Abstract

Learning can no longer be dichotomized into a place and time to acquire knowledge (school) and a place and time to apply knowledge (the workplace). Today's citizens are flooded with more information than they can handle, and tomorrow's workers will need to know far more than any individual can retain. Lifelong learning is an essential challenge for inventing the future of our societies; it is a necessity rather than a possibility or a luxury to be considered. Lifelong learning is more than adult education and/or training-it is a mindset and a habit for people to acquire. Lifelong learning creates the challenge to understand, explore, and support new essential dimensions of learning such as self-directed learning, learning on demand, collaborative learning, and organizational learning. These approaches need new media and innovative technologies to be adequately supported. A theory of lifelong learning must investigate new frameworks to learning required by the profound and accelerating changes in the nature of work and education. These changes include: a) an increasing prevalence of "high-technology" jobs requiring support for learning on demand because coverage of all concepts is impossible; (b) the inevitability of change in the course of a professional lifetime, which necessitates lifelong learning; and (c) the deepening (and disquiet ing) division between the opportunities offered to the educated and to the uneducated. This article explores conceptual frameworks and innovative computational environments to support lifelong learning. It also analyzes why training approaches need to be transcended and how this can be done.

Citation

Fischer, G. (2000). Lifelong Learning—More Than Training. Journal of Interactive Learning Research, 11(3), 265-294. Charlottesville, VA: Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE). Retrieved August 31, 2024 from https://www.learntechlib.org/primary/p/8380/.

© 2000 Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE)

Keywords

• Change
• Educational Technology