Director of Digital Learning & Academic in Salem, West Virginia at Salem University LLC

Position Summary:

The Director of Digital Learning & Academic Technology provides University-wide leadership for Salem University's digital learning environment, Learning Management System (LMS), instructional design function, academic technology integrations, and course-development operations.

The Director is responsible for ensuring Salem University's digital courses are effectively designed, developed, maintained, quality-reviewed, integrated, and deployed to support the University's academic programs and monthly course-start model.

Serving as the operational connection between approved curriculum and its successful implementation within the University's digital learning environment, the Director collaborates closely with the Provost, Associate Provost, Director of Curriculum, Assessment & Academic Quality, academic Deans and Directors, Registrar, Information Technology, faculty, instructional design personnel, and external vendors.

The Director establishes and maintains University-wide course-development processes, digital course standards, production schedules, quality-assurance expectations, LMS practices, and academic technology standards that support academic quality, consistency, scalability, accessibility, student success, and continuous improvement.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

The duties listed below are representative of the responsibilities of this position. Additional duties may be assigned based on departmental or organizational needs.

Digital Learning & LMS Leadership

• Provide University-wide leadership and operational oversight for the University's Learning Management System, currently Blackboard, and associated digital-learning technologies.
• Ensure the LMS is effectively configured, maintained, and utilized to support academic programs, faculty, and students.
• Establish and maintain standards for LMS course structures, templates, permissions, gradebook configurations, instructional tools, and related academic technology practices.
• Monitor LMS releases, updates, enhancements, and emerging functionality and coordinate testing and implementation with Information Technology and other stakeholders.
• Establish appropriate LMS governance, procedures, documentation, controls, and continuity practices.
• Identify opportunities to improve the digital learning environment and enhance the faculty and student experience.
• Promote effective, consistent, and scalable use of the University's digital-learning technologies.

Course Development & Monthly Course Production

• Own and manage the end-to-end digital course-development and production process from receipt of approved curriculum through design, development, quality review, technology integration, LMS deployment, and course readiness.
• Develop and maintain a comprehensive course-development and production calendar aligned with the University's monthly course starts.
• Coordinate with the Associate Provost, Director of Curriculum, Assessment & Academic Quality, Registrar, instructional design personnel, and academic leadership to identify upcoming course-development and revision needs.
• Maintain a centralized course-development tracker identifying project status, responsible parties, milestones, deadlines, quality-review status, and anticipated deployment.
• Establish project plans, timelines, responsibilities, and deliverables for new course development and course redevelopment.
• Coordinate faculty and subject-matter expert participation in course development and establish expectations for timely content development and review.
• Ensure courses are appropriately developed, reviewed, integrated, and available according to established institutional timelines.
• Provide regular course-readiness and production reports to Academic Affairs leadership.
• Proactively identify and escalate risks that could affect upcoming course starts or student access.

Instructional Design Leadership & Supervision

• Provide leadership and direct supervision to University Instructional Designer(s) and other assigned academic technology or course-development personnel.
• Establish priorities, production expectations, project assignments, timelines, and performance measures for instructional design activities.
• Monitor workload, project progress, deliverables, and resource needs.
• Provide coaching, feedback, professional development, and performance management for assigned personnel.
• Ensure instructional design resources are aligned with institutional priorities, curriculum revisions, new program launches, enrollment needs, and monthly course schedules.
• Promote instructional design practices that support student engagement, accessibility, academic rigor, instructional presence, usability, and consistency.
• Coordinate and manage external or contract instructional design resources when needed.

Course Quality Standards & Style Guide

• Develop, implement, and maintain a comprehensive Salem University Course Style Guide.
• Establish consistent expectations for course navigation, module organization, terminology, instructional materials, assignments, assessments, accessibility, faculty presence, and student experience.
• Develop and maintain standardized University course templates appropriate for undergraduate, graduate, and other instructional formats.
• Establish and maintain a formal course-development lifecycle encompassing curriculum approval, design, development, academic review, quality assurance, deployment, evaluation, and revision.
• Partner with academic leadership to establish a systematic course-review and refresh cycle.
• Ensure digital courses accurately reflect approved curriculum and established University academic and instructional standards.
• Develop quality-assurance processes and documentation for new and substantially revised courses.

Academic Technology & Third-Party Integrations

• Provide operational oversight for third-party academic technology integrations, including LTI tools, publisher platforms, digital textbooks, assessment systems, and other instructional technologies.
• Coordinate with vendors, Information Technology, academic departments, faculty, and other stakeholders to implement, test, troubleshoot, and maintain integrations.
• Maintain a centralized inventory of academic technologies and integrations, including purpose, affected courses or programs, institutional owner, vendor information, and renewal timelines.
• Ensure third-party integrations are appropriately tested and operational prior to applicable course launches.
• Evaluate existing and emerging academic technologies and provide recommendations regarding adoption, consolidation, continued use, or discontinuation based on instructional value, functionality, scalability, institutional need, and cost.
• Support the responsible implementation of artificial intelligence and emerging technologies within the digital-learning environment in collaboration with academic leadership.
• Coordinate with Information Technology regarding technical, security, access, and integration requirements associated with academic technologies.

Master Course & Instructional Materials Management

• Partner with the Registrar and academic leadership to maintain an accurate master inventory of active courses and corresponding LMS master course shells.
• Maintain documentation regarding master-course status, development history, revisions, and applicable course versions.
• Establish and maintain appropriate version-control processes for master courses.
• Coordinate with academic leadership to maintain an accurate and timely master textbook and instructional-materials list.
• Ensure approved textbook and instructional-resource changes are appropriately reflected in applicable master courses and third-party integrations.
• Establish processes that ensure the appropriate version of each master course is deployed for scheduled offerings.

