Adult education, distinct from child education, is a practice in which adults engage in systematic and sustained self-educating activities in order to gain new forms of knowledge, skills, attitudes, or values. It can mean any form of learning adults engage in beyond traditional schooling, encompassing basic literacy to personal fulfillment as a lifelong learner. and to ensure the fulfillment of an individual.
The Erasmus Programme is a European Union (EU) student exchange programme established in 1987. Erasmus+, or Erasmus Plus, is the new programme combining all the EU's current schemes for education, training, youth and sport, which was started in January 2014.
The Lifelong Learning Programme 2007–2013 was the European Union programme for education and training.
The EU also funds educational, vocational and citizenship-building programmes which encourage EU citizens to take advantage of opportunities which the EU offers its citizens to live, study and work in other countries. The best known of these is the Erasmus programme, under which more than 3,000,000 students have taken part in inter-university exchange and mobility over the last 20 years. Since 2000, conscious of the importance of Education and Training for their economic and social objectives, EU Member States have begun working together to achieve specific goals in the field of Education. By sharing examples of good policy practice, by taking part in Peer Learning activities, by setting benchmarks and by tracking progress against key indicators, the 27 Member States aim to respond coherently to common challenges, whilst retaining their individual sovereignty in the field of Education policy. This strategy is referred to as the Education and Training 2020 programme (ET2020), which is an update of the Education and Training 2010 programme. The European Union is also a partner in various inter-governmental projects, including the Bologna Process whose purpose is to create a European higher education area by harmonising academic degree structures and standards as well as academic quality assurance standards throughout EU Member States and in other European countries.
Apprentices mobility is the movement of students and teachers in vocational education or training (VET) to another institution inside or outside their own country to study or teach for a limited time. The term is usually used in the context of European Union (EU) policy.
The eTwinning action is an initiative of the European Commission that aims to encourage European schools to collaborate using Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) by providing the necessary infrastructure. Therefore, teachers registered in the eTwinning action are enabled to form partnerships and develop collaborative, pedagogical school projects in any subject area with the sole requirements to employ ICT to develop their project and collaborate with teachers from other European countries . The primary workspace for the eTwinning action, is the eTwinning Portal (www.etwinning.net) and it is available in twenty-five languages. Teachers registered in the eTwinning action, also called eTwinners, find each other, communicate, share resources and collaborate through the eTwinning platform. This growing and active community enforced the change in the motto of eTwinning from "School partnerships in Europe" to "The community for schools in Europe".
The European Association of History Educators (EuroClio) was established in 1992 with the support of the Council of Europe. The NGO works as a European wide facilitator for innovation and progress in history Education. The organisation contributes not only to the development, but also on the actual implementation of regional, national and European long-term projects, which focus on establishing knowledge, experience and expertise in the countries by training and consulting teachers. EuroClio develops teaching materials, builds and maintains professional Networks and acts as advisor to governments, international organisations, NGOs, History Teacher Associations and other Organisations. EuroClio is supported by the Europe for Citizens Programme of the European Union and has, for many years, Official Participatory Status and is part of the EU Stake Holder's Network in Education and Training.
The European Day of Languages is observed 26 September, as proclaimed by the Council of Europe on 6 December 2001, at the end of the European Year of Languages (2001), which had been jointly organised by the Council of Europe and the European Union. Its aim is to encourage language learning across Europe.
Leonard Orban is a Romanian independent technocrat who served as the Commissioner for Multilingualism in the European Commission, the executive body of the European Union (EU). He was responsible for the EU language policy and was the first Romanian Commissioner and the first member of the Commission whose portfolio is exclusively multilingualism. His term of office began on 1 January 2007 and ended on 9 February 2010. With a background in engineering and economics, Orban has taken up various posts working for the accession of Romania to the European Union, most prominently as Deputy and later as Chief Negotiator for his country at the time of final negotiations with the European Union.
The Medical University of Varna (MU-Varna) is a Bulgarian state school for higher education dedicated to training specialists in the fields of medicine and healthcare who graduate with the educational and qualification degrees of Master, Bachelor and Professional Bachelor. The University has a legal entity status with the following scope of business activities: training of cadres and professional qualification; training of PhD students; postgraduate education for medical and non-medical cadres; conducting medical diagnosis, prevention, consultation, rehabilitation, and expert services at the university hospitals; scientific research and applied sciences; international cooperation in the field of education and science; administrative, social, sport, publishing, information, and other activities.
The Enhancing Student Mobility through Online Support (ESMOS) project is a European-funded partnership between higher education institutions from Austria, Bulgaria, Italy, Lithuania and the United Kingdom. It has the aims of developing, evaluating and modelling the use of Virtual Learning Environments and online technologies to support students who take part in either a study exchange (ERASMUS) or work placement programme (LEONARDO), spending part of their studies overseas.
The STELLA project was originally supported and co-funded by the European Commission. The aim was to develop a new language learning methodology for online language learning suitable for European learners. The project's aim was also to deliver online language learning courses for less widely taught and used languages (LWTULs) within the European Union in order to meet the European Union's aim to "safeguard the linguistic diversity in Europe". The methodology was subsequently used in courses which further delivered languages considered to be of strategic importance to the EU and member states.
EUROMOBIL is an interactive multimedia language learning and information programme for nine European target languages. The EUROMOBIL project was launched in 1999 with the aim to support student mobility. EUROMOBIL has been designed with the support of the European Commission (Socrates/Lingua2). EUROMOBIL can be used for self-study as well as for tutor-based language teaching sessions. With the help of the Offline programmes students can prepare themselves for studying abroad and coping with everyday situations in the host country.
Global Hands-On Universe (GHOU) is an educational program that enables students to investigate the Universe while applying tools and concepts from science, math, and technology. Using the Internet, GHOU participants request observations from an automated telescope, download images from an image archive, and analyze them with the help of image processing software.
PLOTEUS is an acronym of Portal on Learning Opportunities Throughout European Space, meant to connote πλωτηρ (ploter) which means "navigator" in ancient Greek. It is a European Union web portal, coordinated by the European's Commission Directorate-General for education and culture, that aims to help citizens find out about education and training opportunities, throughout the countries belonging to the European Union, Switzerland, Iceland, Norway and Turkey, though the latter did not participate in PLOTEUS at its launch, as it was not a member of the Leonardo da Vinci programme yet. According to France 5, the portal offers an "easy access" to an "excellent source of information" from primary school to postgraduate education. PLOTEUS has been prioritised as a "project of common interest" by the European Commission. The European Parliament and the European Council have confirmed in 2006 their "support for transnational web-based services such as PLOTEUS". The portal is run by the Euroguidance network, financed by the Leonardo da Vinci programme, and is interconnected with EURES, the European Commission's portal on job mobility information. Both PLOTEUS and EURES are considered as examples of "pan-European services". After the launch of PLOTEUS and EURES in 2003, the Bologna process drive to favour student mobility in Europe wa further expressed in 2004 by the launch of the Europass program, which is accessible from the EURES portal, as well as PLOTEUS.
The development of the European Lifelong Learning Indicators (ELLI) is an initiative of the non-profit Bertelsmann Stiftung to monitor the state of lifelong learning in Europe. The main focus of the ELLI project is the ELLI Index. The ELLI index is an annually updated composite indicator summarizing the state of lifelong learning for European countries. The ELLI IT platform is an online portal that provides access to regional data related to learning and socio-economic outcomes in Europe.
EUF - Campus Europae is a European network which aims at the promotion of high quality student mobility and contributing to educating a generation of European graduates with an innate understanding of Europe’s unity in diversity. The project is under the patronage of the Government of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg and its secretariat is based at the Munsbach Castle.
The Learning Teacher Network is a European non-profit, member-based education network and association, which performs as a European platform for professional debate in the vanguard of educational progress. The network works closely with UNESCO in Quality Education and the implementation of the Global Action Programme for Education for Sustainable Development (GAP/ESD).
Blended mobility is an educational concept that combines physical academic mobility, virtual mobility and blended learning. It aims to promote employability of higher education students. Since 2009 it has evolved from virtual mobility, keeping the international value of academic mobility, but at the same time giving a concrete answer to possible family related, financial, psychological and social barriers of a physical mobility.
