We’re Hiring! Online Campus and Catalog Administrator
Online Campus and Catalog Administrator
Background:
The Extension Foundation provides Extension educators in member institutions the free use of an online learning management system (Moodle 3.11) for use in delivering asynchronous education to their respective patrons. It further enhances that service by providing an e-commerce storefront for educators to charge fees for access to their courses. The funds collected through the storefront are distributed quarterly to the respective member institutions under the procedures published at https://extension.org/campus-procedures/. The learning management system is provided by Learning Pool (https://learningpool.com), and the e-commerce storefront is provided by Course Merchant (https://www.coursemerchant.com/). The Foundation also contracts with Blackbelt Help (https://blackbelthelp.com) to provide Level 1 (student) level support. Users or teachers requiring assistance communicate their requests via email, submitted to the Foundation’s help desk service with Kayako. Use of telephone, Zoom, or chat support is limited and rare, depending on the urgency of the request.
Responsibilities of this position are:
- Serve as site administrator for Campus. This includes:
- Managing the rights associated with various roles.
- Managing user authentication policies and procedures.
- Creating course shells on Campus for eligible Extension educators.
- Managing course categories and organization of courses on the site.
- Creating standard and ad hoc reports as needed for Extension Foundation and individual course teacher use.
- Advising course teachers on the use of Moodle tools and structure of their courses; assisting teachers on isolated, complex tasks.
- Monitoring Moodle versions and plugins, coordinating with Learning Pool for the installation of new versions and new plugins as needed.
- Submitting troubleshooting tickets to Learning Pool about issues beyond the rights and knowledge of the site administrator.
- Responding to user-level issues that are beyond the ability or rights of the agents at Blackbelt Help.
- Serve as site administrator for the Extension Catalog of fee-based courses. This includes:
- Creating course listings on Catalog of courses available for a fee.
- Creating voucher codes that provide discounts as specified by the course teachers.
- Inserting course purchase buttons and instructions into course descriptions on Campus.
- Working with users to resolve issues related to the purchase and enrollment in fee-based courses.
Assisting teachers in creating a course structure appropriate for collecting fees. - Providing reports of purchases to the CFO for purposes of reconciling PayPal transactions.
- Manage the annual contract with Learning Pool.
- Manage the annual contract with CourseMerchant.
- Manage the annual contract with BlackBelt Help.
Qualifications:
- Associate’s degree or Educational Technology or equivalent experience; Bachelor’s degree strongly preferred.
- Minimum 2 years of experience with administration support or course development on virtual learning platforms; Moodle experience preferred.
- Familiarity with non-academic or Cooperative Extension education systems.
- Experience producing non-credit and competency-based courses in Moodle.
- Familiarity with relational database management systems.
- Proficient in administering user roles and privileges that go with them.
- Advanced analytical skills for addressing complex technical problems, and critical thinking skills to provide recommended solutions.
- Proficiency in using Microsoft Excel.
- Good written and verbal communication skills and experience interacting with course teachers and students.
- Ability to manage and rearrange priorities based on the needs of the teacher or user requesting assistance.
- Highly customer-focused, listening to and immediately acknowledging their needs, and responding in a friendly manner with suggestions for options and alternative approaches that might assist the teachers in accomplishing their goals.
Platform Metrics:
- Campus consists of 587 active courses and 197 hidden courses which are taught by 470 teachers representing about 40 different institutions.
- Over the past year, 42,500 users have accessed Campus; 11,700 within the past 3 months.
- Catalog lists 135 courses for which fees are collected.
- Over the past year, the site administrator completed 550 requests for assistance.
- Over the past year, the Blackbelt Help service handled roughly 3300 help tickets for students, with fewer than 5 per month being escalated to the site administrator.
Position:
The Extension Foundation is seeking a part-time (0.25 FTE) contractor to serve as the site administrator for campus.extension.org (Campus) and catalog.extension.org (Catalog) effective January 1, 2023. This is a virtual position and personal office equipment will be required for daily work.
In compliance with federal law, all persons hired will be required to verify identity and eligibility to work in the United States and to complete the required employment eligibility verification form upon hire.
To apply for this position, please submit your application by October 1, 2022 for consideration.
Apply here: Online Campus and Catalog Administrator (extension.org)