Mara Hancock’s Resume

January 6, 2007

Mara I. Hancock Resume

1831 Parker St. Berkeley, CA 94703
Home Phone: 510.841.4557
Work Phone: 510.407.0543
Email: mara@media.berkeley.edu

EMPLOYMENT SUMMARY

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY – March 2002 to present

Educational Technology Services

Director of Educational Technologies, January 2008- Present
(Interim Director for Educational Technology Services, Jan. 2008- Jan. 2009)
Lead the innovative Educational Technology Services department (ETS), the campus-wide provider of educational technology services. Provide services to a user-base of over 50,000 faculty, students, staff, and research teams for their teaching, collaboration, and learning technology needs. This includes media capture and delivery; classroom design, installations and support; mobile AV for classrooms and Special Events support; broadcast studio; virtual learning environments and online learning applications; faculty development support for teaching, learning and technology in both classroom and virtual environments; and the campus radio station, KALX. Oversee staff of 55 employees, and an annual budget of $6.3 million comprised of state, grant, external, and project income.

Select Work Accomplishments:

  • Initiated ETS organizational review and strategic planning activities, leading to set of organizational recommendations and the establishment of an ongoing strategic process
  • Proposed new advisory structure for ETS to ensure accountability to campus constituency and engage partners, faculty, and students in defining the future of educational technology services at UC Berkeley
  • Created new communication channels to improve cross-department communication
  • Increased departmental focus on teaching and learning, embedding teaching and learning expertise and goals across educational technology activities
  • Launched Active Learning Classroom Project
  • Established classroom costing team to improve maintenance and refresh cost projections for general assignment classrooms and created a costing model for use in other service areas
  • Shaped and facilitated a diverse departmental funding portfolio of $6.3 million/year
  • Advocated for and received the necessary ETS operational funding in a tight budget climate
  • Led the drive for regularization of the budgeting process for ETS operational funding
  • Envisioned and led the international Opencast project (opencastproject.org), a community of practice and open source development for media capture and delivery, and teaching, learning, and collaboration tools. Proposed and obtained external funding for the planning phase of the project.  Two follow-on proposals to be presented for funding in 2009.

Associate Director, ETS Learning Systems Group, March 2002 – December 2007
Oversaw the Learning Systems Group within Educational Technology Services at University of California, Berkeley. This team of approximately 20 staff develops and supports scalable and sustainable open source learning applications and tools for the campus and higher education community. It provides instructional design support for faculty, graduate and undergraduate students in integrating the effective use of technology into their teaching and learning activities.

Select Work Accomplishments:

  • Spearheaded the campus initiative for a single enterprise-level LMS for the Berkeley campus to meet the diverse needs of the UC Berkeley faculty and students.
  • Led the UC Berkeley Sakai strategy, development, and enterprise implementation (bSpace)
  • Presided over a 2000 + % increase in course site creation and adoption (over 2300 sites/sem)
  • Facilitated the migration to the Sakai CLE as the single enterprise LMS on campus, enabling the retirement of four aging and redundant campus systems: webCT, Blackboard, eRes, and CourseWeb
  • Expanded virtual collaboration services, offering Sakai CLE to campus-wide collaborative and scholarly project sites (over 2600 sites to date)
  • Established User Experience team to implement user-centered design in strategic projects, leading to recognition as a UX Center of Excellence for the campus
  • Led the webcast.berkeley program through an extraordinary expansion, resulting in partnership distribution agreements with iTunes, Google, and YouTube
  • Sponsored webcast application re-architecture, establishing key intra-departmental partnership between Video Services, ETS Applications Design and Development, and Engineering groups
  • Aligned open video content program with the Open Courseware Consortium, the Hewlett Foundation’s OER program, and stewarded the UC approval process for Creative Commons licensing for UC Berkeley’s webcast content
  • Initiated UC-wide dialog regarding community source licensing resulting in the Community Source Licensing Summit sponsored by the Mellon Foundation
  • Forged strong collaborations with other campus departments such as the Library Systems and Teaching library, the Registrar, IST, and ResComp resulting in improved services, increased integration between the bSpace and library and campus data systems

Grant and Community Source Project Leadership

  • The Open Cast Project | Planning Grant funded 2008-2009
    Planning grant jointly funded by the Hewlett Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

    • Lead PI and manager on grant
    • Explore the requirements and readiness for a new community source effort around the shared development and design of an open source podcast capture and delivery system for higher ed. Document best practices and case studies.
  • The Fluid Project (http://fluidproject.org) | Grant funded 2007-2009
    Core partner and sub-awardee on the Fluid Project, a  two-year $2.5M grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

    • Collaborated on establishing vision and grant proposal
    • Directed lead user experience team on the project responsible for development of UI Components and templates, design patterns, UX methodologies for Fluid project, delivery of U-Camps for Sakai, uPortal, and Kuali Student Projects
    • Member, Board of Directors
  • Sakai Project (http://sakaiproject.org) | Grant funded 2004-2005
    UC Berkeley ETS was a key contributor to the Sakai development effort. The Sakai Foundation was established in 2006.

