Participation in Adult Education through ICT / New Media ?

05.09.2013 | Faculty of Human Sciences | General Education Media Education | Prof. Dr. Petra Grell | 1
Prof. Dr. Petra Grell
Increase in participation to adult education
through ICT/new media?
2nd Networking Meeting
Research on adult education and lifelong learning in Germany
Co-organised by the UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning (UIL) and the University of
Hamburg (UHH)
Hosted by ESREA / Humboldt University Berlin

Conclusion
Increase in participation to adult
education through ICT/new media?
Uh, no, not yet.
(But maybe in the future?)

1.  Promises
2.  Gap
3.  Challenges & Perspectives

“It would be foolish to ignore
the tremendous opportunities
the Social Web offers to
education.”
(Steve Wheeler 2009)
Promises

“Current social software allows users to
communicate, collaborate and publish in
a number of ways, in a variety of media,
and it also helps learners act together to
build knowledge bases that fit their
specific needs.”
(Owen et al., 2006: 28)
Promises

Promises – MOOC
Massive Open Online Course
https://moocfellowship.org
„Nothing has more potential to lift
more people out of poverty (...).
Nothing has more potential to
unlock a billion more brains to
solve the world’s biggest
problems. And nothing has more
potential to enable us to reimagine
higher education than the massive
open online course, or MOOC,
platforms“ (Thomas Friedman, Ney York
Times, Jan 26, 2013)

Open Educational Resources (digital)
„The potential for open educational resources
(OER) to transform the global educational
landscape is immense.
OER have emerged as one of the most powerful
resources to transverse the global education
landscape (along with the World Wide Web and
the Internet) in the past century.“
(Olcott 2012, p. 283)
Don Olcott Jr. (2012) OER perspectives: emerging issues for universities, Distance Education, 33:2, 283-290, DOI:
10.1080/01587919.2012.700561; OER Global Logo CC by Jonathas Mello

Data

Increasing Use of the Internet
(German Speaking Inhabitants, +14 Years)
(N)Onlineratlas 2013
2001 – 37,0%
2013 – 76,5%
ARD/ZDF
Onlinestudie 2012
1997 – 6,5%
2012 – 75,9%

ARD/ZDF-Onlinestudie 2012
90% or more
Men
Women
In professional education
Employed
Not employed / retiree
Overall

(N)Onliner Atlas
2013: onliner by household income
<1.000 €: 55,0%
1.000-2.000€: 66,5%
2.000-3.000€: 84,9%
>=3.000€: 93,0%

Internet-User Types (D21-Digital-Index 2013)
D21-Digital-Index2013,
http://www.initiatived21.de/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/digialindex_03.pdf,S.48f.
Outside Sceptic
On occasion at home
Cautious pragmatic
Smart mobile
Passionate Onliner
Reflective profi

Internet-User Types (D21-Digital-Index 2013)
13
D21-Digital-Index 2013, http://www.initiatived21.de/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/digialindex_03.pdf , S. 49
On occasion - at home
• Female, 44 years old
• Education: low – medium
• 50% not employed
• 98% using Internet
• Only superficially familiar
with new technologies
• Television is favoured

The Gap
Adult Learning in the Digital Age (Neil Selwyn,
Stephen Gorard & John Furlong 2006)
Learning online? Educational Internet use and
participation in adult learning, 2002 to 2010
( Patrick White & Neil Selwyn 2012) DOI:
10.1080/00131911.2011.626123
Patrick White & Neil Selwyn (2012) Learning online? Educational Internet use and
participation in adult learning, 2002 to 2010, Educational Review, 64:4, 451-469

The Gap
„The results of multivariate analyses show that
although there was a substantial increase in both
Internet access and non-educational use of the
Internet during this period, there was
comparatively little growth in ‘educational’
Internet use.“ (Patrick White & Neil Selwyn 2012)

The Gap
„As with participation in adult learning more
generally, educational Internet use was
structured by age, occupational class and
educational engagement.”
(Patrick White & Neil Selwyn 2012)

The Gap
„The growth in the availability of Internet access
and the development of new technologies appears
to have neither increased nor widened
participation in adult learning.“ (Patrick White &
Neil Selwyn 2012)

The Gap
„The nature of the available data also means that
very little can be said about the reasons
underlying the respondents’ engagement or non-
engagement with the Internet for educational
purposes.“
(Patrick White & Neil Selwyn 2012, p. 463)

Challenges & Perspectives
•  ICT, digital media, the Internet offer great
opportunities to local and global participation,
collaboration, sharing knowledge, enhance
learning and education
•  But (educational) technology does not fix existing
structures of inequality.
•  We do know that!
•  Shall we go on describing this?

•  What kind of research might gain new insights
that could help to solve these well-known
problems?
•  Are we asking the right questions?

•  What hinders people to realize their interests in
life and to broaden their abilities to cope with
challenges?
•  What do we know about their hidden (learning)
strategies?

Challenges and Perspectives
„Furthermore, the ever increasing
technologically rich learning environment in
which today’s learners and teachers are
immersed is raising issues in terms of social
exclusion; the technological divide might
be narrower but it is deeper – those not
connected or not using these new
technologies are being left behind at an
alarming rate.“ (Conole 2012, p. 131)
Gráinne Conole (2012) Fostering social inclusion through open educational resources (OER), Distance Education, 33:2, 131-134,
DOI: 10.1080/01587919.2012.700563

Participation in Adult Education through ICT / New Media ?

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