User Support Specialist

Department:  Northwestern University Qatar
Division: Information Technology (NUIT)
Requisition #: 12856
Location: Qatar
Full Time Percent: 100.00
Grade:ITS/75
Salary: TBD

Job Summary

The User Support Specialist - Qatar provides the majority of the day-to-day support for technology services at Northwestern University in Qatar (NU-Q) to support the teaching mission.  The primary services areas supported by this support specialist are NU-Q smart classroom support, NU-Q teaching lab support, and NU-Q learning systems support, primarily Course Management System and its related applications.  This support specialist also provides classroom support for videoconferencing, and assists with personal videconference services for NU-Q staff in concert with other NU-Q IT staff from the networking and user support offices.

The Specialist reports to the Director of Information Technology, Qatar.

Specific Responsibilities:

• Supporting digital learning services for NU-Q faculty and students; 
  
• Providing training and daily support for the Blackboard Academic Suite (for primary course site services), including distribution of course materials, provisioning of discussion forums, and use of Blackboard Gradebook; social applications (e.g. NUblog, NUwiki) for courses, and Depot files services;
  
• Providing day-to-day support for a Macintosh-based computer lab for instruction with Final Cut Pro, Adobe Creative Suite, and Flash software applications for creation of video segments, audio clips and web based communications at NU-Q; 
  
• Providing day-to-day support for laptop-based and PC classroom activities, including shared network file services across both Windows and Apple operating systems;
  
• Assisting in the support of administrative desktop and laptop systems;
  
• Providing day-to-day support for NU-Q smart classrooms;
  
• Coordinating smart classroom technology improvements to conference rooms, seminar rooms, classrooms and auditoriums in Qatar;
  
• Supporting faculty and staff use of room-based and desktop-based videoconference technologies; 
  
• Working under the direction of the Sr. User Support Specialist and the Networking Services Engineer to develop, design and deploy new videoconference services at NU-Q;
  
• Performing other related duties as required or assigned.
  

Minimum Qualifications

• A bachelor's degree in computer science, engineering, science, communications, journalism or in a related field or the equivalent combination of education, training and experience from which comparable skills can be acquired;
  
• Minimum 5 years experience as faculty support person in a university setting and minimum 2 years experience as a project manager of a technical computing effort;
  
• Experience in interacting successfully with faculty and students;
  
• Experience in training students or staff in a university or corporate setting; 
  
• Excellent writing and spoken communications skills;
  
• Demonstrated leadership in projects that are designed for distributed education, media production activities, or course management services;
  
• Demonstrated experience setting up, maintaining, and troubleshooting desktop and laptop computers in the latest Windows and Apple environments;
  
• Academic computing lab planning, operations and server administration experience for Mac OSX environments;
  
• Experience with digital media authoring applications (Avid, Final Cut Pro, or similar) and technical support and administration of media workstations;
  
• User and classroom support of H.323 videoconference technologies and H.239 data/application sharing;
  
• User support of A/V technologies (projector and LCD display), A/V control system technologies, and videoconference rooms;
  
• User support of the Blackboard course management system (Version 8.x) or a similar course management system (WebCT, Sakai, Moodle, etc);
  
• Previous experience with technical support of faculty in an instructional environment;
  
• Ability to work collaboratively within a team environment, being willing to assist in other areas of IT as required.
  

Preferred Qualifications

• An advanced degree or the equivalent combination of education, training and experience from which comparable skills can be acquired;
  
• Apple Mac Repair Certification preferred;
  
• Experience in managing university computing labs;
  
• Experience in design of smart classrooms, and management of A/V contractors on smart classroom projects;
  
• Experience in conducting faculty training workshops for instructional or publishing applications;
  
• Experience in conducting student training workshops for course management applications, media authoring applications, or newsroom applications;
  
• Experience in managing a university's (or department's) Blackboard support office.
  
  Salary commensurate with qualifications and experience.
  
  Northwestern University is an Equal Opportunity, Affirmative Action Employer. Members of historically underrepresented groups are strongly encouraged to apply.  Employment eligibility verification required upon hire.
  
  Apply by 3/31/08 for full consideration.  All final candidates will undergo a comprehensive background check.
  

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Northwestern University is an equal opportunity, affirmative action educator and employer.

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