A recent LinkedIn post by Flower Darby—referencing Rachel Elliott Rigolino’s Inside Higher Ed article, 'The LMS Is Dead; Long Live Online Teaching'—has reignited a decade-long debate regarding the obsolescence of Learning Management Systems (LMS), formerly known as Course Management Systems (CMS)."
The traditional Learning Management System (LMS)—platforms like Moodle, Canvas, and Brightspace—is currently facing an existential crisis far more severe than the technological disruptions of the past decade. While the LMS remains essential as a "filing cabinet" for administrative record-keeping and regulatory compliance, recent analysis suggests it is functionally obsolete for assessing student knowledge. The emergence of "Agentic AI"—autonomous browsers and agents like Comet, Perplexity, and OpenAI’s Operator—has rendered standard online assessments unsecured and often meaningless. These agents can currently navigate the LMS interface directly, reading course materials and analyzing the underlying code of quiz pages to select answers without human intervention.
The era of students simply copying essay prompts into ChatGPT is over; the machine can now act as the student. In response, many instructors are resorting to "adversarial design," inserting inaccessible visual trivia or "trip wires" into quizzes to catch bots. However, this strategy creates an accessibility nightmare in violation of disability standards and ultimately measures a student's ability to bypass traps rather than their mastery of the subject. The research indicates an imperative for universities to shift away from "tech-centric" patches and toward "human-centric" pedagogy to preserve academic integrity.
The gravity of this moment brings back memories of an old issue dressed in a new form. It is useful to juxtapose the current crisis with the "corporate disruption" of 2017. As noted by analyst Josh Bersin in 2017, the LMS was already being demoted to a "back-office compliance tool" because it was clunky, slow, and failed to engage users accustomed to YouTube and Netflix. Bersin’s critique focused on Experience: the LMS was boring. His proposed solution was to make learning "consumable"—using AI to curate micro-learning and auto-generate quizzes, integrating education seamlessly into the digital "flow of work" via tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams.
However, the very solutions championed in 2017 have inadvertently created the vulnerabilities we face in 2025. Bersin celebrated the efficiency of AI-generated quizzes and seamless digital flow, but today, that seamlessness allows Agentic AI to cheat at scale. The 2017 disruption prioritized speed and passive consumption, effectively "Netflix-ifying" education. While this model works for corporate training—where success is measured by whether an employee viewed a video—it is dangerous for universities, where success is measured by credentialing actual knowledge. If we adopt the "Netflix model," we play directly into the hands of agents’ ability to "consume" content faster than any human.
Comparing these eras reveals a fundamental shift in what we consider "broken" about the LMS. In the 2015–2019 period, critics like Ali Jafari and Saad El Yamani argued the LMS was too isolating. Their solution was to make the LMS "Social," mimicking the connectivity of Facebook or Instagram. In contrast, the critics of 2025, such as Rigolino and Darby, argue the LMS is too automated. The current problem is not a lack of connection, but a lack of verification. Consequently, the proposed solution has shifted from "more tech" to "de-automation"—a return to small class sizes, oral exams, and synchronous human verification.
This divergence highlights the reason for the "LMS is Dead" sentiment of 2025 as distinct from the disruption of the last decade. Both the 2015 academic shift and the 2017 corporate shift assumed more digital engagement was the answer. Jafari believed social networking would drive learning; Bersin believed mobile apps would drive learning. Neither anticipated the automation by agents of digital engagement itself. The "auto-generated" content and frictionless interfaces designed to help humans learn faster are now the exact mechanisms allowing machines to bypass learning entirely.
Therefore, the "Social" and "Mobile" revolutions of the past decade failed to future-proof the LMS because they addressed boredom rather than integrity. The crisis of 2025 is about reality: verifying the presence of a human mind. As a result, the LMS must be demoted. It should be viewed strictly as administrative infrastructure for FERPA/GDPR compliance and grade recording, but it can no longer be trusted as the primary classroom or assessment venue. The "classroom" must move back to human-to-human interaction, whether that occurs in a physical room or via high-touch video conferencing.
For the educational institutions, this necessitates a strategic bifurcation of assessment. Low-stakes LMS quizzes are now essentially open-AI self-checks and should only be used for formative learning. High-stakes summative assessment must move off-platform. This means returning to invigilated in-person exams, oral defenses via Zoom, or blue-book style writing sessions. We cannot rely on software vendors to "patch" these vulnerabilities, nor should we adopt "trip wire" questions that degrade the quality of our education.
Furthermore, we must critically re-evaluate the scalability of online education. The decade-long assumption about online courses' ability to scale infinitely with low overhead is dead. Maintaining integrity in an AI world requires higher labor costs, specifically smaller class caps (around 25 students) to allow for the human interaction necessary to verify identity. The notion of the "auto-graded" massive course is incompatible with the reality of Agentic AI.
While the 2017 disruption successfully killed the LMS as the center of the user experience, it failed to protect the integrity of assessment. Looking toward Spring 2026, one must be skeptical of vendors promising "AI-enhanced" platforms that prioritize speed and ease of use. Educational institutions do not need tools that make it easier to consume content; we need methodologies that make it impossible to fake understanding. The future of our digital transformation is not in better software, but in a strategic retreat to human rigor.
Bersin, J. (2017) Watch Out, Corporate Learning: Here Comes Disruption, Forbes. Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/joshbersin/2017/03/28/watch-out-corporate-learning-here-comes-disruption/ (Accessed: December 15, 2025).
Darby, F. (2025) “Perspective on how outdated LMSs like Canvas and Brightspace are,” LinkedIn, 13 November. Available at: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/flowerdarby_the-lms-is-dead-long-live-online-teaching-activity-7405329180394971136-oHA9/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios&rcm=ACoAAAFYvXgBK8sLMZmD_C_wRe6OF20pFEzK1xY (Accessed: December 15, 2025).
El Yamani, S. (2019) The Post-LMS World: Social, Simple, Modern, Mobile and Student-Centric - EdSurge News, EdSurge. Available at: https://www.edsurge.com/news/2019-04-07-the-post-lms-world-social-simple-modern-mobile-and-student-centric (Accessed: December 15, 2025).
Grush, B.M. (2015) The Move from Course Management to Course Networking -, Campus Technology. Available at: https://campustechnology.com/Articles/2015/08/18/The-Move-from-Course-Management-to-Course-Networking.aspx (Accessed: December 15, 2025).
Rigolino, R.E. (2025) The LMS Is Dead; Long Live Online Teaching, Inside Higher Ed. Available at: https://www.insidehighered.com/opinion/career-advice/teaching/2025/12/12/lms-dead-long-live-online-teaching-opinion (Accessed: December 15, 2025).
15 Dec 2025
