Rize Education Overview

• Mission: fundamentally transform higher education and provide every student with an enjoyable and riskless pathway to a fulfilling career

• Initial Problem: colleges desperately need to increase enrollment & improve outcomes, but can’t afford the upfront investment & costs for new degree programs

• Solution: high-quality, flexible degree programs that dramatically reduce cost and risk. By allowing colleges to add new online courses taught by other institutions, Rize provides non-profit, accredited colleges & universities with the fastest and most affordable way to add skills-based majors & minors for college credit

• Funding: raised Series B in 2024 from Thrive, Founders Fund, Flume, Strada, and other investors to pursue significant growth and product improvements. Projected to be profitable by Fall 2026 with no need for additional funding

• Team: 50+ person team that includes college athletes, educators, Jeopardy! participants, Ivy Leaguers, and hustlers who paid their own way through community college, all with the shared goal of improving education for current and future generations

The Role

Rize powers 500+ academic programs for over 100 colleges seeking innovative ways to grow enrollment and improve student outcomes. We have built an incredible team, all working toward our primary goal: creating an educational product that will transform the college experience by increasing student transparency and ROI. We are looking to add an analytical, thoughtful, empathetic, and high-output individual who will be excited and motivated by the high standard of excellence we seek to maintain.

The Instructional Design Lead will be responsible for building and maintaining curricula for a broad range of college programs, such as Business Analytics, History, Accounting, and Finance. Specifically, your first task will be facilitating the build-out of several new courses we’re rolling out this Fall Semester in the Finance and Cybersecurity MBA programs, as well as the Healthcare Administration and Project Management undergraduate programs. Deep domain expertise in these subjects is not necessary, but general technical literacy and interest in designing educational content in these subjects are expected. You will use our existing learning design and accreditation standards to launch programs and deliver strong learning outcomes across a scale of hundreds of classes and thousands of students. 

We currently do this through the following principles:

• Being truly student-centered. We only succeed if we produce engaging, fun courses that lead to excellent student job outcomes

• Implementing thoughtful, data-informed learning design practices that emphasize hands-on, project-based learning and follow industry trends

• Using data from surveys, student interviews, learning platform activity tracking, and feedback from academic and industry experts to continuously inform, improve, and innovate our courses

This job likely isn’t for you if you believe that the lecture format is fine for most students, or if you don’t believe distance learning can be rewarding when done well.

You will report directly to the Head of Program Management and work closely with our broader Instructional Design team (profiles below) to build the best online courses in the country. More specifically, you will be tasked with the following responsibilities:

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and manage the creation of online college courses delivered to students

• Maintain precise, detailed program and course documentation to be shared with colleges

• Co-design courses with subject matter experts (both academic and industry) to maximize online engagement and career outcomes

• Test assignments and course features to maximize outcomes and student satisfaction

• Launch and maintain courses in an LMS (Learning Management System - we use Canvas)

• Analyze survey and LMS data to inform product decisions

• Help refine and iterate learning design standards

Primary KPIs

• Registrations per college per program

• Student retention per college per course

• Student career outcomes

• Enrollments per program (via program marketability)

• % of students who prefer our courses to their on-campus courses

• % of students who find our courses help them achieve post-grad outcomes

• Job placement rate and starting salary

Qualifications

We are open to hiring people from a range of backgrounds for this role. If you fit this description but don’t have much formal instructional design experience, that is ok, we will be considering a range of experiences for this role, so encourage you to apply! We are looking for the following qualities:

• Stimulated by helping people learn and start rewarding careers

• Led by empathy and data, not frameworks (we believe ADDIE, Blooms etc. are great, but no substitute for listening to students)

• Excited by the pursuit of improving quality in education, not just applying existing standards

• Detail-oriented 

• A natural communicator and collaborator; there will be lots of interaction with students, college professors, industry experts, and other Rize teams

• Exhibit a high standard of personal accountability and are a doer–you hit deadlines and & are comfortable taking ownership of projects and their outcomes

• 2+ years of experience, ideally in teaching or instructional design, is a plus but not required

• Low ego and humble individual who is willing to work with and learn from others

• This position can be in person (office in Soho, NYC) or remote

Compensation

Compensation will vary with experience, but a rough range will be:

• Salary: $110,000 - $140,000

• Equity: 1,000 - 2,000 shares

Rize Instructional Design Team

To Apply

If you are interested in applying for this job, please email Madeline Dostal ([email protected]) and include your resume. To learn more about Rize Education, please visit our website or read some of the articles linked below.