To Centralize or Not to Centralize the Curriculum: An Essential Question for Program Administrators
DJ Kaiser, Webster University, St. Louis, Missouri, USA
In 2011, I joined the faculty of Webster University in St. Louis, Missouri, as the coordinator of a small TESL program. Each course in the curriculum was offered one or two times per year, serving a few dozen students taught by instructors who usually designed their own course. That instructor autonomy came with the responsibility to maintain the quality of each course being taught. When hiring faculty, I needed instructors who could take ownership of their own course, including selecting their own course text and developing their own assessments.
In 2018, I was asked to travel to the Republic of Uzbekistan and identify a university partner to offer our MA in TESL. By September, Webster University was offering the first U.S.-based academic program in Uzbekistan, and I was responsible for directing this program at a distance. I interviewed and hired an initial group of ten instructors, and one trusted colleague flew over to spend the first semester with them. By 2026, we had a faculty of approximately 90 instructors serving more than 1,800 students in Uzbekistan!
One criterion for selecting faculty shifted from identifying faculty who felt comfortable selecting and developing their own materials to identifying those who felt comfortable working with a centralized curriculum. To address this, we added the following question to every interview:
Webster’s TESOL program currently uses a centralized curriculum, where all instructors teach the same content, the same readings, and use the same assessments. What experience do you have with teaching a centralized curriculum? And how comfortable are you with being asked to keep your course consistent with other sections (even if you would prefer to teach in a different way)?
This question reflects a major shift for our program, and what was a major shift for me as a program administrator: the decision to centralize the curriculum and the assessments. This article will explore centralization, using our TESOL program as a single case.
Why Centralize?
This is perhaps the first question one would ask. Over 15 years, we shifted from offering one section of a course at a time to as many as 50 concurrent sections of the same course. As an example, in Summer 2026, our program offered 196 course sections across seven courses, taught by 86 instructors at four locations in Uzbekistan and online. We learned very quickly that students in the program compare notes and have a strong sense of equity. If one section assesses through a series of group projects while another section assigns individual papers, students would literally line up and complain. If one section was assigned an extra 10 pages to read, there would be a formal complaint. When we offer 50 concurrent sections of Teaching English for Specific Purposes, for example, each section uses the same assigned readings, and the assessment expectations are the same (which allows us to collect assessment data from every course section).
What Have Been Some Advantages to Centralization?
First, students have a sense of fairness and equity when they discuss the program with their friends in other sections. Students may still complain about reading several articles or writing their formative and summative assessments, but knowing that every student in every section is required to do the same promotes a sense of fairness.
As class attendance and active participation during class sessions are required, another advantage of the centralized curriculum is that it provides opportunities for students to attend another section the same week if they have a conflict. Our graduate programs run in eight-week terms with weekly four-hour class meetings, designed to accommodate the schedules of working adults, many of whom are working teachers and/or have family care responsibilities. Reducing the number of students who must drop classes and delay the completion of their degree because they cannot meet the attendance requirements is only possible with a centralized curriculum that ensures that each instructor is teaching the same content in the same week (keeping all students on track to prepare them for their assessments).
Our centralized curriculum has the added benefit of having all course readings, assessments, and suggested in-class activities pre-loaded into the learning management system (LMS). Instructors save countless hours of course preparation and instead focus their preparation time on reading the assigned readings and personalizing in-class activities to make their classes more engaging. Newer instructors tend to follow the suggested in-class activities posted in the LMS, while more experienced instructors develop new approaches to work through readings and prepare for assessments. Pre-term virtual meetings through Teams involve walkthroughs of the main topics and assessments for each course, and chat channels for each course allow instructors to ask questions and share resources.
What Have Been Some Disadvantages to Centralization?
Because our program offers the option to take courses in person or through videoconference, centralization had to account for both modalities. The suggested option for in-person handwritten exams was not a viable option for the videoconference modality, so for fairness and equity, all assignments for the program are submitted as electronic documents. The electronic submission of documents for a centralized curriculum for a large program presents challenges for academic integrity. While faculty have centralized their resources for teaching, students can also centralize resources for each other and future cohorts to get through the program. Some of these student resources are helpful, while other resources are designed to help students cheat. Students will share assignments that received high grades and put them through programs that reword or paraphrase to avoid plagiarism detection.
The emergence of generative AI tools created a further disadvantage in addressing issues of academic integrity when using a centralized curriculum. Our TESOL assignments require engagement with course readings, including quoting sources, which these AI tools inadvertently also paraphrase (signaling academic dishonesty). Students will share AI prompts to complete their assignments, so every class includes a series of formative assessments, requiring revision before completing the summative assessment. Revised formative and summative assessments require screenshots of instructor feedback along with comments from students on how they addressed that feedback. As AI tools are not currently capable of taking screenshots or addressing all instructor feedback, these strategies have allowed us to maintain a centralized set of assessments while ensuring academic integrity.
A final disadvantage of a centralized curriculum is the impact of limited flexibility and personalization of the course content for specific groups of learners. A centralized curriculum ensures that teaching and learning materials are aligned with and scaffolded up to the course- and program-level learning outcomes. By doing so, the validity and reliability of the assessment system meet the accreditation requirements of the TESOL master’s program as all students complete the same courses and meet the same competencies. Newer faculty may struggle with this level of alignment. While some instructors may prefer more freedom in their classes, analytic assignment rubrics are continually updated and aligned to the relevant program learning outcomes. We found that standardized and consistent course shells in the LMS are the only viable option.
What Did It Take to Achieve Centralizing our TESOL Curriculum?
Centralization requires additional work. As first the Coordinator and then the Program Director, most of the work was my responsibility. Having already taught nearly every course in the program, I had already developed earlier versions of our assessment system, giving me fundamental yet holistic knowledge that newer or specialized instructors might not have. Curriculum revisions involved unpaid labor, especially closer to the beginning of new terms. Although faculty are involved in providing curriculum feedback, which helped with additional input without increasing the workload of my faculty, pre-term walkthrough meetings are also used as a way to review each course and receive feedback prior to the term starting or before the course is taught the next semester.
Having a centralized curriculum system has been essential for students. Before centralization, some students commented on the time it took to figure out how to navigate the course content in the LMS. With eight-week terms, there is no time to waste. Once one logical course template was created, the same template was used for every course, a change welcomed by all faculty and students. Once they learn to navigate one course, they can navigate the entire program.
Final Thoughts
If someone asked me my preference for a program curriculum approach earlier in my career, my answer would have certainly been not to centralize. At that time, I had the luxury of knowing every student’s name and teaching primarily in-person classes in the United States, where my students could (and would) purchase any textbook I ordered through the bookstore. Opening the first U.S.-based academic program in Uzbekistan and helping build one of the largest global TESOL programs has been a career-changing experience. Centralizing the curriculum to support our hard-working faculty and better guide our busy students was the only logical decision.
Every decision will come with its challenges, and not everyone will agree with the decisions you make. If I have learned anything from 15 years of program administration, it is nearly impossible to make decisions that will make everyone happy. Logic and meeting the needs of the majority come into play. Once you get past serving one or two hundred students, the decision to centralize or not will almost be made for you. Centralization allows for fairness and equity across sections, flexibility for students to attend other sections when needed, and saving valuable class preparation time. A few disadvantages to centralization have been limitations on assessment options, new challenges with academic dishonesty, and limited opportunities for major adaptations to courses to meet students’ needs. However, as I look at the possibility of breaking the 2,000-student mark in the next year or two, I cannot imagine making any other decision.
DJ Kaiser is Professor and Director of TESOL at Webster University. He is the author of Practical Pronunciation: Pronunciation Strategies in Practice (University of Michigan Press, 2026).