This thesis is situated in the context of the emergence of the ‘digital university’ in higher education. It addresses research questions which focus on organizational change, particularly on how a strategic shift to increase the provision of online distance education in a traditional, research-intensive, campus-focused university, affects the existing temporal and spatial practices of the institution. The research undertaken focuses on a UK university, during a period of strategic digital expansion in its postgraduate taught degree programmes, where funding is allocated by the institution to support a number of new courses and programmes, developed and designed to be available to students on a fully online basis. I take a narrative ethnographic research approach, which draws on interviews with university staff and students, alongside higher education policy and think-tank documents, and institutional websites. Particular attention is paid to the temporal aspects of each narrative account, in order to surface temporality over what I consider to be the spatial preoccupations of the literature and practices of online ‘distance’ education. Sustaining a critique of ‘anytime, anywhere’ accounts of online education, with a reminder that education takes place over time and in particular times and spaces, I draw on Sharma’s (2013) work on ‘critical time’, and particularly her notion of temporal ‘recalibration’ (2014), to think about complex temporal relations in the digital university. I go on to explore the idea of the digital university as transtemporal, as an alternative conceptualisation which opens up possibilities for imagining the university beyond its traditional temporal and spatial boundaries. I argue that understanding the dominant times and spaces of the university campus as central, and those accessing the campus in asynchronous or asymmetric ways as peripheral, may not just lead to spatially biased practices of distancing, but to a lack of recognition of emergent inequalities which are digitally reconfigured and potentially invisible. I conclude with some reflections on theoretical and methodological approaches to time and the digital in higher education and propose areas for future research.

Les TIC évoluent, vite et profondément. Autrement dit, l'évolution des TIC est susceptible d'avoir un effet encore plus profond qu'aujourd'hui sur la structuration des territoires, les modes de vie et les formes de socialisation, la localisation et l'organisation des activités, les conditions de compétitivité des territoires, etc. S'intéresser aux TIC dans la prospective territoriale ne signifie donc pas de céder à un quelconque déterminisme technologique, mais enrichir la liste des variables et paramètres qui influent sur l'avenir des territoires – voire même, identifier de nouveaux domaines de R&D pertinents à soutenir.L’objectif de notre thèse est d’analysé le rôle qui peut jouer l’Université Numérique dans la structuration de territoire donnée, ainsi qu’une mise en ouvre possible pour la Tunisie. / ICT evolve quickly and deeply. In other words, the development of ICT is likely to have a more profound effect on today's territorial structure, lifestyles and forms of socialization, location and organization, conditions competitiveness of territories, etc. Interest in ICT in regional foresight does not mean giving in to any technological determinism, but add to the list of variables and parameters that affect the future of the territories - even, identify new areas of relevant R & D support.The aim of this thesis is to analyze the role that can play the Digital University in structuring given territory, as well as implementing best to Tunisia.

