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Through curricular innovation, tools for student success and equity, and educational research and analytics, the University of Michigan Center for Academic Innovation is building the future of education. Our vision is a future in which education connects and empowers learners everywhere to reach their full potential throughout their lives. To realize our vision, we make it our mission to collaborate across campus and around the world to create equitable, lifelong educational opportunities for learners everywhere.
About Online Learning at CAI
The Online Learning group within CAI consists of five teams that collaborate with others across the Center and University to design and develop online learning experiences that support the future of education for a global community. We work with faculty and academic unit leaders to envision how they can expand reach and impact, advance innovative teaching, and support greater access and lifelong learning through the design and development of integrated online learning experiences. Our teams focus on the following areas:
- Strategic sourcing of new opportunities for online learning;
- Developing internal and external partnerships that promote engagement with learning experiences;
- Providing program management services throughout degree program development and operations;
- Supporting end-to-end design and development of online learning experiences, including design management, learning experience design, and iteration of learning experiences after they have launched;
- Supporting learners' success and engagement in live courses and programs.
For more information, please visit our website: Center for Academic Innovation
The Center for Academic Innovation (CAI) at the University of Michigan is seeking a qualified Course Operations Specialist Senior to support programming and data science online courses.
The Course Operations Specialist Senior collaborates with U-M faculty and staff, colleagues across the Center for Academic Innovation, and external platform partners to facilitate, support, and improve the learning experience of a global community participating in Michigan Online learning experiences. This role will also have supervisory responsibilities for part-time and full-time team members who support our portfolio of programming courses. The Course Operations Specialist Senior reports to the Associate Director of Online Learning Systems and Learner Support.
Course Management and Maintenance:
- Evaluate and communicate the status of a subset of programming and data science courses within the Center for Academic Innovation's portfolio of online learning experiences.
- Administer assigned courses to ensure appropriate support for learners and faculty.
- Identify the need for and lead the development, quality review, and implementation of course updates.
- Continuously maintain in-depth knowledge of rapidly evolving key learning platforms (e.g., Coursera, Canvas, edX).
- Provide timely consultation, implementation, and course-building support across teams, throughout the entire lifecycle of a course.
- Collaborate with design teams in the creation of courses to ensure appropriate integration of the technical components and programming features.
Learner Support and Engagement
- Troubleshoot, triage, and categorize bugs, technical problems, suggestions, and issues that come in through learner support channels.
- Determine the complexity and priority of any bug or technical problem, and delineate the responsibility for resolving it.
- Facilitate discussion forum activities and in-course learner communications across multiple self-paced courses with global audiences.
- Prepare and communicate timely, relevant status updates on ongoing concerns to learners, team members, and other stakeholders.
- Facilitate and assist cross-functional teams designing new models and tools to create and enhance learning experiences across the CAI portfolio.
Continuous Improvement:
- Solicit, support, and manage course iteration projects with faculty and design team members.
- Provide faculty partners with periodic updates on course and learner performance.
- Respond to faculty partner inquiries about the status or performance of their courses.
- Collaborate with faculty partners to update courses and resolve issues on learning platforms.
- Guide faculty partners through the course iteration planning and implementation process.
- Support project transitions and handoffs by creating and disseminating debrief documentation.
- Prepare materials and resources to foster productive online learner engagement at scale (e.g., a discussion forum toolkit for course teams).
Operational Management, Leadership, and Supervision:
- Deliver timely and relevant status updates related to ongoing concerns related to course operations to learners, team members, and other stakeholders.
- Lead, refine, and socialize team processes.
- Collaborate with external platform support teams to investigate and resolve learner and technical issues.
- Share insight from our learner engagement and support models with the global online learning professional community through documentation and conference presentations.
- Share insights with cross-functional team members on building and improving learning experiences and workflow processes.
- Manage and supervise part-time staff in courses and/or student fellows.
- Manage and supervise Course Operations Specialist team members, as assigned.
- Support recruitment, hiring, and onboarding of new staff members within the Course Operations team.
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Data Science, Information Systems, or equivalent education.
- 3+ years of experience using Python programming in an educational setting or equivalent combination of experience in computer science, educational technology, and instructional design.
- 2+ years of project management experience.
- 2+ years of personnel management and supervision experience.
- Ability to write, debug, and implement code in Python.
- Familiarity with the Jupyter notebook development environment, Git and GitHub, Docker containers, and Docker images.
- Pedagogical knowledge of online and hybrid instruction.
- Experience implementing and managing programming courses in Learning Management Systems (LMS) such as Canvas, Coursera, edX or other educational platforms.
- Demonstrated organizational, interpersonal, oral, and written communication skills.
- Ability to manage workload and competing priorities.
- Ability to work well in a highly collaborative environment.
- Strong ability to problem solve, work as part of a team, and act independently when applicable.
- Demonstrated experience with work productivity tools (e.g., Google G Suite, Microsoft Office, etc.) and project management tools (e.g., Teamwork, Zendesk, and Asana).
- Ability to learn and appropriately use new technologies to improve processes, communication, and outcomes, including AI-enabled tools where relevant to the role, consistent with university policy and job responsibilities.
The work requirements allow both onsite and offsite work and an employee has an expected recurring onsite presence. On occasion, the employee may be required and must be available to work onsite more frequently if necessitated by unit leadership or their designee and/or the job requirements.
Please Note: This is a 5 year term-limited position with the possibility of renewal depending on funding. The position may be renewed or converted into an open-ended base appointment.
Candidates must have legal authorization to work in the United States.
The mode of work for this position is Hybrid with a minimum of 4 days in the office per week, Monday through Thursday, with an option of remote work on Fridays. On occasion, you may be required and must be available to work onsite on Fridays if necessitated by our center's policy and domain leadership or by your job requirements.
The salary for this position will be based upon the selected candidate's education and experience.
We support the creative, responsible, and ethical use of AI tools to enhance our work, in alignment with institutional policies and best practices.
Excellent benefits are available, for details, see http://benefits.umich.edu/
Organizational Statement on Harassment
We believe all individuals deserve to be treated with respect and dignity and have the right to work in a professional atmosphere that promotes mutual respect and a safe space for collaboration. Any concerns shared with any staff members and student employees in the Center for Academic Innovation will be reported to the Equity, Civil Rights, & Title IX Office to be reviewed and addressed, and the Center for Academic Innovation encourages reporting of any forms of harassment including sexual and gender-based harassment.
Salary Information
The general salary range for this position is $85,000 - $90,000. Candidates can expect to be paid a competitive and equitable salary. Factors used to determine salary include education level, experience, knowledge and skills for the position and internal equity within the unit. All candidates are encouraged to discuss salary questions to honor alignment and transparency throughout the recruiting process.
The University of Michigan conducts background checks on all job candidates upon acceptance of a contingent offer and may use a third party administrator to conduct background checks. Background checks will be performed in compliance with the Fair Credit Reporting Act.
Job openings are posted for a minimum of seven calendar days. This job may be removed from posting boards and filled anytime after the minimum posting period has ended.
Applications will be reviewed as received throughout the posting period and continue until the position is filled.
The University of Michigan is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We are committed to providing an environment of mutual respect where equal employment opportunities are available to all applicants, including protected veterans and individuals with disabilities.
