When I tell people about Pathwright, I often hear a version of “man, my university’s software sucks, we should use yours.”

Hating your LMS (Learning Management System) is not an uncommon sentiment. Google “[LMS name] sucks” for pretty much any mainstream LMS, and you’ll find outpourings of ire from students and teachers listing all the ways they’ve been screwed by these poorly designed platforms.

While I wish we could help students dealing with crappy LMSs, the problems with the Higher Ed-LMS market run deeper than poor software design.

Below are a few reason why bad LMSs end up at even the most prestigious institutions.

Most mainstream LMSs were designed with little thought given to the students’ experience. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure this out (although it may take one to use the software). This seems like a bizarre choice from the outside since 80–90% of the users of an LMS are students, but it is intentional. Student experience isn’t a top priority to the big LMS vendors because the students are not the ones paying for the LMS!

LMSs are designed for the misinformed 💰people

Imagine a committee (when have committees ever made bad decisions?) composed of administrators, IT people, and the token student and/or teacher. For these committees, due diligence in LMS selection starts with a giant features list (one often found through a Google search or provided by fancy consultants). This list determines the “best” match for them.

I use quotes around “best” because the people helping them make this decision are often aggressive sales staff from LMS companies. As you might imagine, on the LMS side, this leads to an arms race of features— one that plays off the good intentions and fears of the committee.

The committee, with feature-FOMO, throws money at the problem. It’s the LMS that can check all the boxes on the list and that makes the most steakholders (this is a better way to spell it—you know it is)happy that takes the prize.

This leads to LMS software that is a rat’s nest of features that only “power users” can understand. Those features require conferences and time-sucking, on-site training for the primary users (students and teachers) to get any work done. The original committee might even regret their decision, but now they’re trapped by the contract—often a contract that lasts as long as 5 years (light-years in internet time). In the end, this is a losing game for everyone.

So how should universities pick an LMS? Start with the needs of your students and teachers. They are the primary users of the software and unless their needs are being met, you are making an expensive mistake. Below are a few tips for picking an LMS that will serve your school well:

Don’t fall into the money trap. Money won’t necessarily buy you the best software (repeat that 100 times). Also, signing a contract for any longer than one year makes no sense in the modern software world. Don’t do it!

Write a list of features you actually need by talking to the people who’ll actually use the software. You don’t need a pre-made check-sheet or consultant for this. Every university’s needs are different. This will take time and research (but you’re good at research!). The energy will be worth the mistakes it saves you from.

Remember, technology is just a tool. Software alone won’t turn bad teachers into good ones. And teachers are the key. Find software that helps them do their job better and then gets out of their way. They’re the ones helping students learn. And isn’t that why we’re all doing this anyway?

Thousands of teachers use Pathwright every day to design and teach courses to their team, class, or anyone in the world. If you’d like to design a course, we invite you to try out Pathwright for free. You’ve got nothing to lose!

The idea of “teaching” an online course has been largely distorted to mean packaging up a bunch of videos and documents and then focusing all energy towards selling it

The idea of “teaching” an online course has been largely distorted to mean packaging up a bunch of videos and documents and then focusing all energy towards selling it. In real life, this would be like a professor selling you a textbook he wrote along with a few slideshows and then heading out the door.

Content marketers, often motivated by a mythical idea of hands-off content streams as passive revenue gold mines, have found creating online “courses” to be an easy sell. You can spot these kinds of courses by the snake-oil style sales tactics used to sell them: access windows that expire for no good reason, super long sales pages, a pyramid-scheme-like emphasis on buying into a passive-revenue lifestyle, unreasonably high price points with steep limited time discounts, etc.

A whole industry of content marketing experts and course creation platforms has emerged around this fad of using “courses” as a get rich quick scheme. While there’s nothing wrong with creating and selling useful content, calling it a “course” and calling offering it “teaching” is at best an abuse of some important words and at worst deceptive.

So what does great online teaching look like? It’s actually pretty easy to identify — being a great teacher online requires doing the same things you’ve seen your favorite teachers do in the classroom.

Build a path of small steps to reach big goals. They understand where their students’ are first and carefully guide them to achieve their goals one step at a time. Great teachers get in their student’s minds so they can make them better people not so they can get in their wallets.

Design practical projects and exercises. Watching a video isn’t enough. Until we can apply the content, we haven’t learned it. It’s one thing to watch a video demo on baking macaroons and another thing entirely to get in the kitchen and actually do it.

Communicate the cost. Effective teachers calculate what their course costs for students both in terms of time and money. This allows teachers to communicate the necessary investment upfront, which helps students buy-in with confidence knowing the challenges and rewards that lie ahead.

Give accountability and motivation. Staying motivated to learn in an online environment is tough. Great teachers help motivate their students by setting a schedule with reasonable deadlines, evaluating and scoring work, and checking in on how they are doing.

Encourage discussion and collaboration. Include opportunities to learn with and from other people through discussion, debate, and collaboration — not just from passive content.

If that sounds like a lot of work, it is. There’s nothing passive about real teaching. It is as much a craft and art as any other job. And doing the job well comes with immense rewards, as any teacher knows.

The good news is that the internet and technology can and should act as a multiplier to great teaching not a bastardization of it. In fact, at a time when so much great content exists, we need truly excellent teachers more than ever — this is not the time to sell out.

Why Is Your School’s LMS So Bad?

Content Marketing Is Not Teaching

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