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Job title: Instructional Technology Specialist – University of Georgia
Date posted: Mon, Dec 16, 2002
Job description:
The University of Georgia seeks an instructional technologist to provide leadership in developing and infusing technology into teaching and learning across our disciplines. Working closely with faculty, library staff, computing support, and the Instructional Technology department, he/she will promote and develop strategies for the use of technology that will enhance classroom learning and department wide collaboration. With the title Director of Instructional Technology Support Services, the successful candidate will have extensive software development and implementation experience as well as experience training and supporting faculty on course management software systems. The Director if ITSS will carry out the following tasks:
The successful candidate will have a Master's Degree in educational or instructional technology with specialization in instructional design or curriculum development, and should also have a demonstrated understanding of best teaching and learning practices rooted in sound knowledge of pedagogy.
It is 6:22AM and the alarm clock has been rattling incessantly for 22 minutes. Last night was a long night working until 1AM to upgrade the college’s on-line collaboration system, which fully integrates to the latest XML/BPML standards. For the first time in the college’s history, we will be able to track all student progress in real-time and the students themselves will also know where they stand in real-time. Today’s the day we begin training the faculty on the new system so they will be well versed in how to utilize the system before the new semester begins. There’s just no use ignoring the alarm clock any more. Time to get up and face the music, its going to be jammed packed with a lot of meetings.
7:30AM – Meeting with Dean and IT Department Head to finalize today’s agenda and to report on last night’s successful upgrade and transfer of all historical data to the new system. If all goes well this week, it is agreed that the old system will be turned two Fridays from today. I leave the meeting feeling good. The Dean and Dept. Head are well coached on need to fully back the system to their co-workers and will brook no arguments to return to the old system.
8:00AM – Computer Support Staff arrive a few minutes early to work for a kick-off meeting at eight o’clock sharp and receive status update on the new system. A brief overview of the system is given to the support team to be sure everyone understands the new system and can help the new users through the pain of the day. This new system is different from all other systems as it completely changes the college’s way of doing business from infrastructure to classrooms. For the first time, it is feasible for professors and students to cross class boundaries in developing coursework and projects the students will work on. The studio concept has reached a new plateau. This semester, with real-time, cross-course design and tracking, professors will be able to work as true teams to jointly develop course syllabi that will automatically adapt to the student’s individual needs depending on which courses in the studio he/she signed up for. The XML and BPML standards built into the system allow professors to quickly and easily change the course syllabus and have changes instantly integrate seamlessly into the other studio professor’s syllabus and its all online where anyone can get to the latest information with a click of the mouse. The support staff has been grilling hard to learn the system and be able to support it. The calls to help desk start today and we’re all nervous, as there was a lot of new ground to cover to get ready for this event.
9:30AM – Attending meeting where two pilot professors are introducing the new system to their colleagues. It is an interesting meeting as many of the professors get their first glimpse at the new system. Only sour Jane (as we all call her) seems to be skeptical of the new system. She’ll be a handful for the help desk, for sure. Nevertheless, she’s bound to come around, as there’s simply too much excitement in the other professors’ demeanor for her to hold out long. She really should be happy as this system not only models the college’s administrative processes and automates much of the work she previously had to depend on support staff to do, her own grunt work has been substantially reduced and she should finally have significantly more quality time to spend working with her students as she had been grumbling about not being able to do for as long as I have been here. Anyway, I digress. My main purpose at this meeting it to answer any technical questions and shed some light on how to best begin using the system. Because collaboration and sharing of information online within the system is so much easier, I must also talk about security and how we have decided to implement roles and rights within the system.
NOON – The training meeting finally adjourns for lunch and I go to lunch with one of the pilot professors who helped sponsor and spearhead this latest effort. Between him and I, we are finally making some headway in restructuring how the educational system should function. Our latest efforts bring us very close to some of the most innovative manufacturing and order procurement systems who’s real-time monitoring and data capturing processes have long been absent from the educational field. It is a celebratory lunch as we both discuss the ramifications our new system will eventually have on the whole campus should this project prove as successful as we both believe it will. I remark that this new system brings us that much closer to being able to combat all those new training schools that have popped up offering “certifications” in anything and everything.
