Lifelong Learning Paradigm Research Articles

Lifelong learning paradigm and socioeconomic sustainability: towards employment growth of vocational trainers in Pakistan

Lifelong learning paradigm and socioeconomic sustainability: towards employment growth of vocational trainers in Pakistan

Information, Digital, and Socio-Psychological Technologies in the Training of Specialists in the Social Sphere

The article is devoted to the application of various educational technologies in the process of training specialists in the social sphere. It is shown that one of the important aspects of professional training is the formation of a generalized orientation in the future social work specialist in terms of goals, subject, means, composition of future professional activity, and this, in turn, represents a problem, since complex types of professional activity are not amenable to rigorous analysis, always leave a person space for creative search. As a guideline on the path of addressing this problem, the importance of didactic design of the training of specialists in the social sphere is emphasized, based on the combination of socio-psychological and information-digital technologies in the educational process, including with the aim of motivating students to adopt the paradigm of life-long learning.

LIMIP: Lifelong Learning to Solve Mixed Integer Programs

Mixed Integer programs (MIPs) are typically solved by the Branch-and-Bound algorithm. Recently, Learning to imitate fast approximations of the expert strong branching heuristic has gained attention due to its success in reducing the running time for solving MIPs. However, existing learning-to-branch methods assume that the entire training data is available in a single session of training. This assumption is often not true, and if the training data is supplied in continual fashion over time, existing techniques suffer from catastrophic forgetting. In this work, we study the hitherto unexplored paradigm of Lifelong Learning to Branch on Mixed Integer Programs. To mitigate catastrophic forgetting, we propose LIMIP, which is powered by the idea of modeling an MIP instance in the form of a bipartite graph, which we map to an embedding space using a bipartite Graph Attention Network. This rich embedding space avoids catastrophic forgetting through the application of knowledge distillation and elastic weight consolidation, wherein we learn the parameters key towards retaining efficacy and are therefore protected from significant drift. We evaluate LIMIP on a series of NP-hard problems and establish that in comparison to existing baselines, LIMIP is up to 50% better when confronted with lifelong learning

The Role of Digital Technologies in Foreign Language Learning in the Context of Life-Long Learning Paradigm

Introduction. The article explores the importance of digitalization in foreign language studying within the concept of life-long learning. The authors underscore the need to create integrated educational space, based on building efficient educational tracks, embracing various forms of e-learning and applying distant educational technologies. The high degree of relevance of life-long learning is attributed to rapid updating of information and knowledge as well as rising competition on the labour market and increasing requirements for professional competence.It is underlined that digital technologies can only be efficient once they are employed within a particular educational framework, designed to achieve specific goals and meet students’ needs and requirements. The paradigm of life-long learning and creation of unitary educational space with regard to foreign language learning suggest that higher educational institutions, which possess the necessary scientific and teaching capacities, should take the leading role in designing, applying and spreading educational digital technologies. The accomplishments and experience of universities and institutes in that sphere should be employed in all the stages of education. Such institutions enjoy sufficient resources and competencies to create online and distant learning courses, which provide access to high quality further education to various categories of students. The authors come to the conclusion that ensuring human right to lifelong learning, including foreign language learning, requires timely meeting changing labour market requirements, building individual educational tracks, and applying modern digital technologies.Materials and methods. The methodical approach of the research refers to the specified and known empirical and theoretical methods in digital linguodidactics. The analysis of mapping out foreign language learning in the framework of the digital educational system is extensively used in the article. Other general and specific research methods – dialectical, comparative, modeling, ect.-have also been applied in this study.Results. The high degree of relevance of creating digital educational environment and life-long learning is attributed to rapid updating of information and knowledge, which stimulates motivation for their acquisition, specification and application. Moreover, rising competition on the labour market and increasing requirements for professional competence, including excellent command of a foreign language, create a powerful incentive for continuous learning, achieved within integrated digital educational system.Discussion and conclusion. The research, that has been carried out in the article makes it possible to conclude that creation of the integrated digital educational environment based on modern learning techniques encourages life-long education, particularly in the context of foreign language learning.

