Instructional Designer

Northern Illinois University is a student-centered, nationally recognized public research university, with expertise that benefits its region and spans the globe in a wide variety of fields, including the sciences, humanities, arts, business, engineering, education, health and law. Through its main campus in DeKalb, Illinois, and education centers for students and working professionals in Chicago, Hoffman Estates, Naperville, Oregon and Rockford, NIU offers more than 100 courses of study while serving a diverse and international student body.

The Instructional Designer provides multi-tiered instructional design support for credit-bearing courses, alternative credentials, and non-credit offerings. This position collaborates with faculty and academic units to apply program framework requirements, ensure quality standards, and design accessible, engaging, and inclusive learning experiences. In addition, the role supports the creation of revenue-generating learning opportunities and contributes to the development of NIU’s online general education course bundle and other strategic online learning initiatives.

The Instructional Designer will report to the Director of Instructional Design and Development

• Collaborate with faculty, academic departments and staff to support the full lifecycle of instructional design for credit, non-credit, and microcredential courses.
• Apply various learning theories, teaching strategies, instructional design models, best practices in online education, and integrating educational technologies to improve teaching effectiveness and student learning experiences.
• Manage course design projects for the entire course life cycle, including systematic refresh activities.

• Collaborate with project collaborators to ensure courses and credentials meet university priorities, institutional policy, accreditation and compliance requirements, and metrics for student success and retention.
• Support efforts for institutional initiatives around course innovation, online learning strategy, microcredential expansion, including participation in cross-functional collaborations.
• Work with colleges to identify and design flexible, revenue generating learning experiences for adult and non-credit learners preparing to entry competitive career fields.
• Design flexible learning structures that respect adult schedules and prior experience, while mapping learning objectives to professional outcomes.
• Leverage artificial intelligence and subject matter expertise to build interactive modules, case studies, and simulations that align with real-world workplace practices.

• Collaborate with the chairs, faculty, and staff to define program framework requirements.
• Apply project and program-level design and development framework strategies for colleges, departments, and other units in developing online, hybrid courses or on-demand learning experiences.
• Support the development of general education courses that meet graduation requirements for undergraduate online programs with and across different colleges.

• Implement and maintain online quality standards, and contribute to the quality standards assessment of all online courses and learning experiences.
• Assure universal design principles are considered in creating media.

• Support the mission CITL through various instructional design assignments.

1. Bachelor’s degree.
2. A total of one (1) year (12 months) in education, training and/or work experience in the area of specialization inherent to the position.

Note: Note: Master’s Degree in an area consistent with the duties of the position may be substituted for one (1) year of work experience.

1. Master’s degree or significant progress toward a master’s degree in higher education, instructional design, online learning, or related field.
2. Two (2) years of experience in an instructional design role, working with subject matter experts to create online, hybrid, or blended learning courses or content using a learning or content management system or related experience to the hiring unit*.
3. One (1) year of professional experience coordinating complex instructional design projects involving multiple, distinct work products, multiple subject or content experts, and coordination with other designers, developers, and/or media specialists.
4. Knowledge of NIU’s online academic degree-completion, graduate, and certificate programs.
5. Certification in Quality Matters or other similar course quality standards.
6. Excellent written and oral communication skills, planning and organizational abilities, problem solving skills and ability to work collaboratively and collegially.
7. Ability to apply instructional design theory to functional design concepts, practices and methods.

$2,500 - $2,708.33 ($60,000 - $65,000 annualized). Includes generous benefits package.

Posting Date: 11/13/2025

Closing Date: 12/5/2025