Beyond the ‘user’ : Socio-material storylines of the learning management system and lecturer professional identities

Howard, Natalie-Jane and Komljenovic, Janja (2023) Beyond the ‘user’ : Socio-material storylines of the learning management system and lecturer professional identities. PhD thesis, Lancaster University.

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Abstract

This study examines the socio-material interplay between the learning management system (LMS) and lecturer professional identities. Increasingly prominent in higher education institutions, LMSs were especially foregrounded during the swift transition to remote learning in the wake of the pandemic. There has been an abundance of international scholarship related to the LMS, including research into implementation strategies, adoption patterns and online teaching, yet less empirical attention has been paid to lecturers’ additional pedagogical and administrative LMS practices. Even rarer are studies which incorporate a sociomaterial sensibility to trace not only the discursive renderings of identity positioning, but to simultaneously explore how materiality is implicated in producing lecturer selves. Responding to this gap in the literature, the study harnesses a novel theoretical approach, integrating positioning theory, the metaphor of imbrication and the mangle of practice. The social constructionist ethno-case study design permits the research to zoom in on a specific platform, Blackboard, and its contextualised use in a United Arab Emirates (UAE) college. The UAE is a particularly insightful location to study lecturer professional identities given its unique, yet unstable, occupational environment for educators. Blackboard is one of the most prevalent LMSs worldwide, consequently providing a relevant, rich and informative instantiation for a socio-material analysis of an LMS in practice. Visual elicitation interviews with lecturers, interviews with specialists and managers, observations and a document review provide a nuanced account of how lecturer positioning is negotiated through the imbrications of discursive resources, material agencies and power relations resultant to the mandated use of Blackboard. As these socio-material imbrications rewrite narratives of lecturer professional identities, three key storylines are constructed from the data. The first illuminates the LMS as a pervasive force through its ubiquitous availability across time and space, and in its enrolment in the monitoring of lecturers. Secondly, the LMS as a conduit of self-image discusses how the desired self may be projected through course customisation and reveals the identity tensions that lecturers navigate when enacting pre-packaged course materials. Finally, the LMS as a digital interference compels lecturers to perform as technical stewards with unpredictable material breakdowns subverting lecturer intentions in the mangle of Blackboard practice. The thesis presents some original terms derived from the analysis and a range of subject positions, including the obsessive workaholic, the humanised creator and the expelled social actor. Evidencing a much more complex framing of the lecturer than a mere ‘user’ of a neutral technology, identities are negotiated through a myriad of tensions, albeit with some opportunities for empowering identity work. The thesis concludes by addressing some limitations and proposing potentially fruitful avenues of further research.