Applying the Lifelong Machine Learning Paradigm in Tuberculosis Triage

Tuberculosis (TB) and pneumonia, including pneumonia from SARS-CoV-2 infection, are among the main causes of lower respiratory infections, which are the fourth cause of death worldwide. Recently, the World Health Organization recommended the use of computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) software as a tool to analyze chest radiographs (CXR) for TB screening and triage. Most CAD developed to date aim to screen exclusively for TB. This work applies the lifelong machine learning paradigm to detect both pneumonia and TB through CXRs and evaluate the models’ ability to retain and acquire knowledge. Two well-known lifelong learning models, the Efficient Lifelong Learning Algorithm (ELLA) and Learning without Forgetting (LwF), were applied to two public CXR datasets containing TB and pneumonia samples together with healthy CXR samples. Pneumonia detection was learned first and TB detection was learned as second task. The SP index, a function of sensitivity and specificity, was used to evaluate the models. We concluded that both algorithms were able to retain knowledge about pneumonia detection and were also able to learn TB detection.

Finding Balance through Connected Learning Designs: Disentangling Self-Regulated and Co-Regulated Learning in Online Postgraduate Education

The paradigm of lifelong learning has changed our understanding of the possibilities of online postgraduate education for fostering self-regulated learning. Recent research attention has been placed on the role of self-regulated learning in higher education in hybrid, blended or fully online environments. Although the fields of EdTech and online higher education have a significant research agenda in both scale and scope, rigorous research and substantive findings about how students experience the balance across a continuum from self-regulated learning to guided instruction have been limited. The purpose of the current study is to examine and expose learning strategies and practices that support and shape connected forms of lifelong learning in online postgraduate education across contexts. Results are presented from the qualitative component of a broader mixed methods study aiming to explore the phenomenon of interest from the participants’ perspective. The findings present three key areas of interest to further the conversation on how to best support lifelong learning in online HE and promote changes in our understanding of self-regulated learning. The article concludes with a discussion of the identified learning strategies and practices used to support learning across contexts to provide more nuanced insights into the factors that support or hinder efforts to foster lifelong, self-regulated and co-regulated learning.

University as a cathedral: lifelong learning and the role of the university in the European context

ABSTRACT The paper discusses the main issues which emerge for the university as an institution in the European context from the development of the lifelong learning paradigm. It focuses on both the opportunity-creating and tension-provoking presence of the lifelong learning concept in the university’s institutional environment. The analysis is based on a thematic review of articles published in the International Journal of Lifelong Education (IJLE) during the four decades of its existence. The paper argues that: (1) the implementation of lifelong learning requires a profound change in the systemic characteristics of the university institution and cannot be limited to the establishment of departments of adult and continuing education; (2) without being uncritically perceived, lifelong learning is a strategy that can help universities successfully address some of their main problems and continue to develop as a key institution of societies in the 21st century and (3) in the European context, the institutional model that can embody the paradigm for lifelong learning and at the same time contains the possibility of preserving the specificity of university as an institution, is best symbolised by a cathedral.

CL 2 R: Compatible Lifelong Learning Representations

In this article, we propose a method to partially mimic natural intelligence for the problem of lifelong learning representations that are compatible. We take the perspective of a learning agent that is interested in recognizing object instances in an open dynamic universe in a way in which any update to its internal feature representation does not render the features in the gallery unusable for visual search. We refer to this learning problem as Compatible Lifelong Learning Representations (CL 2 R), as it considers compatible representation learning within the lifelong learning paradigm. We identify stationarity as the property that the feature representation is required to hold to achieve compatibility and propose a novel training procedure that encourages local and global stationarity on the learned representation. Due to stationarity, the statistical properties of the learned features do not change over time, making them interoperable with previously learned features. Extensive experiments on standard benchmark datasets show that our CL 2 R training procedure outperforms alternative baselines and state-of-the-art methods. We also provide novel metrics to specifically evaluate compatible representation learning under catastrophic forgetting in various sequential learning tasks. Code is available at https://github.com/NiccoBiondi/CompatibleLifelongRepresentation .

Representative Task Self-Selection for Flexible Clustered Lifelong Learning.

