User Support Specialist

Description

The User Support Specialist is a member of the CourseWork Support team within Academic Computing Services (ACS), a division of Stanford Libraries. The focus of the CourseWork Support team is to support faculty, staff, and students' use of the CourseWork, Stanford's course management system, and streaming media systems via consulting, training, and the creation of documentation. The User Support Specialist may work directly with faculty, teaching assistants, and staff members. This position is a two year fixed term position.

Academic Computing Services provides technology expertise, resources, and services to students and faculty in support of the University's academic mission. In addition to supporting the use of technology in teaching, learning, research, and campus community building, ACS operates and manages technology-enabled teaching and learning environments; provides technology education, consulting, and multimedia services; supports CourseWork; supports faculty with Academic Technology Specialists and other experts; and provides technical support for the Stanford Libraries.

The User Support Specialist will support the use of CourseWork, the campus course management system, streaming media system and any ancillary technology tools. S/he will provide input, recommendations and support for infrastructure, configuration and workflows of media systems managed by Academic Computing Services. The User Support Specialist will assist in the creation and use of support resources and disseminate knowledge of these tools throughout the University. S/he must be facile at supporting users at different levels of technical expertise.

The incumbent will report to the User Experience Manager in Academic Computing Services within the Stanford Libraries. The incumbent will be located in Meyer Library.

Required Knowledge

Specific requirements include:

• A bachelor's degree and 3 to 5 years experience in providing end user support and/or media systems support for academic systems, or the equivalent combination of knowledge and experience. An advanced degree in Instructional Technology or related field is desirable.
• Demonstrated experience developing and delivering technical consulting and training to a non-technical audience is required.
• Demonstrated knowledge of operational/technical characteristics of media technologies and classroom capture equipment.
• Demonstrated ability to cultivate relationships and liaison with external groups/partners; including managing multi-group troubleshooting efforts.
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills. Ability to interact effectively and tactfully with members of the academic community; experience working in an environment where colleagues have diverse backgrounds and customs. A keen understanding of, and sensitivity to, the human factors involved in introducing technology into teaching and learning.
• Excellent time management and project management skills. Demonstrated ability to manage a complex workload, prioritize tasks, and use good judgment in providing services based on goals.
• Experience administering and supporting learning management systems such as BlackBoard, WebCT, or Sakai.
• Experience with defect/bug tracking systems such as JIRA, Bugzilla.
• Expert knowledge of Macintosh and Windows environments, and facility with Unix.
• Experience with providing computing resources in a networked environment.
• A commitment to excellence in an environment where success is based on team contributions toward common goals rather than on individual accomplishments.

Desired qualifications include:

• Experience with the Remedy Action Request System.
• Experience administering and supporting streaming media systems.
• Experience developing support resources (help documentation, video tutorials, and software demos) using Captivate, Camtasia, and XML technologies, is desirable but not required.
• Experience with compressed video technology; including videoconferencing - both traditional ISDN analog and IP based
• Experience with multimedia and digital video production and equipment on both Mac and PC platforms.

Duties and Responsibilities

End User Support

• Respond to HelpSU (Remedy) CourseWork and streaming media related tickets. Document all bugs and feature requests submitted by users in the JIRA bug tracking system. Troubleshoot, test and reproduce technical bugs. Track and analyze help issues to plan for future support resource allocation and development efforts.
• Independently design and provide course management tools and streaming media consulting and training support to instructors, TAs, local administrators, and staff. This support may include individual consultations and teaching of workshops on effective uses of CourseWork and streaming media.
• Cultivate relationships and liaison with third party (SaaS) service providers and administrative technology groups on campus, including enterprise systems groups (PeopleSoft, Course Registry, ITS Course Support), Academic Technology Specialists (ATS), and department administrators. Manage multi-group troubleshooting efforts for problems affecting CourseWork users.
• Manage site approval requests and manual site creation, when needed.
• Collaborate with CourseWork User Experience team on gathering feedback and assessing needs of users. Participate in the review of design specs for new features and updates to the user interface. Create design specs or mockup, when needed.
• Assess CourseWork, streaming media, and related technology training needs. Participate in the development and delivery of documentation, user help, and training programs, through web pages, XML-based document management systems, multimedia presentations, and workshops.
• Participate in outreach programs to faculty members, TAs, students and staff to inform them of the support services, resources, and updates to the CourseWork system.Collaborate with the CourseWork QA team, verifying bug fixes and new functionalities of scheduled software releases. Review test cases to make sure they match expected behavior. Create test cases, when needed. Participate in regression testing and day-of-deployment testing.
• Review professional literature; attend conferences; publish articles; network with colleagues within and without the University; participate in newsgroups and other forums to continually improve knowledge of academic technology and multimedia development.

Streaming Media System Support

• Provide Tier 1 support for technical issues related to the streaming media system. Respond quickly to equipment/system failures and act as a liaison, with third party providers, escalating issues and ensuring that they are addressed in a timely manner.
• Participate in internal projects to scale up streaming media services, disseminate streaming media best practices, and improve streaming media workflow methodologies.
• Research and evaluate new technologies to enhance existing streaming media systems and/or add new functionality and services. Evaluate alternate solutions and coordinate with vendors as appropriate.
• Keep abreast of emerging multimedia technologies and pass new information/materials on to colleagues to ensure all team members are well informed.