Incommensurate practices: sociomaterial entanglements of learning technology implementation J. Hannon Curriculum, Teaching and Learning Centre, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia Abstract The framing of ‘implementation’ of learning technologies in universities can have profound effects on approaches to teaching and learning that may be insufficiently acknowledged by practitioners. This paper investigates a case that demonstrated the formation of strong connec- tions between technology and pedagogy, in which a learning content management system called for a series of accommodations between technology work and academic work. The site for this study was the meso-level in the university: those practitioners working in-between aca- demics and institutional learning technologies, and draws on the accounts of practice by learn- ing technologists during this implementation. The discussion of practice that emerges from these accounts draws on sociomaterial perspectives to draw attention to the contingencies of particular connections during the implementation process. This study does not assume that the work of implementation follows naturally from plans and intentions of human actors, rather it investigates actual arrangements and the entangled practices that bring significant unintended consequences. The findings suggest the need to attend to the potential for conflicting practices when system technologies become a key component of e-learning, and I argue for implementa- tion to be scoped early to encompass pedagogical goals, and for interventions by learning tech- nologists and teaching academics over all the social, material, and discursive factors that are critical to e-learning practice. Keywords academic development, content management systems, e-learning, implementation, learning technologists, sociomaterial. Introduction The deployment of learning management technologies in the institutional strategies for e-learning is now per- vasive in universities, yet it has not been clear that their use has been accompanied by much insight into their effectiveness. The concerns of early researchers about the trajectory of online education and its still unfinished shape (Cuban 2003; Romiszowski 2004; Hamilton & Feenberg 2005) continue to be discussed in the litera- ture on technological change in higher education: despite the widespread acceptance of the transformative effects of learning technologies in higher education, less seems to be understood in a consistent way about how they are taken up by their users and how they are integrated throughout institutions (Oliver et al. 2007; Riley 2007; Selwyn 2007; Goodyear & Ellis 2008; Marshall 2010). The emergence of e-learning in universities has been accompanied by increasing economic pressures and significant investment in institutional managed learning systems (Conole & Oliver 2007; Gosper et al. 2010). Accepted: 22 December 2011 Correspondence: John Hannon, Curriculum, Teaching and Learning Centre, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Victoria 3086, Australia. Email: J.Hannon@latrobe.edu.au doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2729.2012.00480.x Original article © 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd Journal of Computer Assisted Learning 1