Developing Web-based Academic Adult Education: Learning Experiences as Starting Points for Planning and for Continuous Development

Abstract

Different innovative web-based solutions for adult learning have made wide-ranging global breakthroughs. Increasingly flexible initiatives are expected in the future from web-based solutions in education and in developing expertise. Global changes reach individuals in their everyday lives, and web-based education enables the realization of lifelong learning in many ways. Traditionally, academic adult students' most central challenge has been the practical difficulties in participation: many connecting factors and responsibilities overlap in their busy everyday lives. New web-based teaching solutions have enabled participation in academic studies more equally and for an increasingly wider group of people. In practice, the development continues proceeding as a process of different experiments, mistakes, and insights. In this article we present, with regard to pedagogical candidate-level research methodology studies in Finland, the development of web-based studying and teaching, adult students' experiences, and evaluation of their own learning and the experiences of teachers regarding challenges and future views of web-based teaching. Especially in web-based academic adult education, the significance of the planning stage and web-based pedagogical and adult educational starting points are emphasized: flexibility, independence of time and place, intelligibility of high quality expert teaching, and wider recognition of starting points of adult student.