Five Colleges, Incorporated, a consortium whose member institutions are Amherst, Hampshire, Mount Holyoke and Smith Colleges, and University of Massachusetts Amherst, is accepting applications for a Coordinator of Five College Blended Learning Instructional Technology (hereinafter Coordinator). The Coordinator of Five College Blended Learning Instructional Technology is responsible for coordinating and providing support for a broad range of faculty-driven pilot projects (6-10 per year) exploring blended learning in the humanities and humanistic social sciences. These projects will have been selected and awarded funding from a grant supporting the Five College Blended Learning Project. The Coordinator consults with faculty members to identify, analyze and suggest opportunities for applying appropriate technologies to meet curricular and pedagogical goals through blended learning. The Coordinator facilitates conversations, coordinates support, and works in partnership with other information technology staff members of Five Colleges and the campuses and serves as a general resource and support person for faculty members and other instructional technology staff members at the campuses who are exploring and seeking innovative uses of technologies to enhance teaching and learning in humanities courses. The Coordinator provides workshops, individual instruction in associated technologies for faculty members, students and staff members at the campuses and Five Colleges. The Coordinator assists in developing means of assessing learning outcomes, creating new digital materials (print, video, audio, tools), and/or frameworks in support of blended learning pilots undertaken by teams of faculty members and staff members. This is a 3-year, grant funded position (June, 2014 – June, 2017). Salary range $60,000 – $75,000, depending on experience.

Five College Blended Learning Project Goal:
The goal of the Five College Blended Learning Project, of which the Coordinator is a key part, is to enable and support faculty members as they envision, explore, design and develop pilots in blended learning environments, including developing multi-media content for use in on-site, flipped, and online classrooms on a variety of platforms (desktop, mobile); the project will support faculty members develop means of assessing how blended learning supports achievement of goals for student learning in their courses.

Duties and Responsibilities

• Work closely with the Five College Director of IT, the Five College Director of Academic Programs, the Faculty Director, and the Steering Committee in support of the Five College Blended Learning Project.  Assist the Project overall and each faculty project leader with development of a calendar and work plan for each project.
• Consult with faculty project leaders and teams to identify and assess appropriate technologies for meeting pedagogical and learning goals.
• Plan, develop, and deliver workshops, training programs, documentation, videos and other resources to assist faculty members apply blended learning instructional technologies.  Arrange, coordinate and/or provide instructional technology support for each project.
• Coordinate and communicate with other technology professionals at Five Colleges and other campuses to ensure adequate support for pilot projects.  Possibly supervise other blended learning instruction technology support staff members at Five Colleges as needed and/or assigned.
• Attend meetings as assigned, serving as FCI liaison and/or minute taker as needed.
• Assess progress toward meeting the overall Project goals and individual pilot project goals and regularly revise and refine plans to meet them, in consultation with each project’s team, providing written progress reports, data, and analysis, as requested.
• Other duties as assigned by Director of IT.

Qualifications

• Graduate level degree in a field of humanities, humanistic social sciences, instructional design, educational technology, or related field.
• Demonstrated ability to understand, identify, and explain needs, goals, and objectives of projects to technical and non-technical individuals.
• Proven record of working effectively with a diverse group of faculty members, staff members, and students with differing levels of technological abilities.
• Excellent written, oral, and presentation communication skills; organizational and project management skills; sound judgment; initiative; flexibility; and detail-orientation.
• Evident ability to learn quickly and think creatively about the functional limitations and strengths of various technical platforms, programming/scripting languages, relational databases.
• Demonstrated experience and expertise in/with:
  • application and development of current and emerging learning technologies, web-based learning environments, rich media tools and Universal Design principles;
  • the application of blended learning techniques in the humanities, with emphasis in language learning and/or research methods;
  • supporting users of computer, videography, audio recording, and digital technologies in an academic setting;
  • using course learning management systems including Moodle;
  • strong knowledge of educational technologies; and
  • adult learning theories, instructional theories, and practices.
• Demonstrated ability to stay current on new technologies and tools and to learn new tasks and emergent technologies quickly.
• Capacity to meet the physical expectations of the position, which include:
  • Visual ability to read computer screens and printed materials;
  • Hearing and speaking abilities to effectively communicate via the telephone and in person; and
  • Ability to pack, unpack, lift and carry, move, and relocate standard desktop computer equipment including monitors, desktop computers and printers.

Preferred Qualifications

• Demonstrated experience with HTML(5), CSS(3), or web delivery tools such as Drupal (note experience with Moodle is required).
• Fluency on one or more common programming/scripting languages, such as Python, PHP, Ruby, Java, JavaScript, and relational databases.
• Experience with digital media formats and content and digital asset management tools (e.g. Omeka, Fedora), text-mining tools, text-encoding and markup, and GIS tools and methods.
• Demonstrated experience developing and validating assessment tools to gauge student learning and engagement.
• Experience with strategies to create and convert materials for maximum accessibility.
• Graduate level degree and teaching experience for students in second language acquisition (other than English).
• College or university teaching experience.

To apply for the job and see the original ad visit Smith College’s HR site.