Consider the lifelong machine learning paradigm whose objective is to learn a sequence of tasks depending on previous experiences, e.g., knowledge library or deep network weights. However, the knowledge libraries or deep networks for most recent lifelong learning models are of prescribed size and can degenerate the performance for both learned tasks and coming ones when facing with a new task environment (cluster). To address this challenge, we propose a novel incremental clustered lifelong learning framework with two knowledge libraries: feature learning library and model knowledge library, called Flexible Clustered Lifelong Learning (FCL3). Specifically, the feature learning library modeled by an autoencoder architecture maintains a set of representation common across all the observed tasks, and the model knowledge library can be self-selected by identifying and adding new representative models (clusters). When a new task arrives, our FCL3 model firstly transfers knowledge from these libraries to encode the new task, i.e., effectively and selectively soft-assigning this new task to multiple representative models over feature learning library. Then: 1) the new task with a higher outlier probability will be judged as a new representative, and used to redefine both feature learning library and representative models over time; or 2) the new task with lower outlier probability will only refine the feature learning library. For model optimization, we cast this lifelong learning problem as an alternating direction minimization problem as a new task comes. Finally, we evaluate the proposed framework by analyzing several multitask data sets, and the experimental results demonstrate that our FCL3 model can achieve better performance than most lifelong learning frameworks, even batch clustered multitask learning models.

A Lifelong Learning Method for Gearbox Diagnosis With Incremental Fault Types

Deep learning (DL)-based fault diagnosis models have to collect the most comprehensive data of mechanical fault types to ensure reliability. In real scenarios, due to complex, variable operating conditions, machines often generate unexpected faults that lead to an increment of fault types, causing the diagnosis model to be invalid. Therefore, the data of new fault types are needed to retrain the model. However, DL models suffer from catastrophic forgetting when incrementally learning new classes. To solve the problem of the diagnosis of increasing fault types, a lifelong learning method for fault diagnosis (LLMFD) is proposed in this paper under the lifelong learning paradigm. The key of LLMFD is a proposed dual-branch aggregation networks (DBANets) framework that is combined with reserved exemplars to learn the new fault types without forgetting the old ones. In DBANets, each residual block layer has a dynamic block and a steady block to solve the stability–plasticity dilemma in lifelong learning. The aggregation weights are adopted to balance stability and plasticity. LLMFD is applied to a diagnosis case of incremental fault types. Results verify that LLMFD is superior to other lifelong learning methods and has satisfactory robustness.

Rumors Detection Based on Lifelong Machine Learning

The amount of training data is small in the field of Weibo rumor detection, and online news changes constantly, but the existing models do not have the ability of continuous learning, which means they cannot achieve knowledge accumulation and update. Hence, they will require many training examples to improve their detection ability. In contrast, Lifelong Machine Learning (LML) paradigm has the capability of continuous learning, which retains the knowledge learned in the past and uses it to help future learning tasks. After learning, some knowledge is updated. With the growth and update of knowledge, the performance of each task will be better and better. Hence, we use this paradigm to build a Weibo rumor detection model. First, we extracted three types of features based on content, user, and propagation from Weibo events and proposed three new propagation features and Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) semantic features of source message for rumor detection. We then used Simulated Annealing (SA) to improve the Genetic Algorithm (GA), which was called GA-SA used to search for the best global minimum feature subset to enhance the classification effect of the Efficient Lifelong Learning Algorithm (ELLA) on rumors. The ELLA transfers knowledge to learn new tasks and refines knowledge over time to maximize performance across all tasks in the continuous learning process. The proposed model is called GA-SA-ELLA. The experimental results show that our model could achieve superior detection results even with less training data for each task.

PROshot News: A Novel Avenue for Continuing Radiation Oncology Education

<h3>Purpose/Objective(s)</h3> The growth in the number of reported scientific results over the last decade has been logarithmic, posing a growing critical barrier for practicing oncologists striving to stay current on the best available cancer care. This remains a contributing factor to rising rates of physician burnout. At the same time, practicing physicians have a growing disgruntlement with mandated, formalized continuing medical education (CME) that is often costly—both in monetary value and time spent—without affording corresponding educational value. As such, the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) has recently responded with a call for "effective and efficient" education that works to enhance clinical delivery of care in a truly continual manner. PROshot (formerly known as QuadShot News) was developed to be a uniquely practical and effective web-based newsletter for radiation oncologists. We hypothesize it will prove a popular way for trainees and practitioners to stay informed of trial updates and policy developments that influence clinical practice. <h3>Materials/Methods</h3> Using an email newsletter, weekly quiz, web archive and audible podcast, pertinent research results and policy updates are disseminated in a highly-accessible and digestible way. Updates are formatted in succinct blurbs that are both quick and engaging. User data is hosted by the MailChimp marketing automation platform with built-in real-time analytics. Consumer engagement is measured by (1) email open rates, (2) embedded link clicks, and (3) individual consumer engagement. To capture individual metrics, MailChimp assigns each subscriber an engagement level: opening no more than 1 of the last 12 emails and clicking no more than 1 link (rare), opening 2-4 of the last 12 emails and clicking 2-4 links (sometimes), or opening 5 or more of the last 12 emails and clicking several links (often). Descriptive statistics only were utilized for data analysis. <h3>Results</h3> The inaugural newsletter was sent to roughly 20 beta users in June 2017. It has since demonstrated consistent substantial monthly growth via consumer-to-consumer referrals to now (as of March 1, 2021) reach 2263 subscribers. Of these, 93.6% (n = 2123) are US residents, a number representing nearly half of practicing radiation oncologists nationwide. More importantly, throughout our continued growth, daily user engagement and click rates currently average 52.9% and 11.0%, respectively, compared to the medical industry average of 21.7% and 2.5%. Currently, 24% of subscribers rarely engage, 4% sometimes engage, and 69% often engage, with the remaining 3% too new to be assigned. <h3>Conclusion</h3> Our analytics establish proof of concept with clear sustainable growth and substantial daily engagement. Given our rapid initial success with grassroots marketing, we expect PROshot will transform the paradigm of lifelong learning by utilizing creative continuing medical education methodology designed for the modern radiation oncologist.

