European Association for the Education of Adults: A successful e-traning engaged learners and created a community
Online tools or kilometres between learners are not obstacles in creating engagement or a sense of community in learning. During its lifespan the AE-PRO project managed to engage hundreds of adult education professionals in e-learning.
A shared interest in the topic and a low-threshold participation enabled a success for the course, believes Gina Ebner, the Secretary-General of the European Association for the Education of Adults (EAEA), the coordinating organisation.
“It was gratifying to see that so many adult educators from across Europe were genuinely interested in this peer learning – because this is what it is – sharing and inspiring,” she says.
The project provided two large curriculums for adult education professionals during a 2-year period. The course topics ranged from practice, policy and advocacy in the European adult education field, to the ways in which adult education can contribute to the European challenges, such as inequality, marginalisation, unemployment and sustainability, as presented in the EAEA’s publication Manifesto for Adult Learning in the 21st Century.
The course sessions gathered almost 600 participants from around Europe. Many of the participants completed both curriculums.
“The most rewarding thing for me was gaining more global European perspective on adult education. I learned a lot during the AE-PRO course, met new people and gained more experience in the field,” says Martina Karásková, one of the students of the AE-PRO e-learning platform.
The courses were designed to enable the sharing of experiences, reflection and exchange of knowledge. Besides engaging into learning, the project managed to activate the learners in interaction with eachother – also outside the virtual classrooms.
“This was one of our main objectives: to ‘reproduce’ the community experience that we see in the face-to-face trainings. I was originally a bit sceptical whether we would be able to do that, but the participants were extremely fast in organising themselves and threw themselves into the exchange. They have also been in contact with each other via social media. We couldn’t have hoped for a better outcome,” Gina Ebner says.
AE-PRO project is approaching its end but the success of the project demonstrates that there is plenty of interest in capacity building for adult educators as well as exchanges.
“Adult education professionals can continue the discussion on the Younger Staff in Adult Education Facebook group. To promote learning mobilities between adult education organisations, the organisations can sign a public commitment to support common standards and values of mobilities, set out in Adult Education Mobility Charter,” Gina Ebner says.
EAEA will also publish a toolkit for online course providers, based on the lessons learnt from the AE-PRO training. On the AE-PRO e-learning platform there will be a course available about using digital tools for adult education purposes hosted by an EAEA member organisation Learning & Work Institute. EAEA is currently also looking into the options for running a new AE-PRO course.
