Socio-material mangles: the learning management system and lecturer positioning

Abstract

Learning management systems (LMSs) were foregrounded during the pandemic, yet a paucity of studies has traced the socio-material relationship between LMSs and educator professional selves. Mobilising the mangle of practice, the research explores how materiality is implicated in lecturer positioning. The ethno-case study centres on the contextualised use of Blackboard Learn in a Middle East college. Visual elicitation interviews and observations provide a nuanced account of how lecturer positioning is negotiated through material agencies and power relations resultant to the mandated implementation of the LMS. As these mangles rewrite lecturer experiences and produce emergent subject positions, the first theme exposes the LMS’ enrolment in the monitoring of lecturers, while the second illuminates how the pervasive LMS’ temporal and spatial reach positions lecturers. Evidencing a much more complex framing of the lecturer than a mere ‘user’ of a neutral technology, positions are negotiated through tensions, albeit with some empowerment opportunities.