Facilitating learning in continuing education: some important sources

If higher education institutions are to respond effectively to the demands for continuing education, they will need to change their assumptions about the design of courses and the facilitation of learning. Despite many decades of development of new approaches to teaching and learning, courses in universities and polytechnics are normally still organised around the structures of the academic disciplines and the interests of the teaching staff. Learning-centred and problem-based courses, which can be especially appropriate in continuing education are rare particularly in those professional subjects where the potential for continuing education provision may be the greatest. The aim of the paper is to consider briefly the contributions ofthree groups of people to the ways in which learning can be facilitated in continuing education courses. These are Malcolm Knowles and his associates on teaching and learning strategies, John Heron and his associates on facilitation skills and the needs of adult learners, and the Sydney group based on the Australian Consortium on Experiential Education on fostering learning from experience and problem-based learning.