As the founder of Faculty Job Tools and Babb Education, I’ve spent years helping educators land new roles and pivot into institutions that better reflect their values and teaching philosophies. Time and again, when I ask faculty why they’re looking for a new position, their responses reveal a troubling pattern. It’s rarely about money or title. Most often, it’s because they’re frustrated with their institution’s course design, technological disconnect, too many synchronous lectures leaving no work life balance, or the sheer lack of clarity around expectations. I’ll touch on some of these.
At Babb Education, my instructional design team works with colleges and universities across North America to rebuild those same course structures. We've seen firsthand how poor design drives out good faculty—and how excellent design not only improves student outcomes but increases faculty satisfaction, retention, and performance.
If you're leading academic affairs, online learning, or instructional design, here are five takeaways we believe matter—because your best instructors are paying attention to all of them.
1. When Courses Are Poorly Designed, Faculty Carry the Burden
When a course lacks alignment, scaffolding, terribly integrated labs, integrated textbooks where faculty are left managing codes, or logical progression, students don’t blame the designer—they blame the professor. Faculty then spend hours of time fixing problems on the fly: rewriting assessments, correcting ambiguous rubrics, recording explanation videos for broken assignments, and fielding student complaints about inconsistencies.
And that's not sustainable.
We’ve worked with universities where top-tier adjuncts (and even full-time faculty) walked away—not because they disliked teaching, but because the stress of cleaning up a poorly designed course was greater than the paycheck.
2. Templates Are Great—Until They're Shackles
Most instructional design teams work from templates, and that's not inherently bad. We often do too. In fact, consistency is critical for accessibility and navigation. But when templates become inflexible checklists, and designers aren't allowed to deviate even when pedagogy demands it, the result is a rigid course that frustrates faculty and fails students.
Faculty and students notice when every class feels the same. And they especially notice when the learning materials feel disconnected from the actual discipline or audience. Instructional design must strike a balance between structure and academic freedom—otherwise, educators feel silenced by the very tools meant to support them.
3. The Interface Is the Instruction
We often forget: for online and hybrid courses, the LMS is the classroom. If that classroom is a mess—cluttered, inconsistent, or hard to navigate—students will disengage and instructors will receive the backlash. We've helped institutions rebuild course shells that were visually overwhelming or missing key navigational cues, resulting in improved retention and faculty course evaluations.
When design doesn't reflect user experience best practices, when hyperlinks are buried or module names are misleading, instructors suffer—because students turn to them, expecting clarity. Design should never be an obstacle to teaching.
4. Faculty Want Clear Expectations—and So Do Students
A common complaint we hear from job-seeking faculty is the constant confusion around assignment purpose, grading criteria, and weekly workload, including synchronous hours for online courses and poorly integrated third parties. Many courses we review as part of our rebuild work lack clarity around:
- What each activity is meant to accomplish
- How discussions or reflections will be evaluated
- What students are expected to demonstrate week-to-week
This hurts students and frustrates instructors, especially when faculty are required to enforce unclear policies or grade against vague rubrics. Every course should tell a clear story: why something is included, what it teaches, how it's assessed, and how it connects to broader learning goals.
5. Design Drives Retention—for Students and Faculty
Students aren't the only ones dropping out of classes. When courses are clunky, inconsistent, or misaligned, faculty check out too—emotionally first, then contractually. We've seen it again and again: the more intuitive and aligned a course is, the more engaged instructors become. They stop spending time fixing broken shells and start investing in meaningful student interactions.
Great course design isn't just about pedagogy—it's about operational clarity, emotional engagement, and institutional alignment. When faculty feel like valued collaborators instead of cleanup crews, they stay. They innovate. They lead.
Babb Education: Where Design Meets Impact
At Babb Education, we work with institutions to rebuild courses that faculty are proud to teach and students are excited to take. Our instructional designers don't just plug content into templates (although we do load courses, too)—we collaborate with your SMEs, map outcomes to real-world deliverables, and prioritize both clarity and usability.
From curriculum architecture to interface experience, we ensure every box is checked—so your faculty stop looking for the exit, and start building the future of education with you.
Let us help you design courses that faculty don't just teach—but believe in.
