Lead Skills Architect

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Job Profile Summary

Western Governors University is hiring a Lead Skills Architect to join our team onsite in Salt Lake City, Utah.

The Lead Skills Architect assumes broad responsibility for creating, maintaining, and using program maps comprised of outcome stacks & assessment trajectories that are aligned with applicable marketable skills and standards. The Lead Skills Architect is responsible for creating program maps that improve student outcomes and create the foundation for a variety of educational program needs such as personalized pathways, career planning, industry, and accreditation alignment, prior learning assessment, alternative credentialing and pathways, open loop learning, curriculum development efficiency, and student success. This individual will collaborate closely with stakeholders across various roles and functions to research and incorporate tools, techniques, and best practices from curriculum development, instructional design, content management, and information science to implement the WGU approach to program architecture. The Lead Skills Architect is responsible for the success of many simultaneous projects, assessing risk, reporting progress, and communicating effectively with stakeholders to promote collaboration and accountability.

Essential Functions and Responsibilities

• Manages the development of assigned program maps, including identification and creation of frameworks, pathways, sequences, outcome scaffolds, and assessment trajectories for online learning environments and competency-based education

• Creates, maintains, and utilizes ontologies, taxonomies, vocabularies, and tagging codes, clusters, classes, and hierarchies to mark, organize, and maximize the usefulness of relevant relationships between domains, competencies, outcomes, content, levels, assessments, standards, skills, credentials, occupations, etc.

• Advises and participates in the preparation of materials for stakeholder partners

• Assists in the development, delivery, and maintenance of program products and services, including program maps, curriculum resources, and online learning experiences

• Contributes to the creation or acquisition of tools to scaffold, create, organize, tag, visualize, and store program maps, as well as automate these processes

• Participates in the development of processes, workflows, methodologies, and strategies for the creation, review, refinement, tracking, sharing, and use of program maps throughout the university

• Serves as a catalyst for appropriate and productive change that increases both operational efficiency and student outcomes

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities

• Thorough understanding of curriculum development, instructional design, competency-based education, adaptive/personalized learning, and assessment development

• Knowledge of accreditation, policies, and procedures

• Ability to apply processes and requirements related to the program mapping effort

• Ability to identify requirements for ontologies and taxonomies and develop and adapt these to current curriculum mapping needs.

• Advanced technical writing and editing skills

• Advanced critical thinking, analysis, and synthesis skills

• Ability to develop and use metrics to measure and improve both processes and program maps

• Ability to collaborate with content specialists, technologists, and development teams to maximize the value of curriculum maps to the WGU user community

• Ability to facilitate collaboration, support, and approval from a variety of stakeholders

• Ability to manage multiple projects efficiently and work independently under minimal supervision

• Thorough understanding of project management, needs assessment, and risk management

Competencies

Organizational or Student Impact: