Consistency Without Conformity

September 29th, 2026

By Lindsey Lewandowski Robinson, Learning Experience Designer Sr.

How do we scale courses without sacrificing quality, rigor, or the student experience?

During my time at Fulton Schools of Engineering, I’ve seen that effective scaling is possible, but it has to be intentional. The goal is not to make every course, section, or instructor the same. It is to create a coherent learning experience for students while preserving the professional judgment, expertise, and autonomy of faculty.

This work is especially important for programs that rely on multiple instructors to teach the same course across different sections, campuses, formats, or modalities. One instructor may be teaching an online section, another may be facilitating a hybrid section, and others may be teaching in person. While students may experience the course in different ways, they are often working toward the same learning outcomes and moving through the same curriculum pathway. That creates both an opportunity and a responsibility to provide a coherent student experience while still honoring the different ways instructors teach.

Consistency does not have to mean conformity.

I think about this work through three connected ideas: consistency, alignment, and flexibility. Consistency gives students recognizable structures, terminology, resources, expectations, and learning pathways. Alignment helps ensure that courses and sections reinforce key concepts, support program-level outcomes, and avoid unnecessary duplication or gaps. Flexibility gives instructors room to make pedagogical decisions, adapt examples and activities, respond to student needs, and bring their own expertise into the course.

This distinction matters because scaling can sometimes be misunderstood as standardizing every instructional choice. That is not the intent. A strongly scaled course model should not replace instructor voice or reduce faculty to facilitators of a fixed script. Instead, it should clarify the shared foundations students need, while making space for instructors to teach in ways that are responsive, discipline-specific, and authentic to their expertise.

That is the heart of consistency without conformity: deciding together what should be held steady for students and what should remain flexible for instructors.

In practice, this might mean holding some elements consistent across sections while preserving faculty autonomy in others:

Shared for Student Coherence	Flexible for Instructor Autonomy
Course learning outcomes	Modality-specific teaching approaches
Major assessments or assessment criteria	Examples and applications
Common communication about major course expectations	Instructor presence and communication style
Key terminology and concepts	Discipline-specific connections
Shared student support resources	Facilitation strategies
Assignment language and expectations	Varied deliverable formats

This approach gives students a reliable foundation. They know where to find materials, how expectations are communicated, what resources are available, and how the course connects to broader learning goals. At the same time, instructors retain meaningful professional autonomy. They can respond to student needs, draw on current examples, adapt facilitation, emphasize disciplinary connections, and teach in ways that reflect their judgment and strengths.

For me, the practical takeaway is that scaled course design should begin with a careful conversation about purpose. Before deciding what should be shared, course teams should ask:

What do students need to experience consistently in order to be successful, and where does instructor choice strengthen learning?

That question shifts the focus away from control and toward coherence. It also helps teams avoid over-standardizing elements that benefit from instructor discretion. Not every discussion, example, announcement, activity, or engagement strategy needs to be applied across sections. In many cases, those differences are not only acceptable, but valuable. What matters is that students encounter clear expectations, aligned assessments, accessible materials, and an intuitive pathway through the course.

A few practical takeaways stand out:

Define the shared foundation early.
Course teams can identify the elements that benefit students when they are consistent across sections or modalities, such as outcomes, major assessments, grading criteria, required technologies, accessibility standards, and core resources.
Name the areas of faculty choice explicitly.
Instructors should know where they have room to adapt. This might include examples, case studies, discussion approaches, engagement strategies, supplemental materials, pacing decisions, or modality-specific facilitation.
Use Canvas structure as a student success tool.
Consistent navigation, module organization, naming conventions, and assignment formatting can reduce cognitive load for students, especially in large or multi-section courses, without dictating how instructors teach.
Align assessments while preserving instructor judgment.
Shared rubrics, common criteria, or coordinated assessment designs can support rigor and comparability while still allowing instructors to contextualize feedback, emphasize course-specific connections, and make informed instructional decisions.
Create shared resources as supports, not scripts.
Scaled course materials should function as strong foundations that save time, support quality, and make thoughtful adaptation easier. They should not be treated as a fixed script that removes instructor expertise from the learning experience.
Build in regular coordination points.
Course teams benefit from structured opportunities to compare what is working, identify student pain points, review data, and make timely adjustments. These conversations should support shared improvement, not compliance.
Make modality differences visible and intentional.
Online, hybrid, and in-person sections may need different facilitation strategies, pacing structures, or engagement methods. The goal is not to make these modalities identical, but to ensure that students have equitable access to the same core learning goals and support structures.
Treat consistency as an equity practice.
When expectations, resources, accessibility practices, and support pathways vary too widely across sections, students can have uneven learning experiences. Thoughtful consistency helps make the course more navigable and fair while still honoring instructor autonomy.

Faculty can and should collaborate around shared course foundations, resources, and expectations while maintaining autonomy in how they facilitate learning. In this model, the goal is not about enforcing sameness. It is about supporting alignment, communication, collaboration, and continuous improvement across a course team.

As we continue to scale engineering education, I do not think the real choice is between consistency and academic freedom. The better question is:

What should we intentionally hold consistent for students, and where does faculty flexibility add value?

Answering that question together can help us grow without losing sight of quality, rigor, academic freedom, or the students we serve.

_{Author’s Note: This article was drafted with the assistance of a generative AI tool to support wording and formatting; content generated by AI has been reviewed and approved by the author}.

References

Fulton Schools of Engineering Learning and Teaching Hub. (2026, June 2). Building better courses together: Insights from Lindsey Lewandowski Robinson and Amy Janiczek. https://lth.engineering.asu.edu/2026/06/building-better-courses-together-insights-from-lindsey-lewandowski-robinson-and-amy-janiczek/