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Vice President, AP Instructional Design

Advanced Placement & Instruction

Remote, with hybrid options available in New York City or Reston, VA

Type: This is a full-time position

About the Team

The College Board's Advanced Placement and Instruction division (260 staff) develops and administers coursework taken by more than 3 million students worldwide each school year, and the related subject-matter exams utilized by more than 4,000 colleges and universities for course placement and awarding of college credit. These include credit and placement examination programs like CLEP and ACCUplacer; Advanced Placement (AP) and Pre-AP courses in 40+ disciplines; and associated teacher professional learning programs.

The Advanced Placement Program is the largest offering in the division's portfolio, and currently has five departments: Curriculum and Assessment, which develops the course frameworks, designs the exams, and guides the grading and scoring process; Delivery, which manages the annual cycle of transactions with schools - from student registration to exam administration, scoring, and score reporting; Access, which focuses on expanding availability of AP and Pre-AP courses, participation among traditionally underserved students, and supporting teachers; Strategy, which measures and evaluates the program's components and leads the development and implementation of strategic initiatives; and Digital, which leads product development of the Bluebook digital assessment platform, manages the implementation of digital testing for AP Exams, and provides instructional resources via AP Classroom.

This Vice President will establish vision and strategy for the instructional design of AP courses, with a focus on relevance and student engagement while maintaining alignment with standards for college credit. To this end, the Vice President will develop and lead a new department within the AP Program, the Instructional Design department.

About the Opportunity

The AP Instructional Design department will lead the researching, prototyping, and developing of instructional and design requirements for new AP courses and for revisions to expand reach and relevance. This includes analyzing and identifying options for course content, the role of projects and project-based learning in the course or exam, requirements from colleges and state standards, and features that will enhance career readiness and active learning.

To do this you will develop and lead approaches such as, but not limited to, the following:

• Generate clear and nuanced options for new content by casting a wide net to surface competing priorities and opportunities; drawing upon relevant research and cognitive science; identifying and evaluating trade-offs between competing priorities; and applying deep personal expertise in curriculum design and instruction.

   

• Envision and build new instructional models that make AP more relevant and engaging to broader groups of students and makes good instruction easier for teachers.

   

• Develop and refine instructional components for new content and build a team able to do this well, ensuring exemplary design that can be applied at scale.

   

• Run the governance processes (including managing a Project Management Office) to develop and launch new content across AP divisions.

Your Instructional Design department will enact these responsibilities across four design phases:

Analysis phase. Your Instructional Design department will partner with the Strategy department and the College Board's Learning & Ass essment division to conduct curricular and field research. You will generate options and identify trade-offs in various curricular and assessment choices we could make for content, instruction or teacher training and support.

Prototyping and testing phase. The Instructional Design department along with the Strategy department and the Learning ngineering department will develop prototypes based on the success of the research phase to inform requirements for the new content and lead the decision-making process on whether to move forward to content development.

Planning and project management phase. The Instructional Design department's Project Management Office (PMO) will partner with the Curriculum and Assessment, Delivery and Access departments to build a high-level, integrated launch plan and will then manage the project plan across departments to ensure the successful launch of new content.

Content review phase. Your department will partner with Curriculum and Assessment to review the content created by content experts and confirm alignment with the requirements. Additionally, in partnership with both Curriculum and Assessment and Access Departments, you will approve any refinements or changes to the requirements and jointly approve content for launch.

Specific Responsibilities include:

(While the role will evolve to reflect the vision and strategy of this Vice President, a possible breakdown of responsibilities is provided here.)

Curricular Research and Analysis (20%)

• Guide the work of curriculum analysts in evaluating higher education content scope and standards, secondary education state standards, and other considerations essential to defining options for AP course curricula and assessments.
• Develop a summary of the leading options for the new content, delineating which objectives each option best serves.
• This work will be done for all new AP courses, for major redesigns focused on expanding the reach and relevance of the course, and as requested by the AP Curriculum and Assessment department, for AP subjects with specific needs for such analysis.

Prototyping, Testing, and Developing Requirements for New Content (20%)

• Develop prototypes of various components of a new AP course or a new AP resource for educators. These components could include a project; a sample course topic; a roster of course skills; a pedagogical / instructional approach for one segment of the course; an approach to integrating an industry-recognized credential; or an approach to AP teacher training.
• Test prototypes and secure feedback partnering with the Strategy department and the Learning Engineering department in the College Board Learning and Assessment division.
• Develop a set of high-level specifications or requirements for the new content and facilitate approval of those requirements from the other AP departments that will receive and act on those requirements to develop, launch, and manage the ongoing delivery of the new content.
• Guide the AP Leadership Team and the College Board's Office of the CEO through a process to reach a decision on whether to green light the new content for full development and launch in partnership with the Strategy Department.

Planning and Project Managing the Launch of New Content (20%)

• Guide a Project Management Office through the process of collaborating across all AP departments to develop a high-level project plan for the development and launch of new content or instructional approaches.
• Establish and manage project governance for development and launch of new coursework, ensuring appropriate visibility and collaboration and readiness across all teams, inside and outside of AP, on whom the launch will be dependent.

Reviewing and Approving New C ontent (10%)

• Review new content and confirm fulfillment of the content requirements, or to align on needed revisions to those requirements that become clear during the development or piloting processes, in partnership with the Curriculum and Assessment and Access departments.

Leadership, Team Management, Public Representation, and Field Work (30%)

• Effectively manage a high-performing, remote team of 10 curricular researchers, instructional designers, and project managers, 5 of whom are direct re