Full-Time Contract
Remote (Asheville, NC preferred)
*Opportunity for permanent position after initial contract
About Soomo Learning
Since 2004, Soomo Learning has been creating high-quality, interactive, digital textbooks for higher education. We launched with the objective to “create courseware that works better and costs less than a traditional textbook.” As we put our work to the test, we learned it takes much more than changing a textbook to improve student outcomes. Outcome improvement comes from careful attention to the problems at hand, collaboration with faculty, and iteration. Soomo Learning is an organization built to uncover the strategies and tools to best enable student success in any given course. Today, Soomo Learning provides a broad range of services, technology, and content development for the design, delivery, and improvement of online, blended, and traditional courses. Soomo is a team of people who have chosen to invest our lives in creating better digital resources for learning.
Overview of Role
At Soomo, our webtexts help students mentally engage through the use of questions - hundreds of thoughtfully designed, tested, and revised formative assessment opportunities that encourage comprehension, analysis, and evaluation.
We are seeking an experienced learning designer with an exemplary ability to cut through the noise to align learning purpose with scaffolded practice, feedback, and assessment. You will be responsible for generating learning strategies, comparing the merits of various approaches, and prototyping and developing strong question sets. Your goal is to ensure that every student who completes the work succeeds in the course. Our ideal candidate is a learning designer at heart - constantly thinking about the goal for student learning and how can we more clearly focus the learning experience around it. In addition, you are a strong writer who creates clear, engaging questions and content.
Responsibilities
Conduct thorough course analyses including evaluation of course goals, student needs, common challenges, and, when available, professor and student feedback, historical course performance, and evaluation of current learning strategies
Generate potential solutions, compare promising approaches, choose strategies to prototype or sketch, and productively guide the process from a learning strategy perspective
Write engaging, clear, well-aligned questions for frequent formative assessment
Rigorously align content and questions with desired outcomes and purpose
Effectively guide and collaborate with partner faculty and colleagues throughout the development and revision process
Use activity data to iteratively improve course design
Requirements
Bachelor’s degree required, graduate degrees preferred
5+ years of learning design experience and relevant samples of work
Desire to facilitate student learning in an online environment
Working knowledge of learning theories, instructional practices, and instructional design models
Experience writing measurable learning outcomes and aligned question sets, activities, and assessments
Experience engaging in a design thinking process including paying careful attention to the problem to solve and root issues
The ability to engage with statistics to analyze student usage patterns and an inquisitive spirit for finding anomalies and chasing down explanations
A willingness to work with faculty at many institutions who are new to active learning courseware and data-driven intervention
Exceptional attention to detail and ability to produce error-free work in a fast-paced environment
Strong communication and collaboration skills
Strong technical skills using tools such as Word and Google Docs, communication tools such as email and Slack, and some familiarity with HTML
A willingness to learn new technologies and incorporate new skills and knowledge into daily work
A willingness to ask questions
Experience working with undergraduate curriculum in the humanities or social sciences preferred