This paper presents the background, arguments and examples to support a social informatics of elearning. In more than 25 years of studies of information and communication technology, social informatics draws our attention to how technologies work in practice and in context. Extending the principles of social informatics to elearning requires attention to the history of IT implementation to identify parallels between IT and elearning development, and to use these to produce a foundation for educational informatics. These parallels suggest the usefulness of approaching elearning as an IT implementation, and learning from past experiences with large-scale IT change. Yet the case has not been made. Although a necessary and important component of elearning as a whole, as we have seen in the implementation of computer systems, lack of attention to social and technological impacts, and their co-evolution, leave us at a disadvantage for understanding organizational and institutional transformation. Thus, it is important to learn from IT development to inform elearning development.
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