The mind, the heart and the joule in the crown: A holistic approach to lifelong learning

This paper examines views of learning under the perspectives of behaviourism, cognitivism, humanism, social interactionism and social constructivism. The ‘heart’ of learning is explored through the lens of emotion (albeit assuming its well-worn association with the physicality of the human body as defined and researched through the scientific paradigm within which the disciplines of anatomy, physiology, biomechanics, skill acquisition and kinesiology are well documented). Spirituality and the ‘soul’, under the guise of ‘life energy’, is proposed as an avenue of further exploration and development in order to loosen the restraint of the positivist grip on education. The aim is to establish the characteristics of these perspectives that may lead to a new paradigmatic lens through which we might explore a developmental model of lifelong learning that goes beyond the limits of traditional mandated policy and practice and thus places the whole person firmly at the centre of the lifelong learning journey. The significance and relevance of this lifelong learning paradigm is placed in the current context of the global coronavirus pandemic. Finally, approaches aimed at applying the principles discussed to school settings are illustrated.

Internet of emotional people: Towards continual affective computing cross cultures via audiovisual signals

Despite considerable advances achieved in affective computing over the past decade, the related learning paradigms still remain in an isolated fashion, i.e., models are often designed and developed task-dependently. Nevertheless, with the inherently heterogeneous and dynamic property of multiple tasks, we inevitably face several challenges, such as the implementation feasibility, when dealing with the growing number of new tasks of interest. For this reason, in this study, we endeavour to shed some fresh light on shifting the conventional isolated affective computing into a lifelong learning paradigm, namely continual affective computing. As the first tentative work in audio and video domains, we explore the lifelong learning algorithm of elastic weight consolidation for this benchmark work, in an application of well-established audiovisual emotion recognition in a cross-culture scenario, i.e., French and German emotion recognition. To evaluate the feasibility and effectiveness of the introduced lifelong learning, we perform extensive experiments across the RECOLA and SEWA databases. The empirical results show that the implemented lifelong learning approach remarkably outperforms other baselines in most cases, and is even competitive to the joint training process in some cases, indicating its capability when handling the sequential learning process with multiple tasks.

The rise of lifelong learning and fall of adult education in India

This article focuses on the dynamic relationships between the growing importance of lifelong learning (LLL) and consequent devaluation of adult education in national level educational policies, plans and programmes in India. It argues that by adapting the new paradigm of LLL, which is largely driven by marketcentric neoliberal principles, Indian adult education has lost its core and traditional learning ecology as there is a gradual submission to the pursuit of global economic competitiveness. It identifies three main reasons for the submission: (1) the metamorphosis from welfare to market principles in reforming education; (2) blind acceptance and misunderstanding of LLL as an educational and not a political discourse; (3) fragmented reforms in revamping adult education in India in the last decades.

