The Assumption That Costs Universities More Than They Realize
When a university decides to build or convert an online program, the most common approach is to hand the work to faculty. After all, they know the subject well and have taught it for years, sometimes even decades. They have the credentials, the research background, and the classroom experience. On paper, they seem like the obvious choice.
However, the problem is that knowing a subject deeply and knowing how to design learning around it are two completely different skills. And most institutions don’t make that distinction until something has already gone wrong.
How Faculty Teach vs. How People Learn
Faculty tend to teach the way they were taught, through lectures, readings, and assessments that test how well students absorbed the material. In a traditional classroom, an experienced professor can compensate for structural gaps in real time. They read the room, slow down when students look confused, spark a discussion that wasn’t planned, and adjust on the fly.
Unfortunately, none of that works in an online course. There is no room to read, no spontaneous discussion; therefore, what you build is what learners get, and if the structure isn’t doing the work, nothing else will make up for it.
On top of that, many faculty approach course design by thinking about what they need to cover rather than what learners need to be able to do by the end of the course. Those are very different starting points, and they lead to very different courses.
What Faculty Often Miss
This is not a criticism of faculty. Most of them are exceptional at what they do. But instructional design is a discipline with its own body of knowledge, and without training in it, even the most experienced professor will have blind spots.
- Learning objectives that aren’t actually measurable. Most faculty write objectives, but far fewer write objectives that clearly define what a learner will be able to do, under what conditions, and to what standard. “Students will understand the principles of X” is not a measurable objective. It gives learners no clear target and gives the course no clear direction. A well-written objective uses action verbs tied to specific, observable outcomes: “Students will analyze a case study and identify three contributing factors using course frameworks.” That kind of precision shapes everything downstream, from the activities you design to the assessments you build.
- Assessments that stay at the surface level. Faculty are generally comfortable writing knowledge-check questions: multiple choice, true/false, fill in the blank. While these have their place, they only test recall. Strong instructional design draws on Bloom’s Taxonomy to build assessments that move learners up through levels of thinking: from remembering and understanding, to applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating. A course that claims to develop critical thinking but only assesses recall is not delivering what it promises.
- Content without a learning arc. Covering topics in a logical sequence is not the same as designing a learning progression. Faculty often build courses organized by subject matter rather than by how understanding develops. Week one covers concept A, week two covers concept B, and so on. But learners don’t build capability that way. Strong course design maps out how ideas connect, where practice needs to happen, how complexity should increase over time, and where learners need to consolidate understanding before moving forward.
- Too much content, not enough application. Because faculty think deeply about their subject, they often err on the side of more. More readings, more videos, more information. The result is cognitive overload without enough opportunity to actually use what’s been learned. Good instructional design follows a principle that most faculty haven’t encountered formally: learning happens through retrieval and application, not exposure. The course should spend as much time asking learners to do something with the material as it does presenting it.
- Feedback that comes too late or not at all. In a face-to-face class, feedback is constant and informal. Online, it has to be deliberately built into the course. Without structured checkpoints, learners can spend weeks going in the wrong direction without knowing it. Formative assessment, low-stakes practice activities, and timely instructor feedback aren’t extras, but are core design elements that determine whether learning actually sticks.
- Activities that don’t connect to outcomes. Discussion boards, reflection prompts, and group projects appear in many online courses because they are common, not because they were chosen for a specific instructional purpose. When activities aren’t tied back to clear learning outcomes, they become busy work. Every activity in a well-designed course earns its place by doing specific work in the learning process.
What This Looks Like in Practice
A faculty member building their own online course will typically produce something that reflects how they think about their discipline. The content will be accurate and often impressive in depth, the structure will follow the logic of the subject matter, and the assessments will test whether students read and paid attention.
However, a deliberate learning architecture is frequently missing. The kind of structure that asks: what do learners already know coming in? Where are they likely to get stuck? What does application look like in this field? How do we know by the end that real learning has happened, not just content consumption?
Those questions are the starting point for instructional design and rarely come naturally to someone whose expertise is in a subject area rather than in how people learn.
Why This Matters for Your Institution
Today, online programs are under more scrutiny than ever. Students are paying significant tuition for degrees they expect to be rigorous and career-relevant. Accreditation bodies are raising standards for online course quality. And in a competitive market, programs that deliver a genuinely strong learning experience retain students and build reputation, while programs that don’t, lose both.
Handing course development entirely to faculty, without instructional design support, is a structural gap. It puts the quality of your program at the mercy of skills your faculty were never trained to develop. That’s a reflection on how the work is being resourced.
The institutions that get this right treat instructional design as a professional function, instead if an afterthought. They bring in people who understand how learning works, partner them with faculty who understand the subject, and build courses that are strong on both fronts.
Let’s Talk About Your Program
If your institution is developing new online courses or converting existing programs, the single most important investment you can make is in the design process before content gets built.
I work with universities and colleges to build that process, partnering with your faculty to bring instructional design expertise to course development without taking ownership of the subject matter away from the people who know it best.
Get in touch through the contact form on my website at https://yourelearningworld.com/contact/ and let’s talk about what your program needs.
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