Course Builder (Contract)

ABOUT THE WORK The Course Builder takes a finished, approved course guide and builds the live course in the client's learning management system. This is the step where a design document becomes something students can actually use, and it is more craft than data entry: consistency, accessibility and behaviour under real conditions all get decided here. Work is contracted per course. Most builds are Canvas or Brightspace. Most of the work is independent, but it is not isolated. You will work closely with the instructional designer who wrote the guide, and you should expect to be on a call with the client from time to time. WHAT YOU WILL DO Build Build the course in the LMS from the approved course guide: modules, pages, assignments, quizzes, discussions, files and navigation, following the client's template and structure. Work in batches. Most courses are built in two or more passes rather than all at once, so you will be building one batch while the designer is still finishing the next. Package and embed interactive content, including SCORM and xAPI packages from Articulate Rise or Storyline, and H5P activities built directly in the LMS. Apply client branding and keep it consistent: banners, icons, page structure, naming conventions and formatting. Check accessibility: alt text on images and graphics, colour contrast, heading structure, reading order, keyboard navigation and accessible media controls. Remediating accessibility defects in your own build is part of the work, not a change order. Test the build. Confirm links work, quizzes score correctly, embedded content renders across devices and browsers, and nothing is left unpublished that should be live, or published that should not. Meetings and collaboration Attend client calls and project meetings as necessary, or as stated in your contract. On several of our projects the client reviews the built course live, and the builder is the person who can answer what was done and why. Process Work the fixes list with the designer and the lead. Fixes get logged in one place, not by email or chat, and you confirm each one before sign off. Keep your build status current in the project system so the PM and the designer can see where a course actually is. Flag what you cannot resolve. If the course guide is ambiguous or an activity cannot be built as specified, raise it rather than guessing or quietly leaving it out. HOW THE ENGAGEMENT WORKS Contracted per course under a work for hire agreement. Deliverables are owned by the client. Paid a fixed fee per course at defined milestones, on acceptance. Not hourly, no timesheet. A defined number of fix rounds is included in the fee. The count and the turnaround we expect from you are stated in your contract. Fixes arising from your own build errors are not a separate round. Build work is calendar driven and often compressed. A batch lands and the build window is short, because the client's review date does not move when the designer is late. You will be given access to the client's LMS, which may come with its own rules. Some clients provide guest or limited accounts, and we will tell you what you can and cannot do in them. You will work in our systems too: Google Workspace, Slack, and the project system. We use AI assisted build tooling on some projects. You do not need to bring it, but you do need to be willing to work within the process we use, including our rules about client content and external tools. We expect a reply to email and Slack within one business day during an active build window. WHAT YOU WILL BRING Hands-on experience building courses in Canvas or Brightspace, including quizzes, assignments and graded items. Experience with SCORM or xAPI packages and how they behave once uploaded into an LMS. Real attention to detail. This role is noticed when it is done badly and invisible when it is done well. Working knowledge of accessibility requirements (WCAG 2.1 AA) and how to meet them in an LMS rather than in theory. The discipline to follow a template and a build guide exactly, and to ask when something is unclear. Availability for occasional scheduled calls, including client-facing ones, during US business hours. Candour about what you have not built. If you have never built an H5P activity or never packaged a Storyline file into Brightspace, tell us in the application. We will still want to talk to you. Finding out mid-project is the problem. NICE TO HAVE H5P experience, particularly interactive content types built natively in Canvas: matching, sorting, drag and drop, interactive video and branching scenarios. This is a current gap on our team and is genuinely valuable. Articulate Rise or Storyline, enough to publish and troubleshoot a package rather than to author from scratch. Basic HTML and CSS for cases where the LMS editor is not enough. Experience with Cidi Labs DesignPLUS or similar Canvas design tools. Experience using AI assisted build tooling. Experience finishing a build someone else started. Originally posted on Himalayas Course-Builder, ELearning-Developer, LMS-Developer, Learning-Experience-Engineer, Instructional-Designer, Course-Build-Developer, Course-Developer, Curriculum-Contractor, Course-Designer, Course-Development