The Role: 

The Director of Learning Engagement Research will work closely with our Chief Academic Officer to set the strategy for the development and optimization of a new measure of “student learning engagement.” Based on this strategy, you will lead the design, development, validation, and reporting of this new measure from testing to its use as a corporate-level metric for reporting to our board of directors. You will eat, sleep, and breathe this work from inception through iterative improvements until we are satisfied that we are accurately measuring the degree to which students are authentically motivated to engage in learning. Then you’ll lead our efforts to articulate its correlation to on-platform behaviors and our work to identify and test methods to optimize it. 

Why You’ll Love This Role:

You will have an unprecedented opportunity to lead the development of a new KPI that will anchor the way our organization thinks about, talks about, and most importantly - sets targets against on a quarterly basis - the impact that our products and services have on student engagement. This responsibility is not for the faint of heart. It is a complicated, multi-faceted undertaking that will require experience measuring student engagement, experience optimizing student product experiences, experience conducting in-product research on learning, and evidence of a commitment to equitable, inclusive research methods. The result of these efforts will impact the learning experiences of millions of students.

Why We’ll Love You:

You have 10+ years experience in conducting learning science research in a product context, with numerous examples of how you led the successful design of learning studies that produced valid results, and how you communicated those results to leadership in order to inform product strategy and development. You’ve grown and led a high-performing team that worked in close partnership with stakeholders from across the organization (product, marketing, sales, technology, etc.) at a rapid pace to produce actionable results that were eagerly consumed by partners. Your team’s work has led to measurable improvements in the key outcomes that the product and services teams were responsible for. In addition to developing rich research studies and practices, you’re able to translate key findings and challenges to a variety of audiences, and can skillfully code-switch between technical and non-technical language to communicate product and research needs. You’re also an expert project manager, with a demonstrated ability to handle multiple concurrent workflows with both near- and long-term priorities and deadlines.

About Newsela:

One of the fastest growing tech companies in K-12 education, Newsela was founded on the principle that while every child may have unique learning preferences, they all deserve a rich learning experience that ignites a love of learning. We built our platform based on learning science research to deliver the most engaging, authentic content to modernize how teaching happens in the classroom. Along with interactive assessments and tools, we provide teachers with digital content at five reading levels -- from +100 of the best sources -- that is relevant to the diverse backgrounds and interests of their students. Since we started in 2013, we’ve established a presence in 90% of U.S. K-12 schools and over 2.5M teachers and 37M students have registered with Newsela.