The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated a global “digital turn” in higher education, normalising Learning Management Systems (LMSs) as core teaching platforms. While these systems promise efficiency and scalability, they often replicate traditional, transmission-based models of instruction, sidelining critical pedagogy and reinforcing hierarchies. This uncritical replication is particularly problematic in South Africa, where higher education must also respond to deep-rooted structural inequalities. The promise of digital education is frequently undercut by material constraints, such as unequal access to devices and connectivity, and by pedagogical models that fail to prioritise transformation or social justice.

This study is situated at Nelson Mandela University (NMU), where a humanising pedagogy rooted in the work of Paulo Freire guides institutional values. Despite this commitment, digital learning practices at NMU often reflect constrained imaginations shaped by legacy systems, institutional silos, and uncritical adoption of technology. Using Freire’s critical pedagogy as a theoretical framework and a Design-Based Research (DBR) methodology, this study explored how lecturers navigate and reimagine hybrid digital environments' spatial and temporal dynamics.

Two core research questions guide this inquiry:
(1) How do lecturers’ perceptions of space and time in digital learning environments reflect or challenge existing power dynamics and opportunities for dialogic engagement?
(2) How do institutional and systemic constraints shape lecturers’ challenges in designing pedagogically meaningful digital experiences?

An interpretive case study design collected data from a focus group of 6–12 lecturers using participatory visual timelines as reflective artefacts. These artefacts offer a qualitative and collaborative way to interrogate how lecturers experience, conceptualise, and shape space and time in their digital practices. The DBR framework facilitates iterative cycles of problem analysis, prototyping, evaluation, and refinement to develop transformative, contextually grounded ICT integration strategies.

This study contributes to the discourse on equitable and transformative digital learning in South African higher education. By centring dialogue, critical reflection, and participatory design, it offers a framework for rethinking ICT use not as a neutral tool but as a deeply contextual and political act. In doing so, it aligns with NMU’s humanising imperative and responds to the urgent need for digital pedagogies that are socially just, critically informed, and structurally responsive.

Keywords: Humanising Pedagogy, Critical Pedagogy, Chronotope, Digital Learning, Space and Time, Teacher Education, ICT, Design-Based Research.