Symposium 2: Models for hybrid higher education

Lifelong learning initiatives in the postdigital era

Abstract

Initiating lifelong learning has been a task higher education has worked with for many years (e.g., Biesta, 2011; Knapper & Cropley, 2000). Politically, lifelong learning is emphasised as an tool to develop and nurture human capital and foster social development. The purpose behind many of these initiatives is to make people employable. However, higher education also works with lifelong learning initiatives to offer people democratic and humanistic values. Since the second half of the 20th century, higher education institutions apply these two perspectives (Jaldemark, 2021). In this symposium, the focus is on initiatives closely linked to the needs of the working market. Democratic and humanistic initiatives and perspectives are important but are here deemphasised. Whatever perspective is chosen, lifelong learning as an idea and task for higher education is still an emerging phenomenon.

The ongoing digitalisation of society impacts lifelong learning initiatives in at least two different ways. First, the digitalisation of society impacts human practises in many areas of life (e.g., Billet, 2021, Goodyear, 2021; Poquet & de Laat, 2021). For example, peoples' performance of everyday tasks such as communicating with friends and families or paying bills. In line with the focus of this symposium, the digitalisation of society impact work-related practices and tasks hugely. Some practices and tasks met slightly digitised changes; some disappear in the process. Some professions have disappeared, new ones have turned up in the footsteps of the increasing digitalisation of working life. These changes have led to an increased need for lifelong learning opportunities. Higher education institutions are seen as important providers to meet up these needs.

Second, digitalisation impacts the deliverance of education (e.g., Lock, Lakhal, Cleveland‐Innes, Arancibia, Dell & De Silva, 2021; Sannino, Engeström, & Jokinen, 2021). Lifelong learning initiatives adopt digital practices to deliver highly accessible quality learning opportunities. Nevertheless, the link between higher education, application of educational technologies and lifelong learning is established long before the strong impact of the current digital technologies. Since its inception, distance educational settings have been a vehicle to enable higher education lifelong learning for adults. In effect, such settings predate the digitalisation of society while nurturing lifelong learning is a reason behind the introduction of these distance educational settings. Multi-functional digital technologies replace analogue technologies.

Until recently, Swedish lifelong learning initiatives were a voluntary task for higher education institutions. In 2021, Swedish legislators added to The Swedish Higher Education Act (Sveriges Riksdag, 2021:317/1992:1434) that "in their operations, higher education institutions must promote lifelong learning". In other words, the promotion of lifelong learning is nowadays mandatory for Swedish higher education institutions. This symposium includes six papers that discuss lifelong learning initiatives from one Swedish higher education institution, Mid Sweden University. It presents preliminary results from ongoing work at five development projects. These projects link to a university-wide development called BLAD (Jaldemark & Bång, 2020). In common for these projects, they all aim to develop networked and hybrid lifelong learning models suitable for higher educations alignment with the postdigital era.