In recent years, the vhs association has carried out numerous regional and national projects to transform adult education into digital learning worlds. The aim of the present project European Adult Education 4.0 was to enrich these regional initiatives and their objectives through European experiences and the transfer of good practices. European innovations should be used in a targeted manner to develop overall concepts of how teaching and learning in vhsn and in adult education institutions can look like in the future. This includes the diverse design of teaching/learning settings and the question of how well-functioning and tried-and-tested forms of teaching/learning, e.g. conventional face-to-face courses, can be sensibly supplemented with digital instruments. Adult education 4.0 in the sense of the present project application should not be an exclusively digital strategy, but rather a holistic strategy of how teaching and learning, how self-responsible action and design can look like in a digital society. The aim was also to find answers to the question of what content and skills will be needed in the future in the context of digital living and working environments.
Adult lerning and education (ALE) is affected in several ways by new forms of life and work 4.0. On the one hand, new, digitally supported forms of learning in education have long been the standard, even if a meaningful linking of online learning and classic learning in face-to-face courses has not yet succeeded in many cases. On the other hand, the content of adult education must adapt to the future living and working environment. In its educational offerings, ALE must take into account how we communicate, interact and cooperate. Last but not least, completely new forms of learning are establishing themselves in digitized learning and working environments, which are not only limited to the use of digital media in educational institutions, but also produce completely different types of holistic learning that is controlled by the learner himself. In the present project, employees of the project sponsor vhs-Verband Baden-Württemberg and the adult education centers should get to know new learning environments and strategies 4.0 in European countries and reflect on them with their own experiences. Experiences from European mobility should and could be used as an innovation engine for adult education.