Advancing Adult Online Education through a SN-Learning Environment

Abstract

Adults often have busy lives with little time to spare to join formal or non-formal adult educational programs. Technology can facilitate their engagement by making resources and support available in order adults to have access when and where they have time. Technology provides the possibility of including multimedia and interactive resources that can make adult learning more attractive and realistic, encouraging and even inspiring adults to develop their skills. Moreover, it is essential the online environment to follow the principles of adult education. SN-Learning is a new technology advancement that employs social networks for promoting learning. This technology has not been widely used in adult education yet. To this direction, this paper analyzes the main adult learning theory, namely Andragogy, and its application into SN-Learning in order to promote high-quality adult online education tailored to the needs and preferences of this kind of learners. A prototype system was developed and evaluated regarding students’ perspective and system’s specification. The results of evaluation show that SN-Learning can advance the potential of adult online education.