Perspectives of places of learning, forms of learning and learning content in adult education Erasmus Project

Project Title

Perspectives of places of learning, forms of learning and learning content in adult education

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for adult education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Intercultural/intergenerational education and (lifelong)learning; Rural development and urbanisation; Social/environmental responsibility of educational institutions

Project Summary

All education providers in the European Union are currently facing the greatest challenge and transformation in their history: counteracting increasing individualization through digital opportunities while at the same time demanding social division and exclusion of entire groups of people. This is under the socially and politically most difficult framework conditions since the EU was founded – the impending disintegration of democratic structures and values ​​as the highest maxim of the international community and the existential fears of traditional educational institutions in connection with bans on contact and travel triggered by the Covid19 pandemic. In addition, at least within the younger generation, our future participants and leaders, there are clear requirements for an authentic, diversity-oriented and sustainable design of educational institutions and their content. The free extracurricular educational institutions are therefore required to develop completely new strategies and concepts in order to reach participants in the future and to be able to fulfill their tasks in the educational context of lifelong learning. This affects both the places of learning themselves and their nature as well as the forms of learning in structure and content. Exemplary in this context are the concepts of third learning places, blended learning / inverted classrooms, community and shared learning, cloud-based learning, sustainable learning and experiance-based learning. It is therefore important to rethink both the places of learning and the learning concepts and contents. The institutions are therefore faced with the challenge of structural and substantive change, which alone hardly seems to be possible.
The partners belong to very different educational contexts and work in different educational areas. They are also very different in size, form of organization, funding and orientation of the educational program. It is precisely this diversity and the fact that several have not previously taken part in strategic partnerships that represent the challenge and the opportunity of the project. Dealing with completely different strategies and framework conditions calls for reflection and positioning of one’s own actions and opens up new perspectives and ways. The results are relevant for educational institutions as an organization and places of learning as well as for the offers made by the institutions as learning formats and learning content. In this respect, both the employees and teachers, but as a consequence also all participants, benefit from the changes. In addition, the development of the educational institution and its learning formats and contents are also an asset for the respective educational landscape on site.
Three teaching / training activities are planned in three different countries on the key topics of learning locations, learning formats / learning content and learner orientation. The objective is to present the relevance and implementation options of the key themes for the local institution, the educational landscape in the host country and in the partner countries. The assignment of the main topics results from the specific circumstances of the partner organizations, which in their diversity are models for learning from, with and with each other. In addition to full-time employees, target groups are also teaching staff and volunteers in the organizational context of the participating institutions. The aim is to include all those responsible for the success of educational events organized by the organizations in the qualification context and to raise awareness of the need to implement the key issues. In addition, this is intended to achieve early collaboration between the different function groups and to enable multiplication into the respective function groups.
Furthermore the context-related meaning of democratic educational ideals and transnational cooperation as a basic prerequisite for the implementation of the key issues should be discussed and illustrated. It is precisely the difference in education systems, contexts and legal and financial framework conditions, which is often described as a difficulty and obstacle, that transcend the perspective of one’s own organization. This creates impulses to meet the demands of education in times of globalization and digitalization with ideas and to advance developments. The results are published in a manual of good practice and a cloud-based form of work is developed to enable collaborative work and transparent, barrier-free documentation of the processes.
It is planned to expand the experience of this project after the completion to an innovation project with other organizations and to develop online tools for educational institutions.

Project Website

https://www.ebz-online.net/project-pelle

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 105345 Eur

Project Coordinator

Hessischer Volkshochschulverband eV & Country: DE

Project Partners

• Assoc. FIEF
• Heimvolkshochschule Lubmin Bildungshaus am Meer e.V.
• Familienakademie Mühlviertel
• Studiefrämjandets avd i Uppsala län