EPALE - Electronic Platform for Adult Learning in Europe

EAEA Project Manager Francesca Operti shares an inspiring story about how social media helped a group of adult learners preserve their motivation and learn from one another.

Have you ever registered for an online course? ‘That’s an easy one,’ you would say, and I guess that for many of you the reply would be yes. Have you ever dropped out of an online course?  That’s a bit harder to admit, but according to statistics it’s very likely that you have done that too. I know I have, more than once. Meanwhile, I attend adult education classes every year and rarely give up on them.

While numerous studies try to understand the reasons for this massive (online, open) desertion, it seems that providers have just accepted reality. But should we also do that? Of course, little can be done if the learners’ reasons for dropping out are lack of time or different learning preferences. But I also believe providers can do quite a lot when learners lack motivation or need more support.

EAEA has a success story to share in this regard. The two professionalisation courses held in the ae-learning.eu platform, created in the framework of the AE-PRO project, had a core group of learners that was extremely active for two years. One of the reasons for AE-PRO participants to keep their motivation high and continue their learning experience was the social and professional interaction among them. Indeed, a real community of adult educators was born.

‘Online?’ you might ask. Yes!

Ownership and interaction

In line with the non-formal adult education principles, AE-PRO online learners were not treated as passive listeners, but as valuable contributors to the lessons and as potential teachers themselves.  The webinars enabled participants to discuss topics instead of just reading course materials or listening to frontal lessons.

‘The learning processes were designed to enable exchange of experiences, reflection and creating of knowledge. Bearing in mind that we worked with experienced adult educators from different backgrounds, everything was based on mutual interaction,’ said Nikola Koruga, one of the course designers.

This fostered a sense of ownership for the courses, which together with the interaction between learners, made the online learning environment fun, interesting and accessible.

Participants were also encouraged to get to know their peers by working together on group assignments as well as building personal and professional relationships.  This is the winning approach that EAEA has been using for its ‘Younger Staff Trainings’ – annual capacity-building courses organised in Brussels. One of the participants of the last edition said: ‘We learnt about the main policies carried out in field of adult education and about the best practices. The best part of the training was networking and making new friends across Europe.’ To make the relationships long-lasting, EAEA created an online network thanks to a Facebook group where participants could continue to exchange views and projects on adult education.

An informal way to connect and learn

As soon as they enrolled in the AE-PRO online course, learners were also encouraged to join that Facebook group with the purpose of meeting their colleagues who attended the training in Brussels as well as their online peers. Although the AE-PRO platform featured a forum, participants preferred using the Facebook page filled. The page seemed to provide them with a more informal way to connect, both among themselves and with the course organisers. The course organisers were even informed at a later stage that informal Facebook groups were even created among learners from the same countries. When people get to know each other, it becomes easier to propose other ‘more formal’ tools. That’s why in the second course the forum had more visitors and contributors. However, the Facebook group continued to be very popular and to be filled with further resources related (or not) to the course. Today the group has more than 400 members, among which 200 are active. People still continue learning from each other, while waiting for the next EAEA course to be organised.

Our lesson from the AE-PRO project was that social media can make online courses more similar to a face-to-face non-formal adult education course; perhaps it’s worth a try?

Francesca Operti is a project manager at EAEA, responsible for Erasmus+ projects and their dissemination strategies for over 6 years. Her main professional interests and areas of expertise are social inclusion through education and validation of non-formal and informal learning.