Designing Learning Networks for Lifelong Learners

As discussed in the preface of this book, Learning Design (LD 2003) can represent many different approaches to learning, such as competency-based learning, problem-based learning or collaborative learning. How-ever, most current designers have some implicit assumptions underlying their designs. Given the current demand for more flexible, self-directed, informal and formal lifelong learning opportunities and the need for more efficient teaching scenarios, these assumptions provide an unnecessary restriction on the set of possible design solutions for a learning problem. In the five-year RTD programme, called ‘Learning Networks: connecting people, organizations, autonomous agents and learning resources to establish the emergence of effective lifelong learning’, we examine a form of education delivery that goes beyond course- and curriculum-centric models, and envisions a learner-centred and learner-controlled model of lifelong learning where learners have the same capabilities as teachers and other staff members have in regular, less learner-centred educational approaches, but without increasing the work-load for learners and staff members. This chapter presents a possible design for such a Learning Network, using LD.