Nous constatons que les universités sont confrontées à un double mouvement de la société sur leur organisation provoquant une nécessité de changement. Le premier concerne l’environnement institutionnel changeant depuis la loi Enseignement Supérieur et de la Recherche de 2013 : passage à la responsabilité et compétences élargies, contraintes budgétaires fortes, évolutions sociales des apprenants, nouvelle pratique managériale dans le secteur public. Ce premier mouvement provoque pour nous un paradoxe : la naissance d’un phénomène d’isomorphisme institutionnel, les comportements des universités convergent quand bien même chacune d’elles tente d’être plus attractive que l’autre sur le marché de la formation tout au long de la vie. Par ailleurs, un second mouvement, qui concerne les membres et les usagers des universités, apparaît au regard des usages des Technologies de l'information et de la communication (TIC) dans la société : la facilité d’accès à la connaissance au moyen de nouvelles plateformes, l’adoption des TIC dans la société catalysent cela. En réaction à ces deux mouvements, nous estimons que les universités sont en changement. Et nous souhaitons étudier en quoi l’évolution des usages du numérique conduit à la nécessité d’une gouvernance du numérique universitaire. Nous tenterons de démontrer que l’instabilité provoquée par l’arrivée du numérique dans les universités est une occasion de faire évoluer le système universitaire, au point de créer un nouveau point d’équilibre s’appuyant sur une nouvelle gouvernance : la gouvernance du numérique universitaire. Celle-ci permettrait de développer les usages du numérique de tous les acteurs, et placerait ainsi l’établissement dans un meilleur positionnement dans un environnement devenu de plus en concurrentiel, tout en améliorant son fonctionnement. Pour cela nous construirons les analyses à partir de plusieurs terrains complémentaires, non pas dans un souci de comparaison de terrains, mais bien de vérification partielle d’une ou plusieurs hypothèses au sein de chacun de ces 5 terrains d’observation. Sur la base des analyses de ces expériences et de questionnement sur cette notion de gouvernance du numérique universitaire, cette thèse souhaite contribuer à la réflexion sur les gouvernances d’universités, afin qu’elles puissent mieux appréhender l’éducation supérieure du XXIe siècle. / We see that universities are confronted with a double movement of society on their organization, necessitating a change. The first concerns the changing institutional environment since the Law Higher Education and Research in 2013 : shift to responsibility and broadened competencies, strong budgetary constraints, social evolutions of learners, new managerial practice in the public sector. This first movement provokes for us a paradox: the birth of a phenomenon of institutional isomorphism, the behavior of universities converge even though each of them tries to be more attractive than the other on the market of training all the way long life. In addition, a second movement, involving the players and users of universities, appears in relation to the uses of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in society: the ease of access to knowledge through new platforms, the adoption of ICTs in society catalyze this. In response to these two movements, we believe that universities are changing. And we want to study how the evolution of digital uses leads to the need for digital university governance. We will try to show that the instability brought about by the arrival of digital in the universities is an opportunity to evolve the university system to the point of creating a new equilibrium point based on a new governance : digital university governance . This would allow the development of the digital uses of all the players, thus placing the establishment in a better position in a more competitive environment, while improving its functioning. For this we will construct the analyzes from several complementary fields, not for the sake of comparing land, but rather a partial verification of one or more hypotheses within each of these five observations. On the basis of the analyzes of these experiences and the questioning of this notion of digital university governance, this thesis wishes to contribute to the reflection on university governance so that they can better understand higher education in the 21st century.

I learned to authentically connect by observing the pedagogues who mentored me. My lived experience with them inspired me to base my pedagogical approach on the constructs of community and engagement that youth dismantled by displaying increasing disengagement, which transferred into disaffected relationships. This reflexive/narrative autoethnography investigates the problematic phenomenon affecting youth: the loss of authentic connectivity. I critically examine my professional journey with pre-digital, digital, and post-digital university students by analysing our common, cultural context, thereby interpreting my behaviour, thoughts, and experiences in relation to them. Hermeneutic phenomenology’s framework deepens the inquiry, as it involves a broader cultural, political, and social understanding to uncover deeper meaning in changing behaviours by reflecting on what is the lived experience of authentic connectivity for youth. My comprehensive research evidences that youth’s technological addiction has influenced rapid brain evolution, and exploded their visual and multimodal skills. Neuroscience has broadly concluded that the new forms of learning technology offers are changing the way the brain processes information. I suggest that youth are experiencing a biological conflict, the brain’s rapid evolution overwhelming more slowly evolving physical responses, effectively interfering with the flow of affective information that requires hemispheric transfer. Neither moving beyond the premise of intelligence as being predominantly brain-based, nor acknowledging the cooperative role our bodily intelligence plays, as the latter is embedded in our lived experience, the greater understanding of the whole of learning, and its ally, authentic connectivity, cannot be achieved. I submit that moving beyond the absoluteness of a purely scientific approach to the brain, and integrating both human and cognitive sciences are key in moving toward a more holistic, autonomous learning pedagogy, so to layer our understanding of the ‘person process’, that which includes whole thinking and whole being. To counter the affective devolution, which is detrimental not only to learning, but to being a well-adjusted person, this paper proposes a foundational shift in teacher training curriculum design by suggesting tools that foster an observational pedagogy, which seeks to teach those navigational skills that support higher-level analytical processes that can counteract the excessive reactions that impede learning, and teaching.