General AssemblyTransforming General Assembly’s Flagship Course
General Assembly’s Web Development Immersive (WDI) was the company’s largest revenue-generating course—a 12-week program designed to take students from zero experience to full-stack developers.
But across GA’s 14 global markets, the course was being taught drastically differently, with no centralized curriculum, no underlying systems, and outdated technology choices in some locations. Every instructor was forced to build their own curriculum from scratch, leading to inconsistencies in how students learned and what technologies they were exposed to.
Over the course of seven months, I led the charge to completely redesign the WDI curriculum—standardizing the course across all markets, updating the technology stack, and creating a fully structured, teachable process that could scale worldwide.
The redesign wasn’t just about improving materials—it was about reshaping how General Assembly operated as an educational institution by creating consistency, improving instructor collaboration, and ensuring students left with relevant, real-world skills.
Identifying the Gaps: Instructor Insights & Market Needs
Before jumping into designing a solution, I needed to understand the biggest pain points. My first step was to bring together the instructors, since they were the ones on the front lines, struggling with the inconsistencies.
To do this, I organized two instructor conferences, where teachers from different markets collaborated on:
- Biggest curriculum gaps – What was missing? What wasn’t working?
- Technology alignment – What were instructors teaching? What should they be teaching?
- Instructor pain points – What would make their jobs easier and improve student success?
- Best practices – How could we unify our approach while still allowing flexibility?
- Instructor autonomy – How do we ensure instructors can still bring their own expertise to the classroom without sacrificing standardization?
Key Takeaways from Instructors:
✅ Instructors were frustrated with the lack of centralized materials, but also resistant to change because they had put so much effort into their own approaches.
✅ GA had fallen behind on modern tech like React and Node.js, while some markets still focused on older frameworks like Angular or Backbone.js.
✅ There was zero communication between instructors in different markets—they were all working in silos, unaware of what others were teaching.
✅ Some instructors had created fantastic teaching methods that could be incorporated into the new curriculum if approached correctly.
The biggest challenge wasn’t just redesigning the curriculum—it was getting buy-in from instructors who had built their own versions over the years.
To succeed, I needed to align everyone behind a common vision while ensuring the final product worked for both students and teachers.
Building the New Curriculum: A Structured, Story-Driven Approach
With the input from instructors, I mapped out the technology choices that should be standardized across all markets.
This meant keeping core foundations while introducing necessary modern tools like:
✅ React.js for front-end development
✅ Node.js & Express.js for backend development
✅ PostgreSQL & MongoDB for databases
✅ OAuth, JWT & third-party API integrations
✅ Git & Agile workflows to mirror real-world developer environments
✅ Testing methodologies to ensure students learned best practices beyond basic functionality
Once the tech stack was defined, I structured the curriculum as a progressive, scaffolded learning journey—not just a series of topics, but a story that mirrored how web development itself evolved.
For example:
💡 Students first built static multi-page websites in HTML/CSS, experiencing the frustration of updating multiple hardcoded pages. This naturally introduced the need for a framework like Rails.
💡 As they built out backends, they struggled with complex authentication and data sharing, leading them to understand why APIs and token-based authentication exist.
💡 Instead of just teaching React out of context, students first experienced the limitations of vanilla JavaScript, helping them appreciate why front-end frameworks emerged.
💡 We introduced real-world project structures, simulating professional workflows and the challenges of working in team-based coding environments.
This method didn’t just teach technologies—it helped students feel the pain points that led to their creation, making the learning process more intuitive and meaningful.
Writing the Course: A Massive Undertaking
Once the structure was in place, we needed to write the actual lessons, labs, and assignments.
This was a massive effort that involved:
📝 110,000 words of educational content—equivalent to a full-length novel
💻 365,000 lines of starter & solution code—so instructors had everything they needed to teach effectively
📚 Step-by-step guides for instructors, ensuring lessons could be taught consistently across all markets
📊 Instructor-facing best practice documentation for how to approach lessons effectively
Because I had been one of GA’s highest-rated instructors, I didn’t just write dry technical documentation—I wrote the lessons as if I were in the classroom, making them clear, conversational, and easy to follow.
The goal was for instructors to be able to read through the material ahead of time and feel fully prepared to teach it.
I collaborated with an educational expert and an instructor in London, who provided early drafts and feedback. However, I personally drove the writing and structuring of the full curriculum.
Stakeholder Buy-In & Rollout
Throughout the process, I kept an ongoing feedback loop with instructors across different markets, ensuring they felt heard and involved.
This helped:
✅ Unify instructors who previously worked in isolation
✅ Ensure the curriculum met real teaching needs
✅ Build trust so the rollout wouldn’t feel forced
✅ Reduce the learning curve for instructors, making the transition smoother
At the same time, I worked closely with General Assembly’s product management team in New York to get executive buy-in.
The new curriculum was rolled out first in major markets like New York and Los Angeles before expanding globally.
Impact: A Scalable, Repeatable Learning Experience
Before this overhaul, WDI was fragmented, inconsistent, and outdated.
After seven months of work, I led the transformation into a structured, modern, and repeatable curriculum that:
✅ Standardized all 14 global markets under one unified approach
✅ Brought GA’s tech stack up to date with modern frameworks
✅ Created a fully structured, teachable process that scaled worldwide
✅ Built a new culture of collaboration among instructors, ensuring they worked together instead of in silos
✅ Increased teaching efficiency, reducing instructor prep time
This project didn’t just improve the curriculum—it improved how General Assembly operated as a global educational institution.
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