In the vocational colleges operating in Georgia adult education coordinators have been working for almost a year now and their functions include taking care of establishing new educational services for adults, studying the needs of companies operating in the labor market and initiating the renewal / addition of vocational education and training programs.
On May 15-18, 2020, DVV International organized a four-day online training called "Adult Education - Idea, Approaches, Instruments" for them which was also attended by employees of the Ministry's Vocational Education Department, Adult Education Division, National Center for Education Quality Development.
The training aiming at providing participants with theoretical information on European visions and concepts of adult education, as well as, to discuss existing models and to understand the basic mechanisms of how adult education works in countries with many years of experience.
Zoom has been selected as the training platform which allows comfortable communication with numerous participants simultaneously online. The first day was dedicated to the psycho-social factors of adult learning. The specifics of adult learning and the observations on knowledge acquisition and motivation in adult life were discussed. At the end of the day, participants were allowed to create their programs for adults as part of a creative exercise and present their work at an online exhibition.
For the next three days of the training, education experts TSU Associate Professor Ruso Sanadze and the Head of TSU Quality Assurance Service Irma Grdzelidze worked with the participants. Together with them, participants discussed education systems in Georgia, Estonia and Ireland. Additional time was devoted to providing theoretical knowledge about the fundamental principles of adult education, terminology, history, discussion of the elements constituting andragogy and pedagogy, types of learning and intelligence. During a practical exercise in the group, participants reviewed the specific problems and challenges faced by adult / vocational education providers in Georgia today.
The final day of the training was devoted entirely to the individual stages of training and their management from planning to evaluation. The focus was also on the needs and peculiarities of cooperation with business.
The training was followed by very positive feedback from the participants. In the evaluation questionnaires, most of them positively assessed both the work of the trainers and the whole training, also, emphasizing the importance of the information received and the need for further training on similar topics:
"The training was very timely and necessary ... We discussed useful issues for our activities and reviewed many interesting topics with high interactive involvement, for what I would like to thank the organizers of the training and I look forward to meeting them soon."
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