CMD Instructional Design Specialist

MacFAdden, part of PAE, is seeking an Instructional Design Specialist to support USAID’s Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance (BHA), Civil-Military Disaster Operations Division (CMD) in Washington, D.C.

BHA provides global leadership in Humanitarian response, alleviating suffering, and providing the foundations for transformative change and self-reliance.

CMD conducts worldwide civil-military coordination for BHA during response and steady-state operations through close sustained engagement, influence, and education with the Department of Defense (DoD) and other HA actors to ensure an effective and efficient USG HA Response.

MacFadden serves as an Institutional Contractor to USAID, where assignments and oversight are provided by BHA office directors, deputy office directors, or technical leads, with formal supervisory and evaluation functions performed by a MacFadden contract supervisor.

The CMD Instructional Design Specialist will support BHA’s Civil Military Disaster Operations Division whose mission is to engage with the Department of Defense (DoD) before, during and after a response. To accomplish its engagement goals with DoD, BHA’s CMD has 40 skilled team members that conduct its training, participate in military exercises, and deploy on Disaster Assistance Response Teams (DARTs) or serve on Response Management Teams (RMTs).

The CMD Instructional Design Specialist will oversee CMD’s training offerings as a member of the Education and Doctrine Development Team (EDD). EDD designs, develops, and conducts BHA’s training for the military, schedules and participates in numerous exercises, and reviews DoD civil-military doctrine. CMD primary training courseware offerings are the Joint Humanitarian Operations Course (JHOC), the Civilian Military Coordination with DoD course (aka Reverse JHOC), the Civ-Mil Affairs Coordinator and Mission Tasking Matrix Course, the 1 and 2hr Executive Briefings for DoD leadership, an online Humanitarian Assistance Essentials Course, the Complex Emergency Presentation, and the Humanitarians Operations Workshop presentation. Along with the courseware the Instructional Design Specialist is responsible for developing training guidance documents like the JHOC Style Guide and the JHOC Instructional Guide. While the primary focus of these trainings and documents are on CMD’s external military and non-governmental partners, they also address the need for all BHA staff to become familiar with how CMD coordinates with our military partners during a response.

The CMD Instructional Design Specialist will support will further enable BHA/CMD to engage with the DoD at all levels. The courseware referenced above is adapted to meet the needs of CMD’s Humanitarian Assistance Advisors to the Miliary (HAA/Ms) located at each of the worldwide military combatant commands. The HAA/Ms are critical to the CMD mission are not only involved in the daily operations of each command in an advisory capacity but also train command personnel via the courses referenced above. Through the development and update of courseware the CMD Instructional Design Specialist will be responsible for advancing inter-agency civil-military coordination by maintaining strong working relationships with key humanitarian civil-military stakeholders within, as well as external to the USG.

The CMD Instructional Design Specialist will also support Concrete Shield presentations in support of The Technical Operations Team (TechOps) within CMD that manages BHA’s Biological, Radiological, Nuclear, and Explosives (CBRNE) subject matter expertise, coordinates the development of internal and external CBRNE training and simulations.

DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

Instructional Design refers to the process used to create instructional material, identify gaps in knowledge, skills, and attitude of learners or employees, analyzing learning needs and developing learning material. Instructional design strives to give meaningful and effective instructions to learners in a way that make learning easier and beneficial for them. The instructional design specialist for CMD will:

• Develop new strategies in coordination with division and team members to expand CMDs outreach.
• Analyze CMD training needs and requirements and develop new training courses.
• Evaluate the effectiveness of CMD’s current training programs and provide recommendations for improvement.
• In development of new courseware, initiate and support course design from the conceptual stage to a finished product for internal/external courses, specifically applying the principles of adult learning for both synchronous and asynchronous (online courses) learning.
• Support development of course evaluation procedures, monitoring instruments, and reviews of all completed training to evaluate and measure results.
• Ensure communication is on-going within BHA by maintaining transparent and regular lines of communication.
• Design learning material building on the learner’s current knowledge of the subject matter and use it as a foundation to internalize new knowledge.
• Collaborate with CMD team to produce compelling courseware content and facilitate the creation of content in line with BHA-CMD messaging and strategy.
• Work with division and team members to adapt courseware to reflect changing priorities and evolving needs of BHA.
• Sign-up for and serve as needed, on Washington-based Response Management Teams (RMTs), which provides services and support to Disaster Assistance Response Teams (DARTs) deployed in response to disasters. The duties on RMTs will be varied.

REQUIREMENTS

• Must have the ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. Government issued Secret clearance for the duration of your employment on this contract. Only applicants who currently hold an active Secret or higher-level security clearance or who are eligible to receive a Secret security clearance will be considered for this position.

EDUCATION, EXPERIENCE, AND SKILLS

Education: Bachelor’s degree with 5 years of experience or Master’s degree with 3 years of experience.

Required Experience:

• Experience designing courses/programs for adult learners in an international setting.
• Experience with emergency relief and/or international humanitarian assistance environments.
• Experience training/teaching in-person and online courses.
• Experience/Knowledge of DoD Foreign Humanitarian Assistance Operations and Doctrine.

Skills

• Identify learning needs and determine learning objectives.
• Design the learning structure best suited to CMD’s learners/stakeholders.
• Create engaging and impactful learning experiences using the appropriate instructional design.
• Create program design evaluation tools.
• Possess excellent verbal and written communication and strong presentation skills.
• Utilize a variety of multimedia training platforms and methods.