We are facing with the lack of motivation and persistence by the participants in the programmes for gaining formal education, since they are adults and have many other responsibilities in their everyday lives. With this project, we wanted to get to know how to motivate and make it easier for them to process education, to complete programmes and to be successful. In the PUM-O programme, we have participants who have given up on school, their motivation for education is low, and they face difficult personal hardships and problems, so most often a lot of advice is needed before we can even attract them into the educational process. With the project, we wanted to learn about new, innovative methods of work and consulting. In programmes for older employees, participants who were included in regular education decades ago, but because of the needs of jobs, changes in society are forced to learn and educate. For them, we try to make this process accessible and friendly, making very important first contact with us, and the correct way to communicate with them. This is also important in educating retired people, as they need to adapt the learning process, carefully choose teaching methods and repeat things with patience with them.
In our work and experiences at Adult Education Center of Radovljica, we notice that needs and interests of adult participants are changing. Participants with very diverse pre-knowledge, experiences, perception and personal background are including into educational programmes. They are adults with developed personality, which leads to different attitude towards learning. For these reasons, we are detecting the need for additional training of teaching staff and non-teaching staff, gaining and meeting new teaching methods and tools in order to conduct more quality learning process. The need for additional staff competences is mostly in the gaining of new competences, experiences and knowledge to better identify the needs of participants of the programme, to better identify diversity between them and to motivate individuals to learn. This also demonstrates the need to develop the organisation of teaching and learning. The diversity of participants makes it difficult to achieve the homogeneity of the learning group and to adapt the learning process in such a way as to achieve or exploit the greatest possible potential for each individual. This also demonstrates the need for new learning methods and tools.