| dc.description.abstract | The popularity of digital technologies such as Learning Management System (LMS) in the higher education sector has increased considerably in the past years. LMSs has been seen assigned high value and assumed to support teaching and learning in many ways. While much trust has been placed in the LMS environment to solve various issues common to teaching-learning situations, research has eventually shown that quality teaching and learning with the endorsed LMS does not happen spontaneously. Rather, it largely rests on how teachers undertake their pedagogical design work and how they find ways to connect LMS to this effort and to subsequent teaching efforts. However, research on these processes are still largely under-researched. This thesis examined the way teachers include LMSs (i.e., Canvas) in their teaching and was aimed at providing deeper insights into the nature and challenges of teachers’ pedagogical development work and teaching including LMS technology. Specifically, this empirical study explored their ideas concerning LMSs, the approaches to integrating LMS in their design processes, and their experiences of teaching and learning with LMS. The empirical work consisted of stimulated recall interviews of 14 teachers at the University of Oslo, selected based on their varying experiences of working with Canvas in their teaching. A systematic literature review led to creating a baseline understanding of existing knowledge and developing an interview protocol, allowed collecting data about teachers’ conceptions of LMS, their design processes, and their feelings and reflections of Canvas use in the shared course. Screenshots of teachers were used to prompt their answers. The data was analyzed through the combined process of inductive and deductive thematic analysis, which conducted both on the paper and on the computer. An analytical framework based on sociomaterial and sociocultural theories allowed interpreting the data and led to a rich set of findings. The findings provide a varied insight into teachers’ work and views. They indicate that teachers may endorse multiple conceptions of LMSs since they conceive the LMS as tool to store and present information, as tool to operate the processes of various educational activities, as tool to expand teaching and learning spaces, as tool to navigate teachers and students in progress of the course, and as the one-stop platform for integrating sub-tools, but not as the tool to clarify concepts or develop metacognitive skills. Further, the findings show that university teachers include LMS into their courses during designing in one out of four approaches: some redesign the whole course or elaborate parts of the course with Canvas, while others reactively modify or fill pre-existing course design into Canvas. Individual teacher’s experience of teaching and student learning might be unrelated to LMS use or affected by LMS use to different extents. The integrative view of the findings shows that 1) teacher’s approach to design is the pivotal aspect in their pedagogical design work, since the sophistication of approach to design is informed by the complexity of their conception of LMS and predetermines the favorableness of their experience with LMS, and that 2) teachers can promote or demote the role of Canvas in designing while the materiality of LMS can inspire or hinder teachers’ certain design actions. Thus, the pedagogical design work is jointly achieved by teachers and their digital tool of LMS. These findings extend the knowledge of integrating LMS in teaching and learning in terms of teachers’ pedagogical design work. They have implications for the educational practices in higher education. For quality teaching and learning in universities, teachers need to proactively know about and include LMS into practice while department leaders should acknowledge the impacts of LMS and strategically disseminate the successful LMS use cases. LMS suppliers and the institution need to assure the iteration and deployment of LMS as the inseparable material element for education. Future research should consider to better understand the technology-involved higher education practice in terms of students’ experiences, teachers pedagogical design rationales, and productive course design components. | eng |