Instructional Design 503 Job Posting

Rebecca Muller

EDTECH 503 ID Job Posting

PART 1 - 

Job Description:

Imagine what you could do here. Every day is a new challenge, and you are continually looking for ways to help our team get better at what we do, in the most efficient way possible. A team player at heart, you collaborate with our departments, advocate best practices and roll up your sleeves to pitch in when it is all hands on deck. You use your PLN to explore and discover new resources that can help us.  You move fast while keeping your attention to detail, and you tap into your problem-solving skills to support the district and each school's objectives.

The candidate will:

The Associate Director of Instructional Design & Academic Quality is a full-time position. The ADIDAQ is an expert in instructional and media design with knowledge of child learning theory, course development planning using common core and state standards as well as process management. The ADIDAQ provides leadership and vision for innovation in online and classroom learning and effectively motivates the instructional design and quality assurance teams to collaborate on creating innovative, high quality student learning experiences.

Required skills/knowledge/background:

1.  A minimum of five years of demonstrated experience developing curriculum in educational environment.
2.  Working knowledge or experience in instructional design, instructional design and child learning theory,  development and delivery of instruction
3.  The ability to communicate effectively and professionally, both verbally and in writing.
4.  The ability to think critically in a fast-paced, quickly changing environment
5.  Collaborates well and develops strong professional working relationships
6.  Demonstrated leadership in instructional design, instructional technology,  and curriculum  development.
7.  Proficiency using Microsoft Office, Google Apps for Education and the Adobe HTML5,  CSS, Fireworks  and Photoshop preferred.
8.  Demonstrate a high degree of self-direction, initiative and motivation
9.  Demonstrate a high level of emotional intelligence and collegiality
10.  Use multimedia and web-based applications to design training solutions

Job Duties:

• Exemplifies transformational leadership characteristics and with the principal, motivates and inspires the Instructional Design team towards engaging and effective instruction steeped in quality and best practices.
• Creates the strategic plan for curriculum and course development under the direction of the principal, including the following of state standards, tools, and processes for increased quality and efficiency.
• Ensures strong alignment of learning outcomes among course design, assessment, and learning activities promoting greater content mastery by students.
• Articulates the culture of student engagement that will drive instructional design for all modalities (local schools, instructional site, online web-based, and mobile)
• Manages the prioritization of curriculum initiatives and course development activities as they relate to instructional design and quality assurance.
• Ensures the development and integration of interactive multi-media learning solutions in all courses.
• Extends leadership and support  to the greater curriculum and course development teams.
• Effectively communicates and collaborates with academic leadership, faculty and curriculum staff to develop and document the academic standards, policies and processes by which the curriculum team develops instruction.
• Supports and manages the quality review of all online courses to ensure that academic standards, policies, and processes are met.
• Manages work flow and troubleshoots situations that can arise related to technology systems and classroom maintenance and implementation of technologies.

Additional Job Duties (include but are not limited to):

• Remains current on best practices in online instructional design through the consumption of current research studies, attendance at educational conferences, and other professional development opportunities.
• Presentations and sharing of information that has been developed or worked on for the benefit of teaching others in the field of education

• Leading Change: To continually strive to improve organizational framework; to create a work environment that encourages innovation; and to maintain focus, intensity and persistence.

• Leading People: The ability to maximize cooperation of staff by fostering an environment that encompasses the organization’s culture and execute the mission, goals and core values. 

• Building Communication: This leadership  encompasses written and verbal communications of facts and ideas as well as developing a professional network inside and outside the organization. 

• Driving Results: This leadership stresses accountability and continuous improvement through decision making, execution and producing results.  

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Preferred Qualifications:

• Strong project management experience
• Two or more years of supervisory experience
• Two or more years working with graduate level faculty
• Experience implementing large scale instructional design projects in higher education
• Two or more years experience teaching
• Knowledge of universal design standards
• Experience developing interactive instruction using current technology/software tools
• Experience as a teacher, trainer, and/or professional development instructor for learners

Education: 

• Master’s Degree in instructional design, instructional technology, educational psychology, new media design or a related field. 

PART II - REFLECTION

At the beginning of this assignment, I really don't think I fully comprehended the differences between instructional designers and teachers, but now have a much better understanding.  Because of my experiences in education for the past 25 years, I know that I  have great knowledge designing lessons and guiding curriculum towards the learner.  However, I do believe there is an instructional designer inside me as I have helped the district in the implementation of the Teaching/Learning Cycle and feel that with my experiences in providing professional development throughout our school and in other organizations, I have tapped into Instructional Design as an educator in the area of technology. I have great interest in moving towards  the design part of technology instruction and course building for online classes, so I am very excited to learn more of this methodology and theory to help me build my tools to expand my learning.  As our district has moved more to that Teaching/Learning Cycle, we are essentially building our curriculum using essentials questions, conceptual thinking and planning on how to help students best meet these standards.  With standards-based grading, we again are given a philosophy to pick and choose how we will know that our students learned the concept required and how can we assess it. With budget cuts, our trainers and coaches no longer exist and we as educators are having to fill in these positions which may have more characteristics of an instructional designer then a classroom teacher when planning our instruction.

Teachers are expected to implement the curriculum through units of study that include the standards.  Instructional designers are not asked to implement curriculum. The teacher's role is to facilitate the learning in a classroom through tools that are provided or tools they find imperative to deliver quality instruction to the students. Teachers are expected to be the subject matter experts and instructional designers can design without knowing the subject matter.  Teachers need to know it, before they can teach it.  However, a teacher who knows the subject matter, standards or objectives, and instructional design can ensure that content matches set objectives and can design a wonderful learning experience for their students and can modify their instruction to meet the diverse learner.  Teachers do design learning, but they rarely write curriculum from scratch because school districts and states have standards/objectives that are already written. Creating lessons and curriculum materials isn't instructional design, that is implementing the standards through teaching.

Instructional designers are expected to make learning more efficient and effective.  They are designing specific to the learner in mind.  They build learning objectives.  They build courses that meet these specific learning objectives.  Instructional designers develop programs of instruction that generate certain learner outcomes. Designers make sure this course design  has an alignment of learning outcomes that promote mastery of content by students which includes an assessment piece and learning activities.  They do this in a systematic and productive format which usually follows a specific design theory.  

The three major differences between a teacher and an instructional designer are:

1.  Instructional designers are the creator of curriculum. They train and support educators on the use of the curriculum and then teachers are responsible for bringing it into the classroom.

2.  Instructional designers are "behind the scenes" and get feedback about their designs from teachers/educators and sometimes whoever assesses the effectiveness of the content.  Teachers are the forefront of the curriculum and get immediate feedback of the instructional model and implementation of curriculum from their students, administration and parents.  

3. Instructional Designers create all kinds of curriculum for many areas of study and teachers tend to be the expert in that field of study. The instructional designer needs to be an expert in the types of technologies being used when creating learning materials and courses. To be effective, they must know of the best practices and trends that engage learners. Instructional Designers are the catalyst of leading change.  Teachers can also lead change, but they are only effective in their school or classroom.

When the teacher is also the instructional designer, the whole process becomes faster and curriculum takes ownership. When that happens, the student is the winner. 

PART 3 - Job Posting URLs

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• http://tinyurl.com/BoiseStateID1

• http://tinyurl.com/BoiseStateID2
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• http://tinyurl.com/BoiseStateID3