Senior Lead Educational Program Designer

Senior Lead Educational Program Designer

If you're passionate about building a better future for individuals, communities, and our country—and you're committed to working hard to play your part in building that future—consider WGU as the next step in your career.

Driven by a mission to expand access to higher education through online, competency-based degree programs, WGU is also committed to being a great place to work for a diverse workforce of student-focused professionals. The university has pioneered a new way to learn in the 21st century, one that has received praise from academic, industry, government, and media leaders. Whatever your role, working for WGU gives you a part to play in helping students graduate, creating a better tomorrow for themselves and their families.

The salary range for this position takes into account the wide range of factors that are considered in making compensation decisions including but not limited to skill sets; experience and training; licensure and certifications; and other business and organizational needs.

At WGU, it is not typical for an individual to be hired at or near the top of the range for their position, and compensation decisions are dependent on the facts and circumstances of each case. A reasonable estimate of the current range is:

Grade: Faculty 509Pay Range: $94,700.00 - $142,100.00

Job Description

As a thought leader and high-impact contributor to new and emerging product design, the Senior Lead Educational Program Designer leverages proven leadership skills to drive the design of competency-based higher education products that emphasize students' ability to acquire and demonstrate skills, rather than the amount of time spent learning. The educational product designer will use curiosity, empathy, and experience with convergent experience design to anticipate and investigate the impact of decisions made about product design across the entire enterprise of competency-based education. A systems thinker, this person leads cross-functional teams in translating complex student and business needs into products that deliver efficient, personalized learning pathways, which provide learners with pathways to opportunity and resonate with employers, learners, and policymakers. The Sr. Lead EPD leads highly complex, university-wide initiatives to improve key results in program design. The educational product designs created through this person's leadership will optimize: the value proposition for the learner; the resources required; student engagement; successful learning experiences; and financial sustainability. This role will function as a consultant to all levels of leadership and represent program design to relevant stakeholders and academic departments. If you are experienced in and passionate about leading teams through influence to design elegant, workable solutions to difficult problems in education, we want to talk to you!

Location: This position will be located in our Salt Lake City, UT office.

Essential Functions and Responsibilities:

• Accountable for the design of products that deliver on the promise of competency-based education to provide efficiency, flexibility, personalization, achievement of goals, and fit with industry expectations.
• Resolve program design problems requiring broad-based consideration of variables at the program and college level, and collaborate with discipline and practice leadership on implementing ideas for new and revised programs.
• Lead cross-university coordination of program development, academic, operations, and other stakeholders in educational product design.
• Champion product designs that promote social mobility and equity.
• Ensure that product designs maximize broad access, including for underserved students, industry relevance, learning, and financial sustainability.
• Apply expert-level skill and experience in best practices in educational product design to the context of CBE (Competency-based Education) programs.
• Break down complex problems and delight users with tools that solve their problems efficiently and effectively.
• Anticipate, weigh, and document the cost, scope, and implementation effort of competing design options.
• Plan systems-thinking approaches that consider all elements of product design, such as enrolment, learner engagement, curriculum, instruction, evaluation, assessment, etc.
• Collaborate on the identification of student personas and ensure pathways efficiently meet their needs
• Conduct industry and outside standards research and align product designs to industry and outside standard needs.
• Exercises independent judgment and creativity to redefine policies and procedures at the program and college level to meet key results.
• Assess and maximize the sustainability of a product design at scale over its lifecycle.
• Serve as an expert advisor on tools and technologies that achieve scale while maintaining quality programming.
• Leads highly complex initiatives to improve key results and sets success metrics.
• Deliver thorough and beautiful documentation of the resulting product design to guide development decisions that uphold the integrity of the design, as well as provide a historical record for decisions that were made
• Innovate through thought leadership in program design and have industry-level impact with measurable results.
• Establish a model for training/education for faculty, mentors, enrolment counselors, and all other stakeholders
• Manage change and communication about solutions to stakeholders in a manner that simplifies complexity and generates excitement
• Lead and promote exceptional change management around new program initiatives with senior stakeholders.
• Plan and 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 lead the design team in achieving them
• Provide thought leadership for new and emerging techniques for competency-based education
• Performs other related duties as assigned.

Knowledge, Skill, and Abilities:

• Senior-level experience designing products or solutions that benefit end users and society
• Extensive experience leading design thinking and product design sprints in person and with remote teams. Can demonstrate an extensive "bag of tricks" for empathetic design and facilitation challenges.
• Proven track record of accountability, devising and designing high-quality web and/or mobile products in collaboration with product management and engineering partners
• Good listener – weighs input from multiple perspectives when forming opinions and recommendations
• Collaborative, team-oriented, and change management work approach
• Excellent written, oral, presentation, and interpersonal skills
• Proficiency in technology-driven document and collaboration tools, including Microsoft Office suite, and web conferencing and cloud-based tools

Competencies:

Organizational or Student Impact:

• Accountable for decisions that impact the college or program cluster.
• Leads complex college/cluster initiatives to improve Key Results.
• Is a go-to person at the college/cluster level; is well networked in the college and (perhaps) in the university & nationally.
• May actively contribute to initiatives at the university level.

Problem Solving & Decision Making:

• Resolves problems that require broad-based consideration of variables at the program/course level.
• Implements and supports the creation of new educational methodologies at the college level.
• Supports implementation and assessment of processes that reflect learning outcome achievement indicators at the college and cluster level.
• Works with minimal supervision and operates collaboratively with management in developing goals and objectives at the college level.

Communication & Influence:

• Communicates with students if/as appropriate to the teaching practice area.
• Communicates and collaborates with fellow senior stakeholders and colleges members within and across discipline, practice(s) and academics.
• This individual contributes to scholarly presentations and publications within content areas and disciplines.
• Represents program design at professional conferences and association meetings and engages in discourse with fellow attendees.
• Shares ideas for new and revised curriculum, learning resources, and assessments with content area and discipline leadership.
• Ability to drive scholarly presentations and publications within program design.
• Participates in the national dialogue around program design discipline initiatives and special projects
• Contributes to WGU and college brand development.

Leadership & Talent Management

• A college leader and a source of advice, mentoring, and counsel across the college /cluster.
• An innovative thought leader in discipline or practice with college-level impact and measurable results.
• Innovates to ensure coverage within and between teams, enabling teams to meet field or practice service level agreements.
• Leads and promotes exceptional change management.

Job Qualifications:

Minimum Qualifications: