CHALLENGES OF THE ADULT LEARNING SECTOR IN CONTEXT OF COVID-19 IN LATVIA

ABSTRACT

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected the way people work and learn in unprecedented ways. Also, the pandemic has moved more business activity online, increasing the need for training and prompting them to build more online trainings. In this time of crisis, a suitable response requires novel ways to enable interaction between adult learners, adult learners and teachers, adult learners and content using online tools so that no one is left behind. In the context of regional development, online adult learning provides economic active inhabitants with wide opportunities since employees are able to attend high-quality trainings regardless the place of residence. In context of COVID-19, during the emergency situation Latvia has fully moved to remote learning, including adult learning. Educational institutions as well as enterprises that organise trainings for adults have to implement remote learning using several online tools. The aim of the paper is to analyse the main challenges of the adult learning sector in Latvia in context of COVID-19 taking into consideration the regional development issues. In order to achieve the aim, following research methods have been used scientific literature studies, statistical data analysis, interviews. Main results of the survey in case of Latvia, the Ministry of Education and Science of Republic of Latvia has launched several initiatives towards enabling the shift to online learning, providing recommendations, digital tools as well as good practice sharing. At the same time, there is no methodology and detailed step-by-step recommendations, how to develop the online education learning for educational institutions in Latvia. However, there are incentives to develop online adult learning via project funding.