Research is a fundamental part of education. Researching online learning environments is informing the work of schools and school education jurisdictions. It is argued here that using approaches to research that recognise the place people hold in school education and technology research helps inform the methods of the research conducted. Technological determinism has tended to imbue the language of school education technology policies. This has seen the power and control humans can exercise over approaches to school education research and policy-making, removed. As there has been considerable work already conducted on the technical aspects of learning management systems software, this paper focuses on putting humans back into the research picture by recognising what people can do that computers can’t.