Month: October 2014

Dear UBC Education Faculty, Post-Docs, and Doctoral Students,

The University of Pittsburgh announces one new position as part of the University’s new Center for Motivation and Learning. This position is jointly held in the Learning Research and Development Center (LRDC) and the School of Education, which partner with the Motivation Center in seeking new faculty to be part of collaborative multidisciplinary communities in learning and emotions, motivation, affective neuroscience, cognitive and developmental psychology. Please see attached for more information.MotivationJobDescription_Final

The Office of Graduate Programs and Research is coordinating the Year of Research in Education and looking for two half-time Graduate Academic Assistants (GAAs).

 

The GAAs will work in close collaboration with Brigitte Gemme, project manager for the Year of Research in Education. Their duties will include writing stories for the Year of Research in Education web site and other publishing venues about Faculty of Education research, events, and initiatives; taking photographs; filming and editing video; monitoring and providing content for the @UBCEdResearch Twitter channel; and supporting other Year of Research in Education events and initiatives as necessary; and more. Being present on campus will be necessary for a lot of the tasks to be performed. Excellent writing skills, especially for a general audience, are required, along with curiosity, creativity, capacity for independent work, and sound judgement.

 

Each GAA will be working approximately 5 hours per week between November 1st, 2014and June 30^th, 2015. The hourly wage is $22.34 for Master’s level students and $23.21 for doctoral student.

 

Interested applicants should contact Brigitte Gemme by email before October 27^th at 9 a.m. Please include a short letter (in the body of the email) indicating why you are interested in the position and how you are a good fit for the Year of Research in Education. Please also include your CV or resume. If you have examples of prior writing, media or creative work that you feel is relevant to the position, please include some links.

Are you a Ph.D. student with knowledge of Classroom Assessment theory and practice? Do you have classroom experience?  Would you like to add to your CV and earn some money?  Speaking French is also a great bonus—though not a requirement.  If some or all of these fit for you, there is a great opportunity for you to apply to become a GTA for EPSE 310 (Assessment and Learning in the Classroom).

 

This course is developed as a community of practice and is taught in a lecture/seminar format in January (5th -30th) and in a seminar format fromFebruary 16-March 20.  GTAs chosen to teach the seminars will be given a lot of support in designing and delivering the content of each class (a standard syllabus will be used).  You can apply to teach in one or both terms.

 

In the January term GTAs would come to observe the lecture and then instruct the Teacher Candidates (TCs) in the smaller seminar groups.  Here you would lead hands-on activities, discussions and projects as well as help with, and grade, the TC assignments.  Being a GTA in the January term would help prepare you for the February/March term where you would be the full instructor for the course (though the syllabus is common to all sections—so no worries about having to design this).  In both terms, you will be mentored in your teaching giving you a challenging, fun, and successful experience that builds on your passion as a teacher. The jobs are posted now on the ECPS website:

http://ecps.educ.ubc.ca/people/job-opportunities/, so please have a look or forward this to those who might be interested.

 

Department of Educational Studies (EDST)

 

DESCRIPTION: Seeking a graduate student at the master’s or doctoral level to work on a research project that will investigate the pedagogical values, professional careers, and personal life courses of Canada’s earliest special education teachers.

 

The two-year Hampton Grant funded project is directed by Dr. Jason Ellis, Assistant Professor, EDST, and is entitled “A Special Vocation: Teachers of Early Special Education Classes in Two Canadian City School Systems, 1910 to 1945.”

 

CONDITIONS: The Graduate student researchers will receive an hourly wage of $24.96 for a master’s student or $27.04 for a doctoral student with benefits.

 

POSITION: DATABASE DESIGN AND ANALYSIS/PROGRAMMING RESEARCHER.

 

The starting date for this position is approximately November 17, 2014 to February 6, 2015. The hours of work are 10 hours/week.

 

NATURE OF WORK:

 

• The database design and analysis/programming researcher will be responsible for: (1) designing a database; preparing data entry protocols and codebook; cleaning data entered by researchers; maintaining the database; managing version control and files on an FTP site; and, providing quality assurance on the database. (Database to consist of information on the demographic profiles and professional activities of teachers who taught special classes in Toronto and Vancouver);

 

• for, (2) extracting and performing statistical analysis of quantitative data from the database in order to answer research questions posed by the project director;

 

• and for, (3) programming in Python (or a similar language, such as R) to scrape or data mine the World Wide Web (WWW) for historical sources that have been digitized, such as school board directories, census records, newspapers, and other sources, in order to identify further information about special class teachers; collecting and archiving this data for inclusion in the database; some data entry.

 

QUALIFICATIONS:

 

Education:

• The applicant should be enrolled in a master’s or doctoral program in the Faculty of Education at the University of British Columbia.
• A background in History (e.g. BA, MA or other degree or diploma, major or minor concentration, in History); or Computer science (or closely related fields, e.g. Statistics) (e.g. BSc, MSc, other degree or diploma, major or minor) would be an asset, but is not a requirement.
• Applicants whose academic preparation (or academic preparation and knowledge and experience) combines History, humanities, or social sciences with programming or statistics are urged to apply (this combined background is not a requirement).

 

Knowledge and experience:

 

• (Required.) Experience or knowledge designing, maintaining and extracting and analysing information in databases.

 

• (Required.) Experience applying quantitative research methods and principles.

 

• (Required.) Statistical analysis of quantitative data experience.

 

• (Required.) Experience or knowledge programming in Python (or R).

 

• (Not required, but would be an asset.) Experience or knowledge programming for web-scraping or data mining the WWW for archival or library information (for e.g. using pymarc; automatic downloading with wget; downloading with query strings).

 

• (Not required, but would be an asset.) Some general familiarity with qualitative research methods and principles.

 

Skills:

 

• Intermediate to advanced computing skills in the areas described.

 

• Intermediate to advanced data science or statistical analysis skills (e.g. working with multidimensional data).

 

• Ability to work independently and creatively solve problems.

 

• Ability to follow timelines, instructions and meet deadlines.

 

• Attention to detail.

 

Please submit:

 

• a cover letter that is no more than one page in length and that speaks specifically to your qualifications for the position;

 

• an up-to-date current Curriculum Vitae;

 

• names, titles, and contact information for up to two academic or professional references.

 

Please submit all materials by email to Dr. Jason Ellis (j.ellis@ubc.ca) no later than 11:59 p.m. on  October 10, 2014.