LMS Support & Service Management

• Oversee the University's LMS support process for faculty, staff, and students.
• Establish service expectations, ticket categories, triage procedures, escalation protocols, and resolution standards.
• Monitor ticket volume, response times, resolution times, recurring issues, and service trends.
• Identify systemic issues requiring training, technology, course-design, or process improvements.
• Coordinate escalation of technical issues with Information Technology, Blackboard, publishers, and other vendors as appropriate.
• Develop and maintain self-service resources, user guides, FAQs, troubleshooting documentation, and other support materials.
• Use support data to identify opportunities to improve systems, training, and the user experience.

Faculty Training & Digital Learning Support

• Develop and coordinate faculty training related to the LMS, academic technologies, digital-course standards, integrations, gradebook functionality, accessibility, and effective online teaching practices.
• Develop LMS and digital-learning onboarding resources for new faculty.
• Partner with academic leadership to identify faculty-development needs related to digital teaching and emerging technologies.
• Create and maintain documentation, training resources, and job aids that promote consistent use of University academic technologies.
• Support faculty adoption of new or revised academic technologies and digital-learning practices.
• Provide or coordinate targeted training when recurring LMS or course-design issues are identified.

Curriculum & Academic Collaboration

• Work closely with the Director of Curriculum, Assessment & Academic Quality to ensure approved curriculum changes are accurately and timely implemented within University courses.
• Partner with the Associate Provost and academic leadership to prioritize course-development projects based on enrollment, curriculum changes, new program launches, teach-outs, academic-quality needs, and institutional priorities.
• Participate in curriculum planning as appropriate to identify course-development, technology, resource, and implementation implications of proposed changes.
• Establish clear operational handoffs from curriculum approval → academic records → course development → quality assurance → LMS deployment → course launch.
• Collaborate with academic Deans and Directors to ensure course content and digital delivery accurately reflect approved curriculum and program expectations.
• Provide regular updates to Academic Affairs leadership regarding course development, readiness, LMS operations, academic technologies, integrations, and identified risks.

Data, Performance & Continuous Improvement

• Establish and monitor operational KPIs related to course development, course readiness, LMS support, ticket resolution, instructional design productivity, system performance, and academic technology utilization.
• Use LMS data, support trends, faculty feedback, student feedback, and course-review findings to identify opportunities for improvement.
• Prepare recurring reports for Academic Affairs leadership regarding digital-learning operations and course-development performance.
• Recommend improvements to processes, systems, staffing, technologies, and digital-learning practices based on performance data and institutional needs.
• Maintain current knowledge of developments in instructional design, accessibility, online learning, artificial intelligence, academic technology, and digital education.
• Promote continuous improvement and operational efficiency throughout the University's digital-learning environment.

Minimum Qualifications

• Master's degree in Instructional Design, Educational Technology, Instructional Technology, Higher Education, Information Systems, or a related field.
• Minimum of five years of progressively responsible experience in digital learning, LMS administration, instructional design, academic technology, online education, or a related higher-education environment.
• Demonstrated experience administering or providing advanced operational support for an enterprise learning management system.
• Demonstrated experience managing course development and instructional design projects.
• Experience with LTI integrations, publisher platforms, digital textbooks, or comparable third-party instructional technologies.
• Demonstrated experience developing course templates, quality standards, course-development processes, or instructional-design guidelines.
• Demonstrated project-management experience managing multiple simultaneous projects and recurring deadlines.
• Experience supervising instructional designers, academic technology personnel, or related professional staff.
• Knowledge of accessibility principles and effective online-course design practices.
• Strong technical troubleshooting, analytical, and problem-solving skills.
• Demonstrated ability to collaborate effectively with faculty, academic leadership, Registrar personnel, Information Technology professionals, and external vendors.

Preferred Qualifications

• Doctoral degree in related discipline.
• Advanced Blackboard administration experience.
• Experience supporting an institution with rolling or monthly course starts.
• Experience with Quality Matters or another recognized course-quality framework.
• Experience implementing or managing AI-enabled educational technologies.
• Experience developing institutional course style guides and formal course-development processes.
• Experience managing academic technology vendors, services, or contracts.
• Experience with complex LMS integrations and academic technology ecosystems.
• Experience leading large-scale digital-learning or course-development initiatives.

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Physical Requirements

The physical demands described below are representative of those required to successfully perform the essential functions of this position.

• Prolonged periods of sitting and working at a computer.
• Extensive use of learning management systems, academic technologies, computers, and virtual communication platforms.
• Ability to review and evaluate detailed digital-course content and technology configurations for extended periods.
• Ability to facilitate meetings, training sessions, demonstrations, and presentations.
• Ability to communicate effectively through written, verbal, presentation, and virtual communication methods.

Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable qualified individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions of the position.

Work Environment

This position operates primarily in a professional academic and technology-based environment and requires extensive use of the University's LMS, digital-learning technologies, project-management systems, and virtual collaboration tools.

The position requires frequent collaboration with Academic Affairs, faculty, instructional design personnel, the Registrar, Information Technology, and external technology vendors.

Workload may increase significantly before monthly course starts, new program launches, major curriculum implementations, LMS updates, academic technology implementations, and other critical academic deadlines.

Occasional work outside normal business hours may be required to support LMS releases, technology implementations, course launches, or significant digital-learning issues.

Equal Employment Opportunity

Salem University is committed to providing equal employment opportunities to all applicants and employees in accordance with applicable federal, state, and local laws.

Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)

Reasonable accommodation may be made to enable qualified individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions of this position.

Job Description Disclaimer

This job description is intended to describe the general nature and level of work performed by individuals assigned to this position. It is not intended to be an exhaustive list of all duties, responsibilities, or qualifications. Salem University reserves the right to modify responsibilities as institutional needs evolve.