Perspectives of lifelong education in Portuguese higher education: a critical analysis of learning outcomes

ABSTRACTNurturing students’ continuous learning is a current trend in the higher education agenda. Curricula and academic contents should enable students to take part in stimulating learning experiences, as well as promoting both developing and training opportunities in the course of their lives and careers. Despite the relevance given to lifelong learning in the educational system, there are still some open questions: how this concept is understood and put into practice by higher education institutions? The paper aims to analyse the conceptions of lifelong learning as reflected on the learning outcomes proposed in a sample of study programs. A qualitative methodology and a data-driven approach are adopted to explore the content of the learning outcomes proposed in 10% of total study programs submitted to quality accreditation, since 2009. Generally, results reveal that higher education institutions are committed to the lifelong learning paradigm, particularly in master and PhD degrees. Students are expected to ‘invest in personal and professional development through life’, to ‘develop learning competences through life’, as well as to ‘foster lifelong learning’. This study provides a better understanding of the range of perspectives and the relevance given to lifelong learning as a valuable learning outcome.

Strategies of students’ information behaviour in the context of lifelong learning

Research objective. The research objective was to identify and analyse the general trends, manifested in the information behaviour of students in terms of realising and taking advantage of lifelong learning in the digital society. The authors attempted to answer the question: What is the specificity of modern students’ information behaviour strategies? Materials and methods. The research was based on the concept of “information behaviour”, considered by the authors as a system of actions to implement the processes of interaction with the information environment. In the conditions of digital society development, the effectiveness of information strategies largely depends on the adoption of the values of lifelong learning. In the context of the activity approach, information behaviour includes the motivational aspect (acceptance of the lifelong learning paradigm, motives of educational activity, relations, interests and orientations within the current learning stage) and the activity aspect (general learning strategies, approaches to new information acquisition, self-management strategies in the learning process, as well as the possession of modern tools to implement these strategies – ICT tools). The research methods included a survey and statistical analysis. During the survey, Russian and Polish students were asked to relate the degree of information behaviour characteristics to a five-point scale. Statistical analysis comprised descriptive statistics, including the distribution of answers for all respondents, comparative statistics for Polish and Russian students, and correlation analysis. Results of the study. The research results have showed that students understand the importance of lifelong learning and accept it as a value and requirement of the 21st century. However, their information behaviour is not always based on effective strategies. Educational activity is insufficiently supported by the use of ICT tools for self-management, goal setting, and construction of an individual educational route. Direct correlations were revealed between the readiness for lifelong learning and the development of initiative, responsibility, self-management, including the active use of specialised electronic tools. Information behaviour is associated with future professional activities. For example, for socially oriented professions, information behaviour comprises such features as openness and empathy. Conclusion. Based on the results obtained, recommendations for lecturers can be formulated to support the process of mastering the advanced strategies of information behaviour by students. Firstly, it is necessary to encourage students to use open electronic resources, not only to access the newest information, but to join the processes of qualitatively new knowledge creation in collaborate work (self-directed learning, learning in partnership, collaborative learning). Secondly, it is important to create conditions for the expansion of professional experience through the strengthening of the practice-oriented assignments role, as well as the inclusion of students in project, competitive and grant activities.

Transfer of Knowledge through Collective Learning

Learning fast and efficiently using minimal data has been consistently a challenge in machine learning. In my thesis, I explore this problem for knowledge transfer for multi-agent multi-task learning in a life-long learning paradigm. My goal is to demonstrate that by sharing knowledge between agents and similar tasks, efficient algorithms can be designed that can increase the speed of learning as well as improve performance. Moreover, this would allow for handling hard tasks through collective learning of multiple agents that share knowledge. As an initial step, I study the problem of incorporating task descriptors into lifelong learning of related tasks to perform zero-shot knowledge transfer. Zero-shot learning is highly desirable because it leads to considerable speedup in handling similar sequential tasks. Then I focus on a multi-agent learning setting, where related tasks are learned collectively and/or address privacy concerns.

