Lifelong learning in the information age

While the implications of the Information Age have been discussed for a number of years, the focus is now shifting to higher education and concepts for lifelong learning. The educational services needed by lifelong learners are different from traditional educational offerings: Focus is on individual learning needs and competencies to perform in complex real-life situations. While classroom instruction is still the prevalent educational concept in most of the institutions offering services to lifelong learners, there is a fast growing interest in net-based learning and teaching, and new organizational and pedagogic concepts for net-learning are required. An analysis of research in the fields of human learning and instruction leads to concepts that are used to outline a co-constructivist approach to net-pedagogy. In addition, organizational requirements for the implementation of net-based learning systems, supporting operational functions, subsystems, and roles are outlined using business process design methods and tools. Finally, IS support requirements for net-based learning are analyzed and a case study is used to demonstrate the prototype implementation of a groupware-based co-constructivist learning environment.