Course Operations Specialist

🔍 Vice Provost for Teaching and Learning, Stanford, California

📁: Information Technology Services

📅   : Apr 24, 2014 Post Date

📅   : 60651 Requisition #

Course Operations Specialist (100% FTE)

The Course Operations Specialist within the Office of the Vice Provost for Online Learning will be responsible for the bedrock of support to teaching staff (instructors and teaching assistants for all of our courses) for all courses using the OpenEdX platform at Stanford. S/he will need to understand the ins and outs of the platform, and effectively communicate this knowledge, both in a one-on-one setting and by creating documentation.

CORE DUTIES *

*Other duties may be assigned.

50% Working with faculty and TAs to get their course material online

The Course Operations Specialist will interact directly with faculty across a range of disciplines, to understand their needs and how their material and assessments can be best presented online. This will be an opportunity to interact with world-class faculty, and work with them on implementing best practices for online teaching in their courses.

25% Responding to emails from online students

On the student side, s/he will triage customer support email, create appropriate FAQs, and determine when a student issue really indicates a problem and needs to be escalated. The successful candidate will reproduce student and instructor-reported issues as needed, so that bugs can be crisply defined.

25% Creating documentation

The Course Operations Specialist works as part of the OpenEdX engineering team. S/he must be comfortable acting as the "voice of the customer" in daily and weekly engineering meetings providing insight into faculty and student issues with the platform.

Education and Experience

● Two-year college degree or equivalent required; Bachelor’s degree strongly preferred.
● 2+ years of related work experience in a customer-facing role required.

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities

● Able to create documentation in HTML format.
● Experience writing step by step, end user instructions.
● Experience using a Unix command line (navigating file directories, running scripts using command line arguments, etc).
● Demonstrated ability to learn new technical tools quickly and teach others to effectively use those tools.
● Ability to handle multiple projects with shifting priorities.
● Strong interpersonal skills.
● Excellent spoken and written English.
● Mature judgment and diplomacy required to interact effectively with a broad range of people, including faculty, academic staff, engineers, and vendors and contractors, both individually and in groups.

Desirable Qualifications

● Technical writing experience.
● Experience using XML.
● Ability to query a database using SQL.
● Experience supporting software.
● Knowledge of Learning Management Systems functionality and features.

This is a two year fixed term position. The final candidate will need to successfully pass a background check to be considered for this position.

Additional Information

Requisition ID: 60651

The job duties listed are typical examples of work performed by positions in this job classification and are not designed to contain or be interpreted as a comprehensive inventory of all duties, tasks, and responsibilities. Specific duties and responsibilities may vary depending on department or program needs without changing the general nature and scope of the job or level of responsibility. Employees may also perform other duties as assigned.

Consistent with its obligations under the law, the University will provide reasonable accommodation to any employee with a disability who requires accommodation to perform the essential functions of his or her job.

Stanford is an equal employment opportunity and affirmative action employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law.