / experience a plus) with a self-driven customer service mindset in a collaborative team environment. Contribute to a balanced support team structure that values individual initiative and requests for collaborative assistance over delegation of tickets / tasks.
- Design and host workshops, often in partnership with other Poorvu Center teams to deliver collaborative events touching on multiple topics for a common audience, such as teaching institutes for faculty, certificate programs for graduate students, or tutoring services for undergraduates. Establish relationships with faculty to participate in a continuous dialog around growing teaching and learning objectives, strategies, and trends.
- Create and maintain online and print documentation; collaboratively maintain our public web presence, and publish regular service and support news updates. Review content on public web pages to ensure content is up to date; familiarity with content management systems such as Drupal and Wordpress a plus.
- Participate in an annual review of existing external applications, usage analytics, faculty/student feedback and evaluation of utility and usefulness to our community. Interest and experience with the fundamentals of programming and/or academic data analytics a plus.
- Consult with faculty to assess instructional technology needs and develop/implement solutions to meet those needs while adhering to recognized pedagogical standards. Deliver technical and pedagogical expertise and provide recommendations in researching, evaluating and implementing new instructional technologies.
- Some schedule flexibility required at certain times of year (e.g. weekend support coverage, occasional evening workshops), as well as other duties as assigned.
Find out more
Please contact Pilar Abuin the hiring manager and Senior Director of Educational Technology to learn more about this position.
To apply, please see the STARS Requisition number: 84058BR