The LMS as a Repository…or a Learning Environment
Historically, the LMS often served as a storage space. The “real” teaching happened in the classroom, while the LMS acted as an administrative support system around it. That distinction is no longer as clear.
Today, the LMS determines how students navigate units, access content, revisit concepts, prepare for assessments, and communicate with educators and peers. Often, it not only supports learning but actively shapes it.
This is particularly important when considering students studying across different modes. Online students often receive more extensive LMS support, including recordings, explanatory videos, scaffolded activities, additional resources, and structured asynchronous content.
In contrast, in-person students may receive a reduced version of the LMS because it is assumed “they were there”. However, attendance is not the same as retention, understanding, or engagement. Being physically present in class does not guarantee that learning was fully processed in that moment. Students revisit ideas. They forget concepts. They need repetition, clarification, and opportunities to reconnect with learning over time.
Learning is rarely a single encounter.
The Fear of Empty Classrooms
Much of the resistance to providing equal LMS access stems from a legitimate concern: if everything is available online, students may stop attending in-person sessions. And in some contexts, this does happen.
Recordings can reduce attendance. Uploaded resources can change how students engage with classes. Educators often worry that if the classroom experience is fully replicated online, students will choose convenience instead.
But this concern raises an uncomfortable question. If the value of attending class disappears when resources are uploaded online, what was the value of attendance based on? Was it learning? Interaction? Community? Discussion? Or was it simply scarcity of access?
This is where the conversation becomes more complex.
Restricting access to resources may increase attendance, but higher attendance does not automatically translate into deeper engagement or better learning. As explored in previous pieces, visible participation and physical presence are incomplete indicators of what students are thinking or understanding.
The issue is not whether attendance matters. It does. Shared spaces, interaction, discussion, and immediate feedback all create valuable learning opportunities.
The question is whether withholding resources is the best way to preserve those opportunities.
Students Already Have the Internet
A challenging fact for higher education is that students now have access to nearly limitless information. When they seek clarification, summaries, explanations, or different examples, they can search online, watch videos, participate in forums, or increasingly, rely on AI tools for help.
The question is no longer whether students will access external resources. The question is whether we want them to rely primarily on external resources that are disconnected from the unit’s context.
Providing recordings, explanatory materials, and structured LMS resources does not remove the need for teaching. Instead, it creates opportunities for students to revisit learning through materials that are intentionally connected to the curriculum, assessment, and learning outcomes of the unit.
A recorded explanation from their educator, directly aligned with the unit’s language, examples, and expectations, is fundamentally different from a random online tutorial. In this sense, the LMS becomes less about content delivery and more about the continuity of learning.
Designing for Attendance or Designing for Learning?
This tension ultimately becomes a design question. Sometimes LMS restrictions are framed as pedagogical decisions, but at other times they are behavioural strategies intended to encourage attendance. Slides are withheld, recordings are removed, and resources are limited because making them available is believed to reduce physical participation.
Yet this can create a contradiction. If students attend only because access is restricted, attendance is driven by scarcity rather than by the value of the learning experience itself.
Strong in-person teaching should offer what recordings alone cannot fully replicate: discussion, interaction, immediacy, collaboration, shared meaning-making, and opportunities to engage actively with ideas.
The goal should not be to make resources inaccessible to preserve attendance. It should be to design learning experiences in which attendance remains valuable, even when resources are available.
One LMS or Two?
This does not necessarily mean that online and in-person students require identical experiences. Different modes create different needs. Online students may need additional scaffolding, clearer structure, or more explicit guidance within the LMS. Asynchronous learning environments often require different forms of support and communication. However, this is not the same as restricting access to core learning materials.
Perhaps the question is not whether online and in-person students should have different LMS experiences, but whether the LMS itself should be considered part of the learning design for all students.
Not a backup for teaching. Not a repository for missed classes. But a shared learning environment that supports students before, during, and after class, regardless of the mode.
Rethinking the Divide
The challenge is not deciding whether learning should happen online or in person. It is recognising that learning now moves across spaces, formats, and moments in time. Students revisit ideas after class. They review explanations before assessment. They reconnect concepts weeks later. Increasingly, learning is continuous rather than confined to the classroom itself.
The LMS should not compete with the classroom. It should extend it.
And perhaps the real question is not whether students should have access to learning materials, but why higher education is sometimes still reluctant to give it to them.
Reflection Questions
- What role does the LMS currently play in your teaching: a repository, a supplement, or a learning environment?
- Are restrictions on LMS materials primarily based on pedagogy or on concerns about attendance?
- What opportunities do recordings and online resources offer for deeper learning and revision?
- How do students revisit and consolidate their learning after class in your units?
- Are you designing learning environments with a focus on access, attendance, engagement, or all three?
