“A Rising Star: How the LMS Replaced the Syllabus”

The COVID-19 pandemic precipitated dramatic changes in higher education teaching and student learning, and political science was not immune. One of these changes involved the use of technology, specifically Learning Management Systems (LMS). While instructors used the LMS to varying degrees in years prior, Spring 2020 became an inflection point in which course materials and assessments appeared in the LMS as a result of the pivot to online teaching. Increasing reliance on the LMS accompanied courses across a range of modalities (face-to-face, hybrid, synchronous, and asynchronous) even after the pandemic. Today, the LMS offers robust features that organize content in a streamlined fashion making the syllabus appear redundant or even unnecessary. This article explores the role of the LMS and the syllabus in this new world. To evaluate how students used the LMS and the syllabus we undertook content analysis and surveyed students. In Spring 2025, we analyzed page views across six political science courses to gain insight about how students navigated the LMS to obtain information and complete assignments. Using a quasi-experimental design, we surveyed 48 students across three Summer 2025 courses to ascertain how they used the LMS, whether they referred to the syllabus, and for what reasons. We argue that because the LMS plays a more prominent role in student learning, the role of the syllabus should be reconsidered. We conclude by offering recommendations for how to better leverage the LMS to foster student learning.