"Senior Manager, Learning Design Strategy"

Job Description

Leads a team of strategists who oversee instructional design, assessment, and multimedia development for Academic Program Development. The Integration Solutions team sets our highest benchmarks and exemplars for learning design and development. They also provide training and enablement for implementation at scale. Additionally, this team is responsible for a variety of ad hoc, strategic initiatives as requested by executives in Program Development. When needed, this team will also be asked to initiate, remediate, accelerate, and/or intervene on high-profile, student-facing projects that require masterful execution.

As principal strategist, this role maintains a roadmap and integration plan for adopting emerging edtech and achieving market-leading quality. The execution of this plan-at scale-is a key success metric for this role and a key metric for Program Development. This leader brings expert-level competency in the learning sciences to direct a cross-functional team of innovators and strategists, including domain experts in learning design, assessment, visual design, and multimedia. Together, they manage the continuous improvement of our collective design and development capabilities.

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

Primary Responsibilities

• Oversees an interdisciplinary team of experts that integrate new and innovate design approaches and ensures the readiness of team members to adopt them.
• Ensures readiness for emerging tech vetted by the Program Experience team with training, best practices, coaching, and consulting for all design and development.
• Develops and executes a strategy to continuously measure and improve the quality of our course materials.
• Manages a hybrid portfolio of new/improved design projects, executive-sponsored initiatives, team member onboarding and ongoing training, quality reviews, and high-priority project interventions.
• Leads out in solving complex design and technical issues that require significant analysis, troubleshooting, and collaboration with other teams.
• Maintains an authoritative coaching relationship with the respective experts on their team (with sufficient cross-disciplinary expertise to provide expert feedback and direct outcomes to optimize reuse and scale).
• Consults on detailed requirements provided to the vendors and contractors used by Program Development.
• Works laterally with other Sr. Managers to find solutions for shared challenges in design, process, tech, or people resources.
• Continuously updates and curates examples of the team's best design work to be used for training and for communicating the overall value of Academic Program Development.
• Performs other duties as assigned.

Qualifications

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities

• High-level of individual proficiency and mastery in the learning sciences
• Ability to put innovation into practice
• Leadership of digital transformation and emerging tech, including AI
• Effective change readiness and enablement skills with the ability to promote, evaluate, and develop these skills on their own team and across all of Program Development
• Fluency in learning production, learning analytics, and reporting
• Strong aptitude for learning new applications and leading implementation.

Minimum Qualifications

• Master's degree or greater in a related field
• 7 years of demonstrated experience
• Evidence of successful learning program leadership that demonstrates both cross-disciplinary knowledge and specialist domain expertise
• Hands-on experience with a wide range of design and authoring technologies
• Background in online higher education preferred but relevant or overlapping experience in corporate, government, or other non-profit contexts may also be considered.
• Experience in leading and coaching expert-level, manager-equivalent leaders with high-value responsibility for the design and development of learning.

Preferred Qualifications

• A doctorate in a relevant discipline paired with demonstrable expertise in program development
• 10 years of leadership in higher education program development, with a preference for 3 years of scaling innovative design across a large team
• Experience in managing experts to achieve outcomes
• Experience in leading AI transformation of both the program development and student learning experience
• A mix of online higher education experience and corporate learning experience to support workforce-relevant approach.

Working Condition

• Onsite collocation is required in Salt Lake City, UT
• Travel up to 15-20% may be required on an ad hoc basis
• Ability to work in a busy, shared-space office environment.

Physical Requirements

• Prolonged periods sitting at a desk and working on a computer.

This job description includes a general representation of job requirements rather than a comprehensive inventory of all required responsibilities or work activities. The contents of this document or related job requirements may change at any time with or without notice.

Position & Application Details

Full-Time Regular Positions (classified as regular and working 40 standard weekly hours): This is a full-time, regular position (classified for 40 standard weekly hours) that is eligible for bonuses; 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; and 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, and other paid leaves, including up to 12 weeks of parental leave.

How to Apply: If interested, an application will need to be submitted online. Internal WGU employees will need to apply through the internal job board in Workday.

Additional Information

Disclaimer: The job posting highlights the most critical responsibilities and requirements of the job. It's not all-inclusive.

Accommodations: Applicants with disabilities who require assistance or accommodation during the application or interview process should contact our Talent Acquisition team at recruiting@wgu.edu.

Equal Employment Opportunity: All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to any protected characteristic as required by law.

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