PRIORIZAR LA COMPETENCIA APRENDER A APRENDER EN LAS PROGRAMACIONES Y UNIDADES DIDÁCTICAS

Abstract.Basic assembly to capture on curriculum design and development Skills, the Learning to Learn is essential for several reasons: first, because the educational paradigm of Lifelong Learning which enshrines the European Union, requires citizens to be suitable for acquiring an ever changing , available at various sources of information, especially that provided by virtual environments, and the ability to apply and use it indifferent contexts , knowledge being in a professional environment where they are going to make clear the acquisition that power. Moreover, this competition covers and covers a wide range of areas, dimensions and indicators of other skills that are essential, the Autonomous Learning goes beyond the cognitive aspects , having special relevance the emotional, something that becomes even more apparent given the interrelated and inclusiveness that characterizes the Basic Skills.The European Higher Education promotes a type of learning in more autonomous and flexible student who required him, among other things, but as a priority , knowledge , control and application of cognitive and emotional factors brought into play during the learning processes. In this paper , we begin by defining the concept and the basic guidelines of this competition lines from psychological approaches that deal with the Meta Cognition, until the underlying socioeconomic and sociopolitical fonts in documents and OECD guidelines (draft DESECO), European Union (program working groups 2010 and 2020), or the Ministry of Education itself . The core of this paper consists in selecting a set of fields , dimensions , sub - dimensions and indicators of competency assessment to learning that will help teachers to design and develop their Schedules and teaching units in forms of Assessment Objectives and Indicators . We end by outlining what the best organizational strategies at plant level , methodological classroom level and individual as well as the different types of activities , materials and resources (as we saw in the seven modules and eight) that are better suited for work this important competition.Keywords: learning to learn, teaching programs , assessment indicators , methodological and organizational strategies.Resumen.Del conjunto de Competencias Básicas a plasmar en el diseño y desarrollo curricular, la de Aprender a Aprender es esencial por varios motivos: en primer lugar, porque con el paradigma educativo del Lifelong Learning que consagra la Unión Europea, exige que los ciudadanos se adecuen a la adquisición de un conocimiento cada vez más cambiante, disponible en varias fuentes de información, especialmente la que proporcionan los entornos virtuales, y con la capacidad de aplicarlo y utilizarlo indiferentes contextos, siendo en el entorno profesional donde más se va a hacer evidente la adquisición de dicha competencia. Por otro lado, esta competencia abarca y engloba un amplio conjunto de ámbitos, dimensiones e indicadores de otras competencias que son esenciales, el Aprendizaje Autónomo va más allá de los aspectos cognitivos, teniendo especia relevancia los aspectos emocionales, algo que se hace aún más patente dado el carácter interrelacionado e integrador que caracteriza las Competencias Básicas.El Espacio Europeo de Educación Superior, promueve un tipo de aprendizaje en el alumno más autónomo y flexible que exigirá de él, entre otras cosas, aunque de forma prioritaria, el conocimiento, control y aplicación de los factores cognitivos y emocionales puestos en juego durante los procesos de aprendizaje. En la presente ponencia, comenzaremos delimitando el concepto y las líneas directrices básicas de esta competencia, desde los enfoques psicológicos que tienen que ver con la Meta Cognición, hasta las fuentes socio políticas y socio económicos subyacentes en los documentos y directrices de la OCDE (proyecto DESECO), de la Unión Europea (grupos de trabajo del programa 2010 y 2020), o el propio Ministerio de Educación. El núcleo central de la presente ponencia consiste en la selección de una batería de ámbitos, dimensiones, sub-dimensiones e indicadores de evaluación de la competencia de Aprender a Aprender que servirán al profesorado para el diseño y el desarrollo de sus Programaciones y Unidades Didácticas en formas de Objetivos e Indicadores de Evaluación. Finalizaremos esbozando cuáles son las mejores estrategias organizativas a nivel de centro, metodológicas a nivel de aula e individual, así como los diferentes tipos de actividades, materiales y recursos didácticos (según lo que vimos en los módulos siete y ocho) que mejor se adecuan para trabajar esta competencia tan importante.Palabras Clave: aprender a aprender; programaciones didácticas; indicadores de evaluación; estrategias metodológicas y organizativas.

Support of active ageing through P2P learning

Personal development throughout the course of life is at the core of several important policy documents that have shaped European cooperation in economic, social and educational sciences over the last decade. The paradigm of Lifelong Learning implies learning at any age of life and underlines the importance of achieving continuous knowledge and self-care.Pedagogy has started taking into account the age of older adults only in recent years.The European project we are going to illustrate sought to test how well peer to peer learning can be useful to define new training and learning models for older adults.The HiHtaST (Hand in Hand to a Social Tomorrow) project provides an example of peer to peer learning among older adults.We provided training for adult learners to teach IT among other older adults as a means for social inclusion in five European countries. Each country had 20 learners / trainers who had other older students in turn.Multiple choice questionnaires and focus groups were used to collect data.The project was run in the theoretical framework of active ageing, considering the paradigm of Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development and co-construction of knowledge.The project results showed that adults can acquire knowledge in peer to peer group situations with no drop-outs especially when learning real and practical tasks, which suggests that peer to peer learning works better than a frontal class in formal as well as non-formal or informal situations.