Reassessing the social benefits of lifelong learning in light of the COVID pandemic

This editorial focuses on what is widely regarded as a beneficial aspect of adult education, that is, increased opportunities for socialising, and how they may have been reduced by the general move to online learning in response to the COVID pandemic. Whilst some scholars have previously highlighted the potential negative social aspects of adults engaging with lifelong learning on relationships with those closest to them (e.g. Waller et al., 2011; Waller et al. 2014), adult education has generally been seen as a source of significant benefit for participants in a variety of arenas. The classic model from Tinto (1975) regarding adult student drop-out cited social integration with fellow course members – or lack thereof – as a major influence on the likelihood of someone completing a course of study. In addition to the personal benefits to learners from improved physical and particularly mental health and well-being, the economic benefits to individuals, society and the state usually outweigh the financial costs of educational provision (Schuller et al., 2004). Other potential benefits for individuals include short term social ones in addition to the obvious longer-term enhanced employment prospects arising from the acquisition of further skills or qualifications, what is often referred to as ‘enhanced employability’ within the dominant neoliberal discourse of policy makers. However, social benefits do not necessarily arise from all forms of study, particularly when the learner’s engagement with the educational process is remote, or online. We highlighted the anticipated growth of Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) in an editorial seven years ago (Holford et al., 2014), with MOOCs then widely hyped as an accessible and democratic form of post-compulsory education, albeit without such obvious social benefits from personal contact for participants. Whilst MOOCs have not proliferated to the extent that their proponents had anticipated (Luik et al., 2020), the number and breadth of MOOCs offered by ‘not for profit’ and ‘for profit’ sectors of adult education alike have both expanded. We can speculate that the lack of interpersonal contact experienced by those studying through this technology turns some people against the idea of remote online learning (Goopio & Cheung, 2021), despite its obvious advantages regarding access for geographically dispersed cohorts of learners, and the environmental and other savings in terms of the resources (including time) required for travel to a site of study. Enhanced access and reduced environmental impact also lie behind the decisions of some academic conference organisers to move to online conferences for the foreseeable future, leaving many in the education community wondering whether we will ever return to the default ‘face-to-face’ conferences we enjoyed prior to the pandemic. Meanwhile, the recent shift across much of the developed world in particular to online ‘delivery’ of many traditionally face-to-face taught courses as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic (James & Thériault, 2020; Waller et al., 2020) has emphasised to practitioners and participants alike the importance of the interpersonal aspects of adult learning. Milana et al. (2021, p. 114) write of the need to ‘ . preserve the quality of people’s encounters . ’ in the move to enforced online learning, including those valuable social benefits. This switch to online provision has been referred to variously as ‘crisis-response migration’ and ‘emergency remote teaching’ (Adedoyin & Soykan,