Instructional Support Coordinator

Overview:
**Term: 2 years.**

This position provides a broad range of instructional support to the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science (SAS). It also provides leadership and continuity across academic terms within SAS courses. The primary responsibility of the Instructional Support Coordinator (ISC) is the coordination of administrative matters and the management of Teaching Assistants (TA’s) for large and medium sized SAS courses in consultation with faculty members teaching those courses. The details of the support and leadership provided by the ISC vary based on the needs of a specific course and faculty member, the needs of a particular course team, and the level of the ISC. The Instructional Support Coordinator will be accountable to the various Academic Associate Chair’s in SAS and take functional direction from the faculty members responsible for the courses they support. The administrative aspects that an ISC manages, include providing advice to instructors regarding course specific practice and university/faculty policies and procedures, managing Teaching Assistants coordinating course operation activities, and maintaining course information repositories and archives. Except for the entry level ISC role, ISC’s take an important role in teaching SAS courses.

**Responsibilities**:
Course Operations and management of a large team of TA’s
- Coordination and management of Policy 30 (Employment of Graduate Student Teaching Assistants) issues.
- Determine the marking and day-to-day needs required to support the delivery of a particular course.
- Ensure the TA’s have the required resources to support the course
- Schedule, organize and attend marking meetings
- Handle informal requests for grade revisions/appeals
- Assist in the investigation of potential academic integrity offences
- Coordination/delivery of TA training and info sessions
- Management and creation of online resources for TA’s
- Support the process of creating and delivering tests for multi-sectioned courses
- Allocate employees for proctoring exams
- Schedule and supervise TAs in the SAS Tutorial Centre
- Management of TA contracts
- Coordinate and manage TA office hours and monitor TA’s workload
- Ensure TA’s are compliant with University health and safety regulations
- Assist in the process of TA evaluations
- Provide regular updates to the instructor/course author about TA’s progress
- In consultation with Faculty and Associate Chairs, manage interpersonal issues arising between TA’s and students

Faculty Teaching Support and Student Academic Support
- Provide first level of support to department members regarding various University of Waterloo’s Learning Management Systems (LMS).
- Proactively communicate and work with faculty teaching in the upcoming term. The ISC reviews these bookings to ensure they work with available course resources. e.g., the number of instructors, assign TA’s, available proctors from the Faculty proctoring pool)
- Support the textbook ordering, as needed
- Provides new faculty orientation and resources to support the use of the LMS
- Involved in various department projects which support faculty
- Respond promptly and professionally to student concerns
- Handle requests for exceptions (e.g., illness, death in family)
- Inform the Associate Chairs of changes/trends in student support issues; suggest improvements to the student support system
- Point of contact for the department for coordinating accessibility issues
- Provide academic advising to undergraduate students within SAS and participate in advising events

Manage grading activities associated with one or more courses
- Distribute solution sets and marking schemes for assignments and exams
- Organize and/or supervise the printing and marking of assignments which may include leading marking meetings and arranging rooms
- Generate, maintain, and archive mark lists
- Compute final grades according to instructors’ guidelines
- Assist in grading of exams and assignments
- Manage the grade appeal/revision process
- Submit final grades to Quest
- Post solution sets and grades, as required
- Provide setup and support for assignment submission/marking systems

Technology and Online Pedagogy
- Identify and understand current/available technologies in online education
- Understand the function and set up of a particular course within the University of Waterloo’s Learning Management System (LMS).
- Effectively design course administrative setup to facilitate the smooth operation and delivery of a large course
- Liaise with campus partners regarding issues with the LMS and other educational technology software platforms and systems (e.g., Odyssey, Crowdmark, Akindi, and iClickers)
- Assist with use of technology in classrooms
- Management of historical course content
- Maintain Graduate database records as it pertains to TA’s

Provide course instruction services
- Prepare instructional material according to guidelines set out