E-LEARNING IMPLICATIONS FOR ADULT LEARNING

If a few decades ago, the education received in school could be in most of the cases enough to go with for the rest of one’s entire life, today the situation has changed dramatically. The individual has to be prepared for a new type of life and training, namely lifelong learning. The individual’s survival in society could depend on his capacity to learn, to re-qualify, to forget what he once learned and to train for the future in an entirely different manner. Within this context, e-learning and distance education can be viable alternatives for the necessary and imperative adaptation process. Modern man’s education has to go beyond the stage of level oriented education (limited in terms of trainee number and training duration) and advance towards continuous education, which is able to train the individual irrespective of his location and with no limitations in terms of time. The passage towards the information society involves mutations in the object of the activities, mainly in terms of selecting, storing, preserving, managing and protecting information. Against this extremely fluctuant background, a relevant question rises: is the adult capable of coping, both individually and socially, with the challenge of e-learning?