The American Press Institute is a not-for-profit organization funded by the newspaper industry to provide training and prepare the industry for the future. Part of my job included making presentations about online newspapers, usability and design, and how journalists do research on the Internet. Another part involved API's distance learning program, under which instructor-led online seminars were delivered to newspaper employees. The third part of my job concerned requirements specifications for hardware and software for API under a $5 million grant that provided funding for extensive technology upgrades.
In presentations in professional seminars attended by journalists, journalism educators, executives and business-side staff from newspapers, I spoke about online media and led seminar members in discussions. Each of these seminars, held in API's large conference rooms, was attended by 20 to 40 people sent by their newspaper management (except the educators, who apply and are selected by API). My presentations included:
I created and evaluated several surveys on these and other topics. I also presented at journalism conferences, by invitation.
I provided support for the distance-learning project and worked with others, including API's instructional design specialist, to evaluate Web-based distance-learning applications. I led a major revision of the program's participant and instructor materials, both online and in printed form.
I planned and executed a comprehensive redesign of API's Extended Learning Center Web site. I built, tested, and deployed an online registration system using Active Server Pages (all the API Web servers were NT). I also fully documented all the code and helped train my replacement after I had left API.
API received a large grant to upgrade in-house technology, and I worked with the information systems staff to hammer out requirements specs for new database, Web, and mail servers; staff workstations; and applications. I worked with the director of finance and technology to determine and provide for staff training requirements. I collaborated with the information systems manager and with two database consultants to integrate API's Web servers with a back-end database (although this was still in the planning stages when I resigned).
API has several directors and associate directors, each in charge of specific seminars for professional development. The Extended Learning Center served as an umbrella for the API Seminars Online project, headed by an associate director.
I reported to the associate director for Extended Learning, who led the API Seminars Online project.