What is Open Universities (OU)

This chapter is based on a research that has been focusing on social sharing device effects and on students' practices of collaboration, communication, and mediation. The author has analyzed the recurring temporal split between academic environment and students' sphere in a context of distance learning. The goal is to understand the origin of the collaborative process of collective apprentice which is illustrated in the communities of apprenticeship outside the academic institution. A netnographic observation was conducted with Bachelor and Master's degrees in a private training center. The author assumes the information and communication socio-technical devices participate in the horizontalization of student practices. The author has highlighted the paradox of these learning communities, which are, unwittingly, in a process of social domination by having choosing a priori a decentralized structure. In light of the social criticism of the time, the observation reveals that digital technologies cause a temporal acceleration.