Research and Production Officer

The Holocaust Educational Trust (HET) is a registered charity working with schools, colleges and communities across the country to raise awareness about the Holocaust and its relevance today.

Job Description

We have an exciting opportunity for a Research and Production Officer to join our team based in Central London. After several years of research and development, we launched Testimony 360 in June 2024, a digital programme for UK secondary schools that uses interactive survivor testimony and virtual reality to innovatively teach about the Holocaust. Through the programme, students can interact with a recorded testimony of a Holocaust survivor, before seeing some of the sites they experienced using virtual reality headsets, all without leaving their classroom.

The successful candidate will serve as a member of the Trust's Programmes Team, responsible for the research, post-production, testing and maintenance of interactive recorded testimony to ensure fluency and usability in the classroom. They will also be responsible for the ethical representation and engagement with the testimonies. We are looking for an individual with experience in research, with an understanding of the sensitive use of testimony, as well as experience of data management systems and platforms used for interactive testimony. They will have the ability to quickly learn how to use new technologies and programmes. As an expert in Holocaust education, you will also contribute to the successful delivery of our Testimony 360 programme through research and development of new content or digital resources.

Key Responsibilities

Interactive survivor testimony

• Work on the development of interactive testimony, including any future capture, clipping, annotation, data / metadata input, and Alpha/Beta testing. Throughout testing, lead the AI training process ensuring the system's accuracy and ensuring the respectful and ethical representation of survivors' life-stories.
• Maintain regular contact with our partner organisation, the USC Shoah Foundation, including progress updates, shared learning, and required training.
• Support colleagues undertaking training and/or working on supportive post-production.
• Log activity and decisions regarding the post-production editing process, as discussed with members of the Testimony 360 team and/or USC Shoah Foundation.
• Organise and deliver Alpha and Beta testing stages, working directly with students both online and in-person to deliver test sessions and action any necessary follow-up (to ensure learning from test sessions is fed back).
• Develop and manage systems to ensure the maintenance, accuracy, ethics and security of interactive testimonies and ensure consistency of approach across teams.

Delivery

• Plan and deliver any future online Beta testing sessions as part of the development of interactive testimonies, sharing knowledge and expertise and supporting their delivery.
• Work with the Data and Evaluation Manager on external research and evaluation partnerships to assess the impact of Testimony 360 on students and teachers, ensuring findings are shared and used to continuously improve our digital education offers.
• From time to time, we ask everyone in our team to be trained to deliver our educational programmes. This ensures we can adapt to our peaks of educational delivery during the year. Therefore, it is desirable that the successful candidate will be willing to participate in our classroom programmes as an educator from time to time.

Development

• Carry out research and development relating to the Trust's digital strategy.
• Work with external providers to create historically accurate content that fits within the Trust's pedagogical approach and programmes.

General

• Discussions about our learnings from Testimony 360 with the wider Delivery team, and we encourage consideration for how these learnings might feed into our wider educational offer.
• Ensuring the education about the Holocaust is at the core of our work. Members of the Programmes team are responsible for supporting the wider teams as they develop, plan and deliver on broader public engagement, fundraising, and awareness-raising initiatives.

This job description is not an exhaustive list of duties and may be reviewed and amended in consultation with the postholder to reflect the developing needs of the Trust.