About the Role:

° The successful candidates will join the Academy team, spearheading CfA’s capacity building initiatives with over 30 leading African universities, as well as a range of mainstream newsrooms and civil society partners to deliver e-learning courses.

° A major focus for the role will be to build modular courses, with core lessons teaching key skills, complemented by elective modules that offer topic/tool-specific add-on skills. CfA courseware is intended to be flexible enough to be easily customised or repackaged for different audiences by our in-country staff trainers or university partners. The MOOC courseware also serves as the master curriculum for teaching kits for our in-person/offline training workshops, as well as template course materials for our university partners.

° CfA’s instructional designer will be responsible for benchmarking our learning materials on global best practices, and will also lead our joint development of new courses with both internal and external stakeholders to create learning solutions on CfA’s platform, academy.AFRICA and other global e-learning platforms like Coursera and Udemy. 

° The candidate should have strong analysis and critical thinking skills, as our projects are varied and fast-paced, so you need to quickly understand and learn new things. You will need to possess a keen attention to detail and a good eye for both quality and aesthetics. You should be comfortable handling multiple tasks with multiple ongoing deadlines and should have previous experience working on the digital collaboration tools that CfA uses, such as Slack, Google Drive, and Trello.

Responsibilities: Your daily responsibilities will include:

° Conceptualising and designing master curricula, in consultation with CfA programme teams and external domain experts, for modular, task-driven experiential courses that function as both self-directed e-learning and as in-person courseware of instructors.

° Developing courseware support materials, including facilitator guides and user manuals; participant materials and exercises/assignments; and course handouts/toolkits. 

° Designing and developing digital training materials, including e-learning modules, videos, and other resources.

° Repackaging the master curriculum for offline/in-person interactive presentation, including developing presentation slides (PowerPoint, etc) with instructor talking points/notes; class handouts and participant handbooks, etc.

° Cultivate and manage a pool of thematic experts that CfA can call upon to co-author courses and/or present flagship classes.

° Working closely with trainers and subject matter experts to ensure that training materials are accurate, engaging, and effective

° Monitor overall usage/completion rates and trends for CfA’s online MOOC and other webinar-based learning programmes, to offer actionable insights to improve the effectiveness of CfA’s Academy programmes and courseware.

° Incorporating best practices in instructional design, including interactive elements, assessments, and multimedia content

° Support trainers and partners with accessible, user-friendly learning resources.

° Stay ahead of trends in digital pedagogy and recommend innovations.

Required: minimum requirements include:

° Qualifications or significant proven expertise in learning sciences, and specifically mass open online course (MOOC) design, instructional design and learning technologies or Information architecture, evidence-based education, and/or related fields.

° Experience with using multimedia and online web instructional materials, especially for a web-based Learning Management System (LMS) such as WordPress’ LearnDash platform.

° Ability to write clear, engaging, and conversational learning content.

° Experience assessing training needs, writing lesson objectives, and storyboarding course outlines/learning journeys. 

° Ability to work creatively with excellent attention to detail.

° Ability to multitask and self-organise, and prioritise work when managing multiple timelines and schedules.

° Preferred: candidates who are able to demonstrate the following will have an advantage:

° Proven experience in instructional design for large-scale e-learning programmes or MOOCs (Coursera, edX, Udemy, or similar platforms)

° Experience with developing courseware formats for new communication channels, including using mobile platforms like WhatsApp or equivalent social messaging platforms.

° The ability to communicate and work effectively with curriculum or domain experts and project team members who work remotely and in different time zones.

° Skills in multimedia production (infographics, video scripting, animation).

° Experience with design tools (Canva, InDesign, VideoScribe, audio/narration editing tools).

° Proven ability to repurpose learning for multiple formats (self-paced, tutor-led, blended).

° Experience in remote collaboration tools, including Slack, Google Drive, and Trello to manage workflows.

° Bilingual (French/Arabic) is an advantage

Language and Location Requirements:

° Location: South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria or anywhere else in Africa

° Languages: English

° Preferred but not required: French and/or Arabic