DIVERSITY IS STRENGTH ….

Post #2 – Self-Directed Learning is Life-Long for Adult Learners

The trends in adult education are transformative, in the sense that we increasingly recognize that life-long learning is not only a personal process but a societal expectation. The idea of finalizing a credential, and expecting that your knowledge in any particular subject area is fixed or absolute, is now a technical rarity. Instead, adults have had to recognize that in a globalized arena of information-gathering and knowledge exchange, we will have to become life-long learners, and furthermore, learn how to adapt to new ways of learning that are dynamic and flexible. Technology has become ubiquitous in educational environments and, even more importantly, knowing how to develop and share content within a variety of platforms, has become a regular expectation. In online learning students have to learn how to participate in ways that are strictly digital in nature — gone are the days of pen and paper, and students meet in virtual break-out rooms on Zoom, rather than in classrooms.

As a student and educator of a more senior demographic, I too need to embrace these ways of learning in order to remain relevant and engaged in up-to-date developments in social policy, disability supports and challenges to accessibility. My students rely on me to share digital stories, create on-line tools or course materials, and use the same technological platforms that they use, whether its a Moodle course at school, or YouTube or Tic-Toq, Twitter or Facebook at home. I am learning with them, and for them, as each semester unfolds. The life-long learner in me rejoices.