The current focus on the development of systems contributing to a managed learning enviroment (MLE) in universities in the UK has prompted institutions to examine how administrative systems and support for learning and teaching fit together. However, it is difficult for academic and adminstrative staff to find opportunities to describe their needs to developers. This paper focuses on a project at University College London to examine systems for academic administration. A roundtable discussion group (Kemp et al,2002)was created to identify issues central to participants' perspectives. The paper uses Activity Theory (Kuutti, 1996) to analyse its outputs, and examines how the methodology has influenced the process of developing the MLE.