10,275 research outputs found

    Sustaining Lifelong Education through Public Library Services in the Electronic Age

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    The research work was on sustaining lifelong education through public library service in the electronic age. Public library services are free public services to any person in the society. It provides access to knowledge, information and works of the imagination through a range of resources and services and is equally available to all members of the community regardless of race, age, nationality, ages, gender, religion language, disability, economic and employment status and educational attainment. Therefore, lifelong education could be sustained through library services in the 21st century, because the public library is open to all categories of users in a community for their information needs that relates to life and workplaces. The article discussed services offered in public library at this age of technology era and Some of services provide by public library to sustain lifelong education in society include: mail service, SDI, bookmobile, outreach programmes, referral and information services etc another area that was in the article overview of lifelong education, goals of lifelong education and impact of ICTs on public library and lifelong learning were also reviewed in this paper. The researchers made some recommendations to librarians in public library. Keywords: Lifelong, education, public library, library services, and  ICTs

    Redressing disadvantage and ensuring social cohesion: the role of distance education and elearning policies in the European Union 1957-2007

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    This paper analyses the development and implementation of the European Union's policies in distance higher education and elearning since the 1957 Treaty of Rome. Distance education emerged in the 1960s and 70s as an instrument at national level to redress disadvantage, and to provide flexible, high-quality and cost-effective access to higher education to adults who were unable, for geographical, employment or personal reasons, to attend on-campus. Analysis of EU policy documents and interviews with key individuals indicates that the support of influential policy entrepreneurs and networks brought distance education to the centre stage in EU education and training policy for a brief period in the early 1990s, culminating in the Maastricht Treaty on European Union (1992), which committed the EU to ‘encouraging the development of distance education’. Since then, distance learning has been superceded by elearning, and is linked in EU rhetoric to social cohesion in the context of making Europe the most competitive economy in the world. Yet, despite the great potential of elearning, this paper outlines the challenges to its wider adoption. These include the persistence of the digital divide in Europe; student resistance to elearning approaches; and the problem of achieving cost-effectiveness in elearning. Much remains to be done to ensure the flexibility in terms of time, place, pace, and indeed accessibility, which would enable adult students to participate in lifelong learning on a truly democratic basis

    CAL and FE: A Welsh perspective

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    The core of this paper is the result of an investigation into the use of computer‐aided learning (CAL) in further education (FE) colleges in Wales: All institutions surveyed used CAL to some extent in teaching or learning, and academic staff were in some way involved in producing CAL materials in almost all. However, student numbers were found not to be a good indicator of the degree to which CAL is used Furthermore, only two‐thirds of colleges approached claimed to have received any external funding for CAL and distance learning involved only a small proportion of FE students. Nevertheless, the general conclusion drawn is that all FE colleges in Wales use ICTs (information and communication technologies) extensively, although there are significant differences in the equipment/student ratios, and there appears to be little strategic college‐wide planning concerning such developments

    Clicks and mortar : learning centres : locating learning and skills?

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    "Colleges are not the only organisations interested in learning centres. Learning centres are at the heart of many current government and other initiatives to bring the information age into education, training and public services. They have a range of goals, organisational models and resources. But are they effective? Clicks and mortar is the first in a series of FEDA publications and web-based information to explore what learning centres do, how and why they do it, and to encourage dialogue between all who are interested in their development" -- back cover

    Metadata for describing learning scenarios under European Higher Education Area paradigm

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    In this paper we identify the requirements for creating formal descriptions of learning scenarios designed under the European Higher Education Area paradigm, using competences and learning activities as the basic pieces of the learning process, instead of contents and learning resources, pursuing personalization. Classical arrangements of content based courses are no longer enough to describe all the richness of this new learning process, where user profiles, competences and complex hierarchical itineraries need to be properly combined. We study the intersection with the current IMS Learning Design specification and the additional metadata required for describing such learning scenarios. This new approach involves the use of case based learning and collaborative learning in order to acquire and develop competences, following adaptive learning paths in two structured levels

    New ways of mediating learning: Investigating the implications of adopting Open Educational Resources for tertiary education at an institution in the United Kingdom as compared to one in South Africa

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    Access to education is not freely available to all. Open Educational Resources (OERs) have the potential to change the playing field in terms of an individual's right to education. The Open University in the United Kingdom was founded almost forty years ago on the principle of 'open' access with no entry requirements necessary. The University develops innovative high quality multiple media distance-learning courses. In a new venture called OpenLearn, The Open University is making its course materials freely available worldwide on the Web as OERs ( see http://www.open.ac.uk/openlearn). How might other institutions make use of these distance-learning materials? The paper starts by discussing the different contexts wherein two institutions operate and the inequalities that exist between them. One institution is a university based in South Africa and the other is a college located in the United Kingdom. Both institutions, however, deliver distance-learning courses. The second part of the paper discusses preliminary findings when OERs are considered for tertiary education at these two institutions. The findings emphasise some of the opportunities and challenges that exist if these two institutions adopt OERs

    Digital exclusion in later life : a Maltese case-study

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    Information and communication technologies (ICTs) are driving profound changes in the way in which individuals, organizations and governments interact. In particular, the internet has been a major force behind the development towards a more globalized, knowledge-based economy. However, in terms of computer access and internet usage, a digital divide between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’ has long been recognized. One key sector of non-users consists of older persons. For various reasons – including no exposure to computers over their lifetime and in their occupations, income levels, physical disability and access to affordable ICT training – only limited percentages of older people have adequate ICT skills. A growing concern is that older adults who do not engage with ICTs face social disadvantages and exclusion. This article reports upon a qualitative study on older non-users of ICTs, with its key goal being to understand what leads to, and the effects of, digital exclusion in later life. Results found that older persons who never made use of ICTs were significantly delineated by gender and socio-economic status patterns - namely, women (especially housewives, who had never been in paid employment), individuals who worked in blue-collar and working-class occupations, and the long-term unemployed. Data also demonstrated that access was not the main issue at hand, and that the failure of older adults to become digital citizens was the result of a continuum of overlapping barriers. This study provided information highlighting the rationales and motivations underlying individuals’ non-use of computers - namely, believing that they were now ‘too old’ to use new technologies, a lack of relevance or ‘life-fit’ of computers, perceived non-usefulness and difficulty to use, anxiety about computer usage, concern about security and privacy issues, and the facing of disability issues.N/

    Student perceptions of the use of ICTs in European education: report of a survey

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