1:30PM – Back in the office with my afternoon decaf java and checking emails. The Dean wants to know if I can meet with the President of the school to discuss our recent initiatives. I wasn’t exactly looking for this kind of publicity, especially before we can even prove our model works, but it is not easy turning down the Dean’s request. There is really nothing Earth shattering here. After all, businesses have been operating on these very types of process modeling, real-time tracking and collaboration systems for nearly a decade now.
2:30PM – In yet another meeting to discuss the new system. This time we’re looking ahead again. Now that we can track so much more data and work as teams like never before, we are now trying to identify ways to aggregate and report on the vast amounts of data being captured. The Associate Dean for Outreach and Services is present. My comments about students being able to learn more in less time because they are able to similarly aggregate their large projects across class boundaries has suddenly taken the meeting off track. The Assoc. Dean is wondering if we’re in danger of losing dollars if students are able to graduate faster than the usual two and four-year programs currently call for. Much time is spent discussing this issue with most agreeing that if we’re educating faster, then we will be in higher demand and thus can raise tuition and/or enroll more students into the program, increasing the ratio of students to teachers, but without affecting overall quality of the education since teachers have regained about 30% of their time that was otherwise devoted to administrative tasks.
3:30PM – Back at my desk and checking my email: I see that the local school superintendent, whom I have been working with on crafting a reform plan for all the schools in Athens/Clarke County, wants to meet with me next week along with some of the school board members to see our new collaboration and real-time tracking system in action here at the college. The local school system has been particularly challenging to deal with given all the local politics involved and general lack of funds available to do anything with. However, the Georgia General Assembly, with a good push from our current Governor is on the verge of granting $30 million dollars to jointly partner the ACC school system with our Instructional Technology research and development staff to implement the reform plan that is currently in the works. There are many eyes on this plan, because if it works, it will finally bring the public school system in line with the times technologically and make it feasible to implement the latest learning paradigms in all public schools in Georgia. The real-time collaboration system we have been developing here will get its first real-test in turning teachers into teams of specialists who can work across physical school boundaries and even county lines. The same system that allows a team of teachers to track all their students’ progress in real-time will also easily extend into the students’ homes, thus allowing students and parents alike to track their progress as well. Of course, it will still be up to the Parents to actually get involved with their child’s education, but they won’t be able to say the school system is not keeping them adequately informed any more. I catch the superintendent on instant messaging and set up a date and time next week as well as discuss the successful launch of the system last night and this morning.
4:30PM – The day’s nearly gone and I have yet to check back in with support staff and faculty to see how the new system is fairing, so I make my rounds. It has been unexpectedly quiet at the help desk so I head over to the various faculty offices to find out what’s really happening. It turns out that many of the professors are fully absorbed in developing their courses online in the new system and just generally getting a feel for the system. It is a slow and painful period of adjustment to with many new paradigm shifts to get used to, but the professors, especially the younger ones have already begun to take advantage of the collaboration features of the software and are helping each other out faster than they can pick up the phone and call help desk with their questions. Of course, they all pull me into their offices as I walk by, so my circuit is a long and slow one to complete as I figured it would be.
6:00PM – “Wow,” I think as I get back to my office. The collaborative portions of the system are already proving themselves. This bodes well for the system, but the real test still lies ahead to when school actually starts and the students have to be ramped up on the new system. This young generation really seems to be comfortable with technology and is quick to adapt and utilize the tools given to them, so here’s hoping all continues to go well. In the meantime, the day is nearly over and I have yet to finish my Trade Journal Article discussing the tenants of today’s business practices and how they apply to the field of Instructional Technology. I had better get busy publishing or no amount of successfully implementing new technologies in the college and local school system is going to land me tenure!
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