Guidance for Faculty: Evaluating Publisher or 3rd-Party Learning Platforms

Publisher platforms, such as Pearson MyLab, McGraw-Hill Connect, Cengage MindTap, or Macmillan Achieve, may appear convenient, but they come with significant challenges. At their core, these platforms shift teaching away from faculty and toward a commercial product.

Remember: The textbook or platform is not the course. The course is defined by the Course Outline of Record (COR).

It is the faculty member’s role to design the learning environment, select appropriate materials, and ensure students have equitable access to learning. When you rely heavily on a publisher, you give up academic freedom, reduce student connection, and outsource your teaching role to a company whose goal is profit, not student success.

Review:

Acceptable Use of Publisher Content

Publisher materials may provide useful starting points, such as PowerPoint slides, quiz banks, or learning activities. Faculty may adapt these resources to align with the Course Outline of Record (COR) and their own teaching style. Acceptable use of publisher content includes:

Supplemental use: Incorporating selected publisher materials into a course designed and owned by the faculty member, rather than outsourcing the entire course.
Adaptation: Revising, customizing, or reorganizing publisher resources to fit your COR and teaching approach.
Free or low-cost resources: Using publisher-provided materials when they are freely available to students or provided at no additional burden.
Academic freedom preserved: Faculty should avoid platforms or materials that cannot be modified, adapted, or repurposed for their specific instructional goals.

⚠️ Red Flag: If a publisher restricts your ability to adapt or revise their materials, or requires students to purchase access codes for basic course participation, this is a signal that the material is not consistent with best practices at Palomar.

Important Considerations When Choosing Publisher Platforms

Accessibility

Accessible design is required by law and is essential to equity. Many publisher platforms are not fully accessible, leaving students with disabilities unable to participate and forcing faculty to individually “fix” materials provided to them by a publisher. Publishers often continue to sell inaccessible products until pressured to change.

Questions to ask:

Has the publisher provided a current VPAT/ACR (Accessibility Conformance Report)?
Will students who rely on screen readers, captions, alt text, or keyboard navigation have equal access?
Are you prepared to remediate inaccessible materials yourself if the platform fails?

Before we incorporate publisher material into our courses, it is our responsibility to rigorously test that material to ensure it's accessible.

Curious what happens when colleges use inaccessible platforms for learning? The Los Angeles Community College District lost a discrimination lawsuit filed by the Office of Civil Rights by two blind students because they were using Pearson MyLab and it was not accessible (Payan v. Los Angeles Community College District, No. 19-56111 (9th Cir. 2021)).

Security and Privacy

When course activities occur in publisher platforms, student data is collected and stored outside of Palomar’s systems. This raises concerns about data security and FERPA compliance.

Questions to ask:

How is student data collected, stored, and shared?
Has the platform undergone a HECVAT security review?
Does using this tool align with district privacy and data protection standards?

No Palomar Support

Palomar’s Academic Technology Resource Center (ATRC) can only support Canvas and learning that occurs in Canvas. Publisher platforms are external systems. If something goes wrong, you and your students must rely on the publisher’s help desk.

Questions to ask:

Who will students contact if they’re locked out during a quiz, you or a corporate help line?
How quickly can students expect issues to be resolved?
Will student success depend on vendor responsiveness rather than faculty guidance?

Cost to Students

Publisher access codes are expensive, disposable, and non-transferable. A single code can cost $90–$120, and most expire at the term’s end. For students taking multiple courses, the cost can exceed $400 per semester, disproportionately burdening low-income, first-generation, and Latinx students. And, students are required to pay for something that they don't get to keep or resell.

Questions to ask:

What is the total per-student cost?
Will students be forced to purchase access just to complete homework or exams?
Does this create inequitable barriers in your classroom?

Alignment with the Course Outline of Record (COR)

The Course Outline of Record (COR) sets the objectives and learning outcomes, not the publisher. Too often, faculty bend their courses to fit the publisher’s product instead of designing the course themselves. This is outsourcing education, and it compromises both academic freedom and the student experience.

Questions to ask:

Does this platform actually align with your COR, or are you adjusting your teaching to match their structure?
Are you teaching your course, or the publisher’s course?
Could you create a better, more inclusive learning environment if you designed it yourself?

Student Experience: Another new tool? Where is my teacher?

Every publisher platform adds a learning curve, and often another login and password. Students may juggle multiple systems across their courses, which can be overwhelming. Many also report feeling disconnected in classes that rely heavily on publisher tools, as though they are being taught by the program instead of their professor.

