A design model for lifelong learning networks

The provision of lifelong learning facilities is considered to be a major new direction for higher and distance teaching educational institutes catering for the demands of industry and society. ICT networks will in future support seamless, ubiquitous access to lifelong learning facilities at home, at work, in schools and universities. This implies the development of new ways of organizing learning delivery that goes beyond course and programme-centric models. It envisions a learner-centred, learner-controlled model of distributed lifelong learning. We present a conceptual model for the support of lifelong learning which is based on notions from self-organization theory, learning communities, agent technologies and learning technology specifications such as IMS Learning Design. An exploratory implementation has been developed and used in practice. We reflect on the findings and future directions.