Lifelong Learning ..... And we're off!

The days that students attended four years of tertiary education after

secondary school and then proceeded to work in the same job for more

than forty years without any further training are well behind us. And

although higher education as well as relevant laws and regulations for

the most part still revolve around full-time undergraduate students,

there is an ever increasing demand for other approaches to learning.

This year experimental pilots have started for the Ministry of Education, 
Culture and Science (OCW) and a number of universities of applied sciences to get together and

examine how to give shape to the concept of Lifelong Learning.

The university I’m proud to work at, Stenden University of Applied Science, 
has extensive experience in providing flexible education. Stenden is,

along with NHL, (Stenden and NHL being the only universities of applied

sciences in the Northern Netherlands) among the fourteen educational

institutions to have been awarded time and resources to participate in a

pilot project to boost this exciting process. The Lifelong Learning theme also

dovetails perfectly with Stenden’s vision: ’Serving to make it a better world’

and its mission statement ’Unleashing potential in our students, staff and

surrounding communities’.

We will explore and experiment how to

make education in the current part-time and work-and-study programmes

more accessible to the target group of students that are allready working.
Our main focus will lie on flexible education for the particular

purpose of providing more opportunities for combining study and work. Opening up 
possibilities for adults to combine their work with studies. Employees seeking (new)
entry-level credentials or looking to change or earn upward mobility in careers etc.

Knowledge and experience

Universities of applied sciences all too often limit their view of the

concept of learning to knowledge being transferred in the confines of a

building from lecturers to students, whereas learning can be

a nice mix of gaining theoretical knowledge and learning through

experience. Clearly, learning methods are shifting considering the many

internships today’s students conduct, although that experiential learning

is mainly for full-time students, whilst adults have a growing need for

opportunities to study alongside their work.

This project  is as exciting as it is huge; the whole concept of education requires reconsideration.

How can education be truly accessible to adults who want to take another

step forward in their development? How can we include the knowledge

and qualities of prospective students when giving shape to education?

How do we deal with exemptions? And how can we ensure that the quality

of the programmes remains at a high level and continues to improve?

 

Cooperating

The universities concerned, the legislator and the professional field act in

concert in order to realise the best possible study programmes. A number

of adjustments have been made to the Dutch Higher Education and

Research Act for the part-time and work-and-study programmes that are

participating in the pilot nationwide, to help successfully implement the

experiment up to 2020.

Broad target group

Part of the mechanical engineering programme will start on the

experiment in September 2016. Stenden’s other part-time and work-andstudy

programmes have started preparing the curricula now in

order to start with the new concept in September 2017. The programmes’

point of departure is the student: What is the learning need, what does

the student want to learn, what is the student’s motivation? Is the adult’s

wish to learn self-motivated? Or does the adult need to do a study

programme in order to advance in or indeed keep his/her current job?

A very broad target group is involved.

High-quality and flexible education

I see this pilot project as part of a larger change process for

universities of applied sciences. That development in which study programmes

are no longer restricted to a narrow column of full-time education,

but offer new opportunities to a larger target group of students, appeals to

me. Universities of applied sciences, professional fields and students,

working together to create high-quality and flexible education. This pilot

allows universities of applied sciences to boost that development and fulfill

their mission to the max as higher professional education institutions.“

 

#lovemywork