ICT And Learning: Supporting Out-Of-School Youth And Adults

Across both the industrialised and the developing worlds, educators have high hopes for information and communications technology (ICT). ICT has been seen as a potentially powerful tool for raising educational performance and increasing access to learning by the disadvantaged. Can it live up to these hopes? And does it have particular relevance to the needs of out-of-school youth and adults with inadequate educational qualifications and low literacy skills?

This volume contains important lessons for educators and policy makers. First, raising motivation is a key factor in encouraging disenchanted and under-confident learners, whether out-of-school youth or adults, to re-engage in structured learning. Second, ICT is not a panacea. It is not an alternative to good teachers, interesting and relevant curricula, and accessible and learner-friendly places for learning. ICT can, however, be a useful complement to each of these.

This publication reveals a number of interesting examples of innovative programmes using ICT that can increase access to learning by the disadvantaged. The papers show that ICT can be one way – but by no means the only way – to improve pathways to learning. It can do this by tailoring learning to the needs and preferred learning styles of the disadvantaged, and it can make learning more interesting by providing immediate feedback. A third message is that just as adult learning itself has been the under-funded and under-appreciated Cinderella of the formal learning spectrum, so the application of ICT within adult learning has tended to lag behind much of the rest of the education system. The present volume provides some cautionary remarks on the recent past and opens up some significant opportunities for the future.