Role Overview
The Director, Instructional Design is responsible for leading the design and development of structured, engaging learning experiences for Career and Technical Education (CTE) courses. This role provides instructional leadership and oversight, ensuring that course outlines, learning objectives, activities, and assessments align with established pedagogical frameworks, industry requirements, and learner experience standards.
The Director works closely with subject matter experts, instructional designers, instructional leadership, and AI development teams to ensure instructional quality, consistency, and coherence across courses, modules, and lessons. The role also oversees AI-assisted course development workflows, including prompt creation and refinement, review of AI-generated content, and continuous improvement of instructional design processes.
Key Responsibilities
Instructional Design Leadership
- Lead and guide the instructional design process for CTE course development, ensuring consistency and quality across programs.
- Establish and maintain instructional design standards, templates, and best practices.
- Review course designs and instructional artifacts to ensure alignment with learning objectives, assessments, and learner experience standards.
- Provide guidance and feedback to instructional designers and other project contributors.
- Coordinate with instructional leadership and project stakeholders to support timelines, priorities, and delivery expectations.
Course Design and Development
- Oversee the development of course outlines, learning objectives, lesson structures, and instructional activities.
- Guide the creation and review of course blueprints and storyboards that support course production.
- Ensure instructional alignment between learning objectives, activities, and assessments.
- Oversee backwards design where required, particularly for certification-aligned courses, including mapping learning objectives, assessments, state standards, and learning activities to exam criteria.
SME Collaboration
- Partner with subject matter experts to translate technical content into learner-centered instructional experiences.
- Ensure that course content incorporates industry-relevant examples and applied learning opportunities.
- Facilitate collaboration between SMEs, instructional designers, and production teams to resolve content and instructional design challenges.
- Provide direction on incorporating technical subject matter into clear, structured, and engaging learning experiences.
Instructional Artifact Development and Quality Assurance
- Oversee the development and review of course blueprints, lesson structures, assessment plans, and other instructional documentation.
- Ensure instructional artifacts provide clear and actionable guidance for course production teams.
- Conduct quality reviews to identify gaps in instructional alignment, content clarity, and learner engagement.
- Establish review processes to maintain consistency across modules, lessons, and courses.
Platform-Aware Course Design
- Guide the design of learning activities and assessments based on the capabilities of the client's digital learning platform.
- Ensure course designs incorporate appropriate interaction types and learner engagement patterns.
- Collaborate with relevant teams to ensure instructional designs can be implemented effectively within the target platform.
AI-Assisted Content Development
- Lead the development and refinement of AI prompts used to support instructional content creation.
- Oversee the review and refinement of AI-generated instructional content to ensure accuracy, clarity, instructional coherence, and alignment with learning objectives.
- Collaborate with prompt engineering teams to improve AI-assisted course development workflows and outputs.
- Identify opportunities to improve instructional design efficiency while maintaining quality and consistency.
Qualifications
- Bachelor's or Master's degree in Instructional Design, Education, Educational Technology, or a related field.
- Significant experience designing digital learning experiences, curriculum, or instructional materials.
- Strong understanding of instructional design principles, learner-centered design, and curriculum development.
- Experience leading instructional design initiatives and reviewing course outlines, blueprints, storyboards, and assessments.
- Demonstrated ability to collaborate with SMEs, instructional teams, and cross-functional stakeholders.
- Strong communication, stakeholder management, and instructional quality assurance skills.
Preferred Experience
- Experience designing CTE or workforce development curriculum.
- Experience leading instructional design teams or overseeing multiple course development initiatives.
- Experience designing content for digital learning platforms or LMS environments.
- Experience supporting AI-assisted course development workflows, including prompt development and AI-generated content review.
- Experience with backwards design and certification-aligned curriculum development.
