Editorial

No abstract available

Why lifelong learning and why learning cities?

This article is based on a keynote presentation made in May 2014 at the Townsville Learning Cities conference in Australia, one of a series of regional events organized by the Australian Learning Community Network. The presentation sought to answer a series of specific questions that had been posed by the city of Townsville as follows: What are the Community benefits of a local government emphasis on lifelong learning? How do we engage youth in learning? How do we reengage adults in learning after formal learning? How do we maintain engagement in learning throughout the life-course? What examples exist internationally for maintaining community participation in learning? This is a specific example of one small city in Australia, but the issues raised might pertain to many other cities in the world

Editorial

No abstract available

Editorial

No abstract available

2016: A new dawn for adult education

No abstract available

Editorial

No abstract available

Learning cities 2020

This article provides a brief overview of historic work in the field of Learning City development. It then proceeds to highlight two contemporary strands of work. The first is the initiative of UNESCO’s Institute for Lifelong Learning (UIL) in establishing the International Platform of Learning Cities. The second is the work of the PASCAL Observatory, currently manifested in the Learning Cities 2020 programme

Editorial

No abstract available

Big Data Techniques to Improve Learning Access and Citizen Engagement for Adults in Urban Environments

This presentation explores the emerging concept of ‘Big Data in Education’ and introduces novel technologies and approaches for addressing inequalities in access to participation and success in lifelong learning, to produce better life outcomes for urban citizens. It introduces the work of the new Urban Big Data Centre (UBDC) at the University of Glasgow, presenting a case study of its first data product – the integrated Multimedia City Data (iMCD) project. Educational engagement and predictive factors are presented for adult learners, and older adult learners, in a representative survey of 1500 households. This was followed up with mobility tracking data using GPS data and wearable camera images, as well as one year’s worth of contextual data from over one hundred web sources (social media, news, weather). The chapter introduces the complex dataset that can help stakeholders, academics, citizens and other external users examine active aging and citizen learning engagement in the modern urban city, and thus support the development of the learning city. It concludes with a call for a more three-dimensional view of citizen-learners’ daily activity and mobility, such as satellite, mobile phone and active travel application data, alongside administrative data linkage to further explore lifelong learning participation and success. Policy implications are provided for addressing inequalities, and interventions proposed for how cities might promote equal and inclusive adult learning engagement in the face of continued austerity cuts and falling adult learner numbers