English
Our partners from University College Cork presented their paper on co-designing with older adults in the AliVe project at EUCEN 2025 in Lille, France on the 5th of June.
Our paper presents the experiences and outcomes of working with older Irish adults to incorporate their knowledge into the development of their lifelong learning pathways. Our conclusions on the co-design process with our participants were that the participants emphasised peer-supported, community-oriented learning for both rural and urban areas. Co-creation was key to recognising older adults as diverse and to design to support their participation in lifelong learning. Designing for and in context is important for community ownership of lifelong learning pathways and may improve uptake and participation. We are aware of future challenges as co-design requires depth of engagement with specific communities and contexts which can make scale-up and implementation in new settings difficult. There is a need for development guidelines and AliVe is aiming to address this gap.
We included a quote from one of the participants on our pilot that we think sums up how important the co-design element was for them:
“The best part was getting to design our own course. We have our own interests and know what we want to learn and were looking forward to the variety and having something for everyone.”
There were some very synergistic presentations at the conference such as the ‘Benefits of LLL on older adults’ – research conducted by UNESCO Institute of LLL by Mo Wang (UNESCO UIL) and ‘Later-life learning: debate on LLL from a lifelong and life-wide perspective beyond the traditional working years’ by Janick Naveteur, Emeritous Pr., University of Lille.
Find more information about eucen – the European universities continuing education network by clicking HERE.
