EPALE Thematic Coordinator Markus Palmen interviewed Ben Vaske, director of the Dutch NGO Oefenen.nl. Vaske argues that social media has much underused potential in basic skills adult education, and easy-to-use apps with concrete everyday value would be a major step forward.

‘Social media would be an ideal fit for basic skills education,’ he says. ‘Yet, good educational apps for adult learning are scarce, and so is research in the use of social media in adult education; meanwhile funding for developing educational social media is negligible.’

Let us step back, and put Ben Vaske’s dissatisfaction into context. Vaske is the director of the Dutch NGO Stichting Expertisecentrum Oefenen.nl (Foundation Expertise Centre Practice.nl). Its mission is to help non-formal and informal adult learners in need of boosting their basic knowledge and skills to better participate in society and working life.

Oefenen.nl – a basic skills portal

Vaske’s organisation fulfils its mission largely through its internet portal Oefenen.nl, developed for lower-educated (young) adults who want to improve their language, literacy, numeracy and digital skills for free. These skills are embedded in subject areas like health, work, parenting and finance. With its 200,000 monthly visits and 450,000 accounts, the portal is a heavyweight among adult learning offers in the Netherlands. 

Social media is underused in basic skills education

The Oefenen portal has a social media presence as well: the portal´s Facebook and YouTube channels promote new programmes, and last year the NGO launched the Samen leren (Working Together) app, which offers a group learning game. However, Ben Vaske feels that social media has a lot more potential in basic skills adult education than most people think. The reason for this potential is that, according to Vaske, his target group is already active on social media: adults with low-level education are often seasoned users of mobile platforms, games and social media. Existing social media like Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp have functionalities that can be used in education.

‘While social media is increasingly used in formal educational contexts, the number of practical applications devoted to learning is negligible and largely limited to formal education. What about apps for the adult education sector?’ Vaske explains.

According to Vaske, the reasons for this omission lie ultimately in the lack of vision and funding:

‘There is little research on the use of social media in education settings, and researchers in this domain are often far-removed from day-to-day educational practice. In addition, our government lacks a vision for adult education and is not really open to diversifying initiatives with technology. They put the little money there is in variations of the same approach. Also existing policy, budgets and institutions make it difficult to create partnerships to develop relevant content. We need a platform that allows innovative parties to initiate a transfer to a new style of learning.’

Easy apps with practical value

Vaske has a recipe in mind for better social media use in basic skills learning. The ingredients are simple: easy-to-use applications focusing on applying basic skills to everyday situations, such as language skills. The apps should be very practical and helpful in real situations and should be supported by short videos and easy-to-understand language. Gradually, these apps would guide the user towards a cooperative learning environment, where learners take the initiative and decide for themselves what learning goals they would like to work on with others.

‘An added benefit to online collaborative learning is that it is free of the negative associations with formal group learning, classrooms and tests that often haunt lower-educated adults,’ Vaske argues.

Markus Palmen is a journalist, writer and audiovisual producer, and a freelancer. Since August 2017 he has been EPALE's Thematic Coordinator for Policy. For eight years Markus was the Managing Editor and Editor-in-Chief for the European Lifelong Learning Magazine.