Senior Educational Program Designer

We are seeking a Senior Educational Program Designer to join our team. As a thought leader and advocate for new and emerging program design, you will lead and facilitate the design of competency-based higher education programs that emphasize students' ability to acquire and demonstrate skills.

Responsibilities:

• Break down complex problems and explore ways to delight users with tools that solve their problems efficiently and effectively
• Collaborate and partner with cross-functional teams of program development, academic, operations, and other stakeholders
• Design programs that deliver on the promise of competency-based education to provide efficiency, flexibility, personalization, achievement of goals, and fit with industry expectations
• Design programs that promote social mobility and equity
• Ensure that program designs maximize broad access, including for underserved students, industry relevance, learning, and financial sustainability
• Apply best practices in backward program design to the context of CBE (Competency-based Education) programs
• Quickly discover and prototype potential options, then weigh trade-offs between choices
• Anticipate, advise upon, and document the cost, scope, and implementation effort of competing program design options
• Apply a systems-thinking approach to help collaborators consider all elements of program design
• Collaborate on the identification of student personas and ensure pathways efficiently meet their needs
• Conduct industry and outside standards research and align program designs to industry and outside standard needs
• Select outcomes and design programs in meaningful ways
• Assess the sustainability of a program design at scale over its lifecycle
• Recommend tools and technologies that achieve scale while maintaining quality programming
• Set success metrics
• Thoroughly and beautifully document the resulting program design to guide development decisions that uphold the integrity of the design as well as provide a historical record for decisions that were made
• Establish a model for training/education for faculty, mentors, enrollment counselors, and all other stakeholders; work directly with students during the deployment of programs and courses
• Ensure the overall quality and effectiveness of training/education for faculty, mentors, and enrollment counselors
• Communicate solutions to stakeholders in a manner that simplifies complexity and generates excitement
• Facilitate meetings and brainstorming sessions that are organized and productive
• Advocate for high standards of excellence in providing delightful and rewarding user experiences, and proactively support the team in achieving them
• Provide thought leadership for new and emerging techniques for competency-based education

Requirements:

• Three or more years' experience within the fields of product, interaction, and visual design/development
• Bachelor's degree
• Background in online learning and/or development of educational products
• Background in metrics-driven, evidence-based decision making
• Portfolio or work samples showcasing product design prowess, creativity, and depth of thought, coupled with fluency in best practices for interaction design, visual design, and prototyping
• Experience working effectively on cross-organizational teams

Preferred Qualifications:

• Master's degree or Ph.D. in a relevant field
• Experience creating cross-contextual learning experiences that are born mobile, social-by-design, gamified, or non-linear with student-driven pathways
• Proven record of developing and producing quality assessment and learning experiences using established development and production processes and methodologies
• Demonstrated understanding of the higher education environment
• Demonstrated success with change management, particularly stabilizing and structuring diffuse and ambiguous situations

Benefits:

• Medical, dental, vision, telehealth and mental healthcare
• Health savings account and flexible spending account
• Basic and voluntary life insurance
• Disability coverage
• Accident, critical illness and hospital indemnity supplemental coverages
• Legal and identity theft coverage
• Retirement savings plan
• Wellbeing program
• Discounted WGU tuition
• Flexible paid time off for rest and relaxation with no need for accrual
• Flexible paid sick time with no need for accrual
• 11 paid holidays
• Other paid leaves, including up to 12 weeks of parental leave