Contract Instructional Designer - Digital Marketing

About Ziplines

Ziplines Education is a category-leading education company that partners with universities to deliver industry-focused certificate courses that prepare professionals for today’s digital-first workforce. Each year, we have the opportunity to help thousands of career advancers build the knowledge, skills, and credentials they need to move their careers forward. 92% of learners would recommend our programs, and our net promoter score is consistently in the excellent range. Together, we empower adult learners to confidently pursue the career they’ve always wanted.

We're looking for a part-time contract instructional designer to help us with maintenance and updates to our 10-week Digital Marketing course. The ideal candidate is an agile, pragmatic instructional designer with great writing and research skills, familiarity with Digital Marketing subject matter, and fluency in Articulate Rise. Hours will vary, but are expected to average 30-40 hours per month.

Our Course Format

Our courses are focused, pragmatic, and application-based. Our goal is to shift mindsets, teach frameworks, and give learners the confidence to move differently in their careers. Each week, learners complete:

• 6-8 hours of asynchronous content in Articulate Rise. Videos from subject matter experts lead into expository content and application-based exercises.

• A 2-hour live session, delivered by an industry professional and supported by a Google Slides deck with recommended demos and activities.

• An application-based capstone assignment, typically offering learners the choice of applying what they’ve learned to a scenario in their own workplace, or using a provided scenario.

Our Digital Marketing Course

Our Digital Marketing course is 10 weeks long and focuses on teaching the core disciplines and technologies to allow a new digital marketer to hit the ground running. Modules include:

• Introduction to Digital Marketing

• AI for Digital Marketing

• Search Engine Optimization Fundamentals

• Search Engine Marketing with Google Ads (Google Ads certification)

• Google Analytics for Marketers (Google Analytics certification)

• Introduction to Email Marketing

• Marketing Automation (Hubspot email marketing certification)

• Social Media Marketing

• Content Marketing

• Data-Driven Digital Marketing Plan

What You’ll Do:

Digital Marketing is evolving as a discipline due to AI and other factors, and Digital Marketing tools and technologies change constantly. Frequent updates are required to keep our Digital Marketing content fresh and aligned with best practices, tool interfaces, and technological capabilities. Our internal Digital Marketing course owner monitors learner and instructor feedback to identify required updates, but needs help executing them. That's where you come in. You'll work with the course owner to:

• Assess the existing course to determine which elements require update.

• Help arrange for new SME input or video content where necessary.

• Update expository, illustrative, and reinforcement elements in Articulate Rise.

• Update application exercises in Articulate Rise.

• Update quizzes and assessments in Articulate Rise.

• Review new SME video and suggest and mark edits.

• Revise live session slide decks in Google slides.

• Other course build and production tasks as directed.

Ziplines courses follow specific instructional design, visual design, brand voice, and editorial standards, and all output must align with those standards. For all standards, we will give you a written standards document, a template, an example to follow, or all three.

Who You Are

You’re a skilled, self-directed instructional designer with at least 3 years of experience creating asynchronous learning content for adult learners in a corporate or ed tech environment.

In addition:

• You are fluent in Articulate Rise.

• You have built one or more courses on Digital Marketing and have some contextual familiarity with core tools such as Hubspot, Google Ads, Google Analytics, and ChatGPT.

• You can follow design standards and model on an example.

• You can navigate ambiguity. You’re able to ask the right questions to clarify unclear situations. You can quickly produce an example or prototype to make sure you’re heading in the ri