    • Member, Sakai Project Board of Directors (June 2004 – present)
    • Program Chair, December 2005 Sakai Conference
    • Chair, Requirements Working Group 2004-2006: Led team to develop and implement community practice for prioritization of Sakai product requirements.
    • Oversaw and directed four UCB FTE working on the following aspects of the project:
      • Sakai Gradebook development (2.0 – 2.4 releases)
      • Section Management tool development (2.3 – 2.4 release)
      • Core Contribution to Sakai architecture, Course Management API, and loosely coupled tools approach to development (June 2004 – present)
      • Leader in UI development and UX activities, including the creation of the U-Camp, an educational and hands-on workshop for improving the user experience within Sakai
  • eBerkeley Initiative Funded Innovation Projects (2002-2004)
    Proposed, received, and managed three Innovation Projects funded through the eBerkeley Initiative:

    • Web-enabled Powerpoint — Project manage and assess the Web-enabled PowerPoint pilot project, including vendor negotiations, project plan, outreach, and tester support (complete December 2002, with extension through Spring 2003)
    • ETS Multimedia Services — Wrote and managed start-up grant for the ETS Multimedia Services unit, a student-staffed unit that developed campus web sites and applications using templates and scalable and sustainable methodologies
    • Usability Models – Wrote and oversaw project to conduct usability studies for several campus units and promoted usability methodologies on campus

Committee and Advisory Roles

Associate CIO for Teaching and Learning, December 2006 – Present
Represent and advocate for the IT needs for the campus Teaching and Learning constituency. Sit on the Campus Technology Council, a strategic advisory to the CIO to define campus IT budget strategy and prioritization. (Concurrent with Associate and Interim Director positions. Term until 2011)

Current Committee Activity

  • Member, Systemwide Library and Scholarly Information and Advisory Committee
  • Member, UC School of Global Health Information, Communication and Education Technology (ICET) Task Force
  • Member, Campus Evaluation Task Force
  • Member, CCCMP
  • Member, YouTube Advisory Committee
  • Member, Teaching and Learning Faculty Development Committee, cross divisional projects for faculty development. Responsible for the May 2007 Teaching, Learning and Technology Symposium: Cultivating Communities in Our Learning Landscapes
  • Member, Digital Library Services Advisory Group (California Digital Library)
  • Member, UC LMS group, group of LMS managers across the UC System to collaborate and leverage learning and effort.
  • Member, Steering Committee, UC Berkeley IT Collaboration Tools
  • Member, Advisory Committee, Media Vault Project
  • Member, Student Systems 2012 Community Council (now Kuali)

Past Committee Activity

  • Member, Steering Cmte., Mellon Faculty Institute for Undergraduate Research (2003-2007)
  • Member and planning group, Educational Technology Committee (2002-2006)
  • Member, Information Technology Architecture Committee (2002-2006)
  • Member, eBerkeley Implementation Task Force (2003-2005)
  • Staff Advisory, IT Governance and Funding and Review Committee (2005)
  • Oracle Academic Environment Advisory Group 2006-Present
  • External Reviewer, UCLA LMS Review Spring 2006

DIGITALTHINK – December 1998 to March 2002
DigitalThink, Inc. was a leading provider of e-learning solutions for Fortune 1000 companies from 1996-2004. They provided a large subscription-based course catalog and custom course development. During my time at the company it grew from 60 employees to over 500.

Responsible for the start-up and leadership of a cross-functional team with the primary goal to create reusable interactive elements, learning architectures, and development tools that serve to increase efficiencies, shorten the product development cycle, and ensure the creation of best-of-breed e-learning.

Senior Manager, Quality Improvement Services
Responsible for administrative and functional management of the Quality Assurance and Maintenance Services teams (20 staff), including: budget, capacity and cost planning, and design and implementation of strategic programs.

Manager, Design Strategies and Technology
Responsible for the start-up and leadership of a cross-functional team with the primary goal to create reusable interactive elements, learning architectures, and development tools that serve to increase efficiencies, shorten the product development cycle, and ensure the creation of best-of-breed e-learning.

Catalog Course Development Manager
Responsible for managing a cross-functional team of 8-14 Instructional Designers, Web Designers, and Web Producers in the development of approximately 10 web-based courses per quarter.

Instructional Designer
Instructional and Media Design of course content and interactivity design for e-learning courses. Worked closely with authors and subject matter experts world-wide to develop course objectives, author content and multimedia, and establish effective learning assessment.

“Mara makes everything seem and feel possible. To work with her is empowering — to work with her is a lesson in how to treat people and how to challenge yourself. And she’s funny. Really funny. She’s simply the best.”

– DigitalThink Instructional Design Manager

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA EXTENSION, CMIL – November 1996 – November 1998
Founding team member and Online Multimedia Specialist for UC Extension Online, a pioneering, award-winning collaborative project between UC Berkeley Extension and the Center for Media & Independent Learning.

INKWORKS PRESS – August 1989- October 1996
Founding member for Design, Desktop Publishing & Electronic Prepress Department at Inkworks Press, a collectively-owned and managed offset printing company in Berkeley, CA.

EDUCATION
San Francisco State University, MA, Instructional Technology, 1997
California College of Arts and Crafts, Oakland, CA, B.F.A., 1986

RELATED COURSES AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

  • Frye Leadership Institute, Emory University & Educause, 2006
  • CIO Institute, Haas Business School, UC Berkeley, 2006
  • Interaction Design Practicum, Cooper, San Francisco, 2006
  • Design Communication Workshop, Cooper, San Francisco, 2006

PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIPS

  • Educause
  • Educause Learning Initiative (ELI)
  • BayCHI, Bay Area’s chapter for ACM’s Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction (SIGCHI)
  • New Media Consortium (NMC)

OTHER PLACES TO FIND ME

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