Hybrid workshop: on site event with online streaming
FLECSLAB stands for Flexible Learning Communities Supporting Lifelong Learning Across Borders and is an Erasmus+ project developed within one of the now 64 European Universities alliances, EUTOPIA.
We would like to discuss key findings and next steps with core stakeholders in the University Lifelong learning arena. The demographics of Higher Education (HE) are changing. Global changes, the impact of technology and cost of living amongst others, compel university graduates to expand their skills and competences at different times of their career trajectory. This results in life-wide learning becoming more prominent. However, when returning to HEI, adult learners have difficulties to find learning offers that align with their needs and their professional context.
The FLECSLAB project is a response to the European Commission's ambitions in the field of lifelong learning (LLL) by developing flexible mechanisms that recognise short-term intensive learning efforts in a transnational context. The distinctiveness of FLECSLAB’s approach is to use the European University Alliance as the driving force for integrating an innovative lifelong learning package into the existing curriculum of the partner universities, thereby differing from the common practices to create new full fledge degrees and/or complementary units within HEI for responding to adult learners.
FLECSLAB addresses the lack of mutual understanding on “more holistic and institution wide approaches to fully transform HEI’s to LLL institutions” (OECD, 2023, p. 9). The project aims to define the conditions that will help universities to set up flexible mechanisms that lifelong learners are looking for. We thereby focus on the coherence between (i) the learner needs, (ii) the educational approach, and (iii) the organizational capacity of HEI for developing a sustainable business model in LLL. We have translated FLECSLAB's experience into policy guidance for academics, industry and public sector partners and produced resources to support higher education practitioners and policymakers in the development of LLL pedagogy (the Lifelong Learning Toolbox) and sustainable provision (the Lifelong Learning Business Model).
