Lifelong learning networks for sustainable regional development

Sustainable regional development is a participatory, multi-actor process, involving a diversity of societal stakeholders, administrators, policy makers, practitioners and scientific experts. In this process, mutual and collective learning plays a major role as participants have to exchange and integrate a diversity of perspectives, interests and types of knowledge and expertise in order to arrive at innovative, jointly supported solutions. The design of ICT-based tools to support such learning processes is a major focus of the Lifelong Learning Network for Sustainable Development (3-LENSUS) project. The aim is to design lifelong learning networks that can bring universities and public and private sector actors together to develop sustainable solutions to complex regional problems. Lifelong learning in this context includes the acquisition of relevant new knowledge and skills by individual participants in the learning network as well as the co-production of new, transdisciplinary knowledge and solutions by (heterogenous) groups of participants. With learning networks we mean ensembles of actors, institutions and learning resources (in any form) which are mutually connected and supported by ICT, in such a way that the network largely self-organizes and gives rise to effective learning. The characteristic of these networks is that they try to make optimum use of social web-based software applications, also known as web 2.0 technologies, which enable a much more active and interactive way of learning. We will present the outcomes of a recent needs assessment regarding learning network design among practitioners from five European regions. Also, we will discuss the major challenges and opportunities that emerge in an on-going pilot in learning network design for a Euregional project in sustainable urban neighbourhood development.European Community Lifelong Learning Programme, 3-LENSUS project (project 142829-LLP-1-2008-1-CZ-ERASMUS-ENW