{"id":12147,"date":"2026-07-06T12:26:52","date_gmt":"2026-07-06T16:26:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/online.suny.edu\/onlineteaching\/?p=12147"},"modified":"2026-10-21T14:07:20","modified_gmt":"2026-10-21T18:07:20","slug":"part2-risks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/online.suny.edu\/onlineteaching\/2026\/07\/06\/part2-risks\/","title":{"rendered":"Part 2: When Did We Stop Building Online Courses? \u2013 8 Institutional Risks"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a08 Institutional Risks<\/h2>\n

The question is no longer simply who owns the content. The question is: Who owns the learning experience?<\/em><\/p>\n

In Part 1 of this series<\/a>, I described a troubling development that has begun to emerge in conversations with instructional designers, faculty developers, online learning leaders, and quality reviewers across SUNY: asynchronous online courses in which the learning management system (LMS) contains little more than a syllabus, a few announcements, and a link to a publisher platform where nearly all of the instructional activity takes place.<\/p>\n

This is not an argument against publisher platforms or the valuable instructional resources they provide. Nor is it an argument that all teaching and learning activity must occur within the LMS. External tools can enrich online learning enormously. The concern arises when the institution’s online course becomes little more than an entry point to a commercially developed learning experience, with limited evidence of intentional course design, instructor presence, meaningful interaction, or institutional oversight.<\/p>\n

In Part 1, I suggested that the canary is singing. Here, I want to examine what that warning might mean for institutions and what we can do about it.<\/p>\n

What Is an Online Course?<\/h3>\n

For nearly thirty years, I thought higher education had answered this question.<\/p>\n

An online course is not simply a collection of digital content. It is an intentionally designed educational experience. It reflects the expertise of the instructor. It creates opportunities for learners to interact with ideas, with one another, with their instructor, and with the institution itself. It provides context, guidance, feedback, reflection, interaction, community, support, and belonging.<\/p>\n

These are not arbitrary expectations. They are grounded in decades of scholarship and practice, including the Community of Inquiry framework (Garrison et al., 2000)<\/a>, which emphasizes the interrelationship of social, teaching, and cognitive presences in meaningful online learning experiences.<\/p>\n

The LMS is not simply a repository for files. It is the institutionally supported learning environment where these experiences can be brought together. External platforms can be valuable components of that environment, but they should support rather than displace its educational purpose.<\/p>\n

Or at least, that is how it should work.<\/p>\n

Increasingly, however, I worry that for some courses the LMS has become little more than a hallway leading students somewhere else. And that seemingly subtle shift carries consequences far beyond instructional design.<\/p>\n

\n

Eight Institutional Risks We Can No Longer Ignore<\/h2>\n

1. Pedagogical Risk: When Content Delivery Replaces Teaching<\/h3>\n

The first thing we risk losing is not content. It is teaching<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Publisher platforms can provide high-quality content, assessments, simulations, adaptive learning activities, and automated feedback. These can be enormously useful instructional resources. But when they constitute nearly the entire learning experience, without meaningful instructional design and facilitation by the faculty member, we risk reducing online education to content consumption and assessment completion.<\/p>\n

Teaching involves much more than providing information and measuring whether learners can reproduce it. Faculty contextualize ideas, connect concepts, identify misconceptions, pose questions, challenge assumptions, encourage reflection, facilitate dialogue, and help learners construct understanding.<\/p>\n

When these responsibilities are delegated almost entirely to preconfigured learning pathways and automated assessments, the instructor’s role can become primarily administrative: providing access, monitoring completion, and recording grades.<\/p>\n

There is also an epistemological dimension to this concern. Many publisher platforms are organized around predetermined content sequences, correct answers, and automated measures of mastery. Those approaches can be appropriate for certain learning objectives. But not all learning can be measured or demonstrated in the same way. Learners also need opportunities to question, argue, discuss, support, defend, interact, collaborate, test, interpret, apply, evaluate, construct, and challenge thinking and assumptions.<\/p>\n

My concern is not that publisher platforms necessarily prevent those experiences. It is that they cannot be assumed to provide them simply because they offer a comprehensive package of instructional materials.<\/p>\n

Faculty expertise and pedagogical intentionality must remain central to the learning experience.<\/p>\n

\n

2. Learner Experience Risk: When Students Lose Their Connection to the Institution<\/h3>\n

Learners do not simply enroll in courses. They enroll in institutions.<\/p>\n

That institutional relationship matters. Learners should experience their online courses as part of a coherent educational environment where they can connect with faculty, peers, academic support services, libraries, accessibility resources, and the broader learning community.<\/p>\n

When most instructional activity takes place in a separate commercial environment, that connection can become less visible. Online Learners may experience their course primarily through the publisher’s interface, content sequence, assessments, and automated feedback, with limited opportunities to engage with their instructor or classmates.<\/p>\n

This can also introduce questions of equity and affordability. Some publisher platforms require proprietary access codes or subscriptions that may expire at the end of a term. Students may have fewer opportunities to use lower-cost alternatives, previously purchased materials, or open educational resources. Access problems, additional costs, and the inability to retain course materials can become barriers to learning.<\/p>\n

These are not inevitable consequences of using publisher courseware. They are risks that institutions need to anticipate, evaluate, and address.<\/p>\n

The quality of an online course should be understood not only in terms of the content delivered, but also in terms of the complete experience of being an online learner at the institution.<\/p>\n

\n

3. Quality Risk: When We Lose Sight of What Makes an Online Course Effective<\/h3>\n

For decades, the field of online education has developed research-based practices, quality frameworks, faculty development programs, and instructional design processes to support effective online teaching and learning.<\/p>\n

At SUNY, that work is reflected in the OSCQR rubric and process<\/a>, which support systematic, collaborative review and continuous improvement of online course design and accessibility.<\/p>\n

But what happens when institutions no longer consistently apply online-specific expectations for course design, faculty preparation, instructor presence, interaction, feedback, and accessibility?<\/p>\n

A syllabus, a welcome announcement, and a link to an external platform do not, by themselves, demonstrate that an online course has been intentionally designed to support effective learning.<\/p>\n

At the same time, we must be careful not to confuse LMS activity with instructional quality. An elaborate Brightspace course can still provide a poor learning experience. A course that relies extensively on external tools may be exceptionally well designed and facilitated.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n