Implementation as a constitutive entanglement: Framing sociomaterial pedagogical practices emerging from the implementation of a learning management system

Abstract

Are there concealed ways of using a learning management system (LMS) among educators in higher education? This paper argues that it is the case, and uses a sociomaterial bottom-up perspective to understand how a group of educators used a new LMS that was implemented at a Nordic university. Understanding an implementation as a constitutive entanglement, a sociomaterial research lens is applied to explain that in an implementation current technology usage evokes previous knowledge and assumptions about technologies and shapes the engagement with new technologies. This study found that when educators engaged with a new LMS, they viewed it as complex and needed to perform strategies that reduced technology complexities into practices that they knew. This engagement formed three sociomaterial pedagogical practices. A sociomaterial perspective might cast new light on how we understand the outcomes of technology implementation processes in educational contexts.