Questions to ask:

How many platforms will your students be expected to master?
Will students feel supported by you or left to navigate a corporate program?
Will students wonder, "Where is my teacher"?

Device and Platform Compatibility

Students use a wide range of devices, such as laptops, tablets, Chromebooks, and phones, and other operating systems such as Windows or macOS. Many publisher platforms perform poorly or inconsistently across these devices, creating inequitable access. Canvas, by contrast, is fully supported on all major devices and operating systems.

As the faculty member choosing to use an external tool, you are then choosing to understand the student experience using their devices to access the tool. To do this, be sure to do your own testing through desktop, Canvas App, and Canvas Mobile to understand your students' experience.

Questions to ask:

Can students participate equally, whether they are on a mobile device, tablet, or desktop?
Are there limitations for Chromebooks, iOS, or Android users?
Have you provided clear guidance so students understand how to access the platform effectively?

Regular and Substantive Interaction

Publisher platforms do not count toward RSI requirements. Federal and state law require online classes to include meaningful interaction between faculty and students, and this must be observable within the official Canvas classroom.

Questions to ask:

How will you design RSI in Canvas to meet Title 5 and accreditation requirements?
Will students experience you as present and engaged—or as absent behind a publisher’s system?

Note: During an accreditation visit, online classes are randomly selected for observation by an accreditation team. The team will be granted access to the previous semester's courses for viewing. The accreditation team must be able to easily observe RSI in the official Canvas classroom.

Grade Considerations

When grades are maintained outside of Palomar’s approved LMS faculty face unique challenges that impact not only grading logistics but also teaching integrity and student engagement.

Key Considerations:

Decoupling Grades from the Institutional LMS Affects Transparency and Control:
When grades are not integrated into Canvas, students must navigate multiple platforms to track their progress, creating potential confusion and reducing transparency. Faculty lose direct control over grade management workflows, which can hinder timely and clear communication of performance.
Academic Freedom and Course Integrity Are at Risk:
Publisher platforms often come with preset assignments, quizzes, and grading schemas that may not align fully with the Course Outline of Record (COR). Relying heavily on these tools risks diluting the faculty member’s ability to tailor assessments and learning experiences to meet specific course objectives and standards.
Equity and Accessibility Concerns:
Not all students may have equal access or familiarity with third-party platforms, especially when these systems require additional logins, fees, or technology. This can create barriers to equitable learning, which runs counter to faculty responsibility in designing inclusive environments.
Shifting Teaching Roles to Commercial Entities:
Outsourcing significant portions of teaching and grading to publisher platforms transfers authority and responsibility away from faculty to a company primarily driven by profit. This shift may erode the personal connection between faculty and students and reduce opportunities for personalized feedback and support.
Recommendations for Grade Consideration and Best Practices:
- Whenever possible, integrate key grade components back into Canvas to maintain a centralized, transparent gradebook accessible to both faculty and students.
- Use publisher platforms as supplementary tools rather than the core grading mechanism. Align publisher assessments strictly with the COR and supplement with faculty-designed assignments and evaluations.
- Clearly communicate to students where and how grades will be posted and how to access all relevant platforms. Provide support resources to minimize access issues.
- Regularly review publisher content to ensure it aligns with course outcomes and update or replace components as needed to maintain academic integrity.

Ultimately, the course and its learning outcomes remain the faculty’s responsibility, not the platform’s. Maintaining control over grade recording and assessment design safeguards academic freedom, supports student success, and honors the foundational role faculty play in education.

Canvas is Required for Authentication

Per Palomar AP 4105, Palomar College students are authenticated for Distance Education through the district-supported LMS, which is Canvas. It must be the hub of all course activity for authentication and accreditation. Publisher tools may supplement Canvas, but they cannot replace it.

Questions to ask:

Is Canvas still the central hub for your course?
Are you ensuring all essential activities occur within Canvas?

What You Can Do Instead: Choose OER

If you want free, burden-free access for your students, full academic freedom over your materials, and the ability to design your course directly from the COR—choose Open Educational Resources (OER).

OER allows you to:

Provide students with free or low-cost materials that don't expire.
Customize content to your course outcomes and your teaching style.
Update materials regularly for cultural relevance, inclusivity, and accuracy.
Take back control of your class from publishers and design the learning environment your students deserve.

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Textbook publishers want to put us all out of work. Don't let them!