If you’re passionate about building a better future for individuals, communities, and our country—and you’re committed to working hard to play your part in building that future—consider WGU as the next step in your career.

Driven by a mission to expand access to higher education through online, competency-based degree programs, WGU is also committed to being a great place to work for a diverse workforce of student-focused professionals. The university has pioneered a new way to learn in the 21st century, one that has received praise from academic, industry, government, and media leaders. Whatever your role, working for WGU gives you a part to play in helping students graduate, creating a better tomorrow for themselves and their families.

Reporting to the respective school’s Manager of Academic Product Management, the Lead Program Development Owner (PDO) oversees the full product lifecycle for an assigned portfolio of educational products, ensuring alignment with accreditation and regularly standards. This individual manages curriculum design, learning resource curation, development, budget, timeline, and continuous improvement efforts for WGU’s online learning content. The PDO collaborates with critical stakeholders in academics, operations, evaluation, and others to provide input about potential changes to the curriculum, assessment, instructional models, and academic support services.

Key responsibilities include evaluating program performance, conducting analysis to inform quality improvements, and managing success metrics related to time, budget, and quality. Strong data analysis skills are essential for continuous improvement through root cause analysis and targeted interventions. The role requires excellent communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to influence stakeholders and ensure adherence to project timelines while optimizing user experience and accessibility.

Location: This position requires you to live in Utah and work at our headquarters: 4001 South 700 East Salt Lake City, UT 84107 with the ability to work a hybrid schedule in the office 3-4 days a week.

Essential Functions and Responsibilities:

• Assume broad responsibility for curriculum and assessment within assigned programs, including relevance, quality, technical accuracy, functionality and assessment validity
• Accountable for success metrics as well as time, budget, and quality measures
• Advocate for the program with college design & development leadership
• Ensure alignment between curriculum and assessment
• Contribute to cross-university coordination with key stakeholders in launch and maintenance of programs and courses
• Create and deliver instructor, mentor and enrollment counselor training in collaboration with program chair
• Champion curation, design, development and continuous improvement for effective curriculum and assessments
• Evaluate programs and learning experience quality​
• Assess program, course, assessment and learning resource performance against student achievement​
• Prioritize and approve incremental changes to curriculum, assessment, and instructional model​
• Prioritize and recommend incremental changes to field and clinical experience​s
• Recommend and advise on major changes to curricula to program and cluster leadership​
• Plan and develop new program/offering business model and charter (requirements for all curricular and service elements) ​
• Collaborate with program architects, program chair, and Program Management directors and Accreditation Office to assure programs meet all accreditation and regulatory requirements
• Collaborate with the project manager to ensure timely delivery of quality programs, including the deployment of efficient processes and resourcing
• Prepare reports about program and course performance as required for operation and quality improvement
• Implement and ensure adherence to best practices in the design, development, delivery, and maintenance of the assigned assessment and curriculum portfolio
• Provide thought leadership and consultation for the most effective curriculum and assessment delivery methodologies for domain content

Knowledge, Skill and Abilities:

• Program-level curriculum and assessment design and development experience
• Strong online learning design and development skills
• Clear understanding of user experience best practices, including accessibility requirements
• Ability to use performance data to make informed curricular and assessment decisions; ability to analyze root causes, design experiments/interventions with clear success measures, and conduct retrospective analysis
• Program and course evaluation skills
• Strong program-level needs analysis skills
• Ability to build relationships and influence at all levels of an organization
• Ability to facilitate groups and meetings in person and remotely
• Strong organizational, project management, and time management skills
• Detail-oriented approach
• Ability to manage multiple projects efficiently
• Basic understanding of statistics and the ability to analyze and interpret statistics effectively
• Excellent written, oral, presentation, and interpersonal skills
• Proficiency in technology-driven document and collaboration tools, including Microsoft Office suite, and web conferencing and cloud-based tools

Competencies:

• Influences Others and Communicates Effectively: Communicates to improve and promote teamwork, decision making, and problem solving. Listens and responds effectively to the reactions and positions of others, and encourages the expression of diverse ideas and opinions. Adjusts message and style to fit the audience. Provides timely and helpful feedback. Communicates appropriately to win support with all audiences.
• Collaborates: Works cooperatively with others across the organization to achieve shared objectives. Represents own interests while being fair to others and their areas. Partners with others to get work done. Credits others for their contributions and accomplishments. Gains buy-in, trust and support of others.
• Manages Ambiguity: Deals comfortably with the uncertainty of change. Effectively handles risk. Can decide to act without the total picture. Is calm and productive, even when things are up in the air. Deals constructively with problems that do not have clear solutions or outcomes.
• Being Resilient: Is confident under pressure. Handles and manages crises effectively. Maintains a positive attitude despite adversity. Bounces back from obstacles and setbacks. Grows from hardships and negative experiences.
• Drives for Results: Has a strong outcomes-based orientation. Persists in accomplishing objectives despite obstacles and setbacks. Has a track record of successfully succeeding goals. Pushes self and helps others achieve results. Has a continuous improvement mindset.
• Organizational Learning: Learns quickly when facing new situations. Experiments to find new solutions. Takes on challenges of unfamiliar tasks. Extracts lessons learned from failures and mistakes. Expands knowledge base through ongoing curiosity.

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications:

• Master’s degree or Ph.D. in a relevant field
• Minimum of three years of program or curriculum and/or assessment development and evaluation experience
• Background in online learning
• Proven record of developing and producing quality assessment and learning experiences using established development and production processes and methodologies
• Effective project management, course development, and evaluation skills
• High energy, enthusiasm, and creativity
• Experience interacting effectively on cross-organizational teams

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience creating cross-contextual learning experiences that are born mobile, social-by-design, gamified, or non-linear with student-driven pathways
• Demonstrated understanding of the higher education environment
• Demonstrated success with change management, and bringing order and structure to complex situations
• Experience in higher education, standardized testing, or educational publishing
• Experience in competency based learning

Working Conditions

• Travel up to 15-20% for college specific business

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The salary range for this position takes into account the wide range of factors that are considered in making compensation decisions including but not limited to skill sets; experience and training; licensure and certifications; and other business and organizational needs.

At WGU, it is not typical for an individual to be hired at or near the top of the range for their position, and compensation decisions are dependent on the facts and circumstances of each case. A reasonable estimate of the current range is:
 

Pay Range: $82,900.00 - $124,300.00

How to apply: apply online

Full-time Regular Positions (FT classification, standard working hours = 40)

This is a full-time, regular position 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.

The University is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability or protected veteran status.