Open Learning: The Future Educational Principle

Abstract

This issue aims to analyze educational models that characterize the category of intergenerational learning that is dubbed open learning, within the arch of the current century. Open Learning between generations is indeed a crucial topic that cuts across institutions and high education practices, and is well placed within broader reflections upon knowledge and the human activity we call 'education'. Furthermore, such crucial topic activates fundamental dichotomies among current pedagogical research: presence/virtuality, object/community, formal/informal learning. And yet, paradoxically, just when it is about to become all-encompassing, this semantic construct tends to dissolve itself in educational models and communicational practices that it brought to life.

We know very well – and the essays published in this volume make it evident – that e-learning does not fully overlap with distance education tout court. Rather, it is learning supported by Internet technologies. E-learning is not a technological solution, but it is a new way to develop knowledge and learning opportunities. In fact, many now prefer to speak of open learning, and highlight the fact it is an 'open' style of learning, whose roles enjoy blurred limits; alternatively, they speak of ubiquitous learning, because of the way it takes down all spatial constraints usually connected with traditional learning approaches; finally, they talk of it as intergenerational learning because of the way it overcomes barriers determined by the different stages of life.