European Cultural Heritage and Skills Development Course for Adult Learners’ Self-Development

Abstract

Aim. This article aims to evaluate the target course created and the development of adult learners’ 21st century skills during the course implementation in six EU countries. Concept. European Cultural Heritage and Skills Development Course is a culture-based blended-learning course created within the framework of the Erasmus+ project “Cultural Knowledge and Language Competences as a Means to Develop 21stCentury Skills” conducted in six EU countries: Croatia, Latvia, Slovenia, Romania, Poland and Czech Republic (Project No.2018-1-HR-01-KA204-047430; 2018-2021). The course content is presented in a form of a story, applying innovative methodologies and tools increasing adult learners’ cultural knowledge and ensuring the skills development. This article focusses on blended-learning in particular, and the course evaluation given by learners and teachers after the course implementation in the six partner countries as well as the development of adult learners’ 21st century skills. Results and conclusion.The results indicate a positive evaluation of the learning platform, the learning methodologies and tasks as well as a positive trend considering the development of learners’ 21st century skills, including the English language competences. Although the results varied from country to country, no extremely significant differences between the evaluation done by learners and the teachers were found, thus the course may be applicable to adult teaching/learning. Practical application.The created blended-learning course may be a viable option for developing adult learners’ 21st century skills and increasing their cultural awareness of the less known EU intangible cultural heritage. Originality.The contribution describes the difference between flipped, hybrid and blended-learning and introduces a novel approach of creating a blended-learning course for adult learners.

Implementation of a blended learning course for adult learners during the COVID-19 pandemic

“…It has to be added that a course trial was conducted, as suggested in the course framework, among 227 learners from these six countries in 2019, where the face-to-face stage was implemented in class. The results obtained indicate a higher skills’ development and greater student satisfaction (Luka, 2021a, 2021b), thus emphasizing the necessity of live interaction.…”

“…As the general concept of BL has been presented in depth in a previous article by the author (cf. Luka, 2021b), this literature review focuses on certain articles published during the COVID-19 pandemic on applying BL for AE that are relevant to the current research.…”

“…Luka, 2019a) and delivered to adult learners in six countries (cf. Luka, 2019bLuka, , 2021a2021b). During the second stage, a culture-based BL multilingual course in ten languages was created and delivered to target groups of adult learners from March 2020 to January 2021.…”

The Phenomenon of Social and Pastoral Service in Eastern Slovakia and Northwestern Czech Republic during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Comparison of Two Selected Units of Former Czechoslovakia in the Context of the Perspective of Positive Solutions

“…Our research aimed to obtain data on the differences between two groups of people who are territorially situated in the former state of Czechoslovakia. The study sought to point out the differences in the subjective perceptions of people in Central Europe who are mentally significantly close [24][25][26]. The study results related to the research were realised after the second wave of the pandemic situation of COVID-19.…”

Implementation of a Multilingual Blended Learning Course for Non-formal and Informal Adult Learning during the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…The course concept, its creation and methodologies as well as the specificity of adult learners have been analysed in prior research by the author (cf. Luka, 2019a;Luka, 2019b;Luka, 2021;Luka, 2022).…”