Transforming disruptive technology into sustainable technology: understanding the front-end design of an online program at a brick-and-mortar university

•Disruptive technology can be an organic product from interactions between an artifact and its sociohistorical context.•Existing social structures in universities can act as barrier for transforming online education as a disruptive to sustaining technology.•Online education as a can be transformed into a sustaining technology in a traditional brick-and-mortar university context.•Entrepreneurial leadership can be a series of distributed human activities.•While examining online program development activity systems analysis can highlight the complex and chaotic interactions.

This article examines design processes that a team of instructional technology faculty and administrators experienced related to an online instructional technology graduate program at a large Midwestern university. This qualitative development research pays close attention to the five-year front-end program design. As participant observers, the first three authors reviewed faculty and administrator interviews, design meeting observations, and program related documents. The analysis relied on activity systems to showcase the disruptive nature of online education at a brick-and-mortar university and how faculty and administrators acted as entrepreneurial leaders. The implications from this study suggest that online education can bring disruptive influences to traditional university programs, but once faculty and administrators embrace the new opportunities and address uncertainties that online programs can bring to the sociohistorical context of their institution they are more likely to design and develop a successful program.