The Future of Education

The paper reports on the developments of the online learning portal OWL (by the German Institute for Adult Education, funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research) aiming towards a new approach for the professional development of adult educators. The portal tries answering the question of how to keep this heterogeneous group motivated to continue learning and to improve teaching skills by building on Gilly Salmons Five-Stage-Model. 
The OWL Learning Space offers an infrastructure for e-moderation as well as technical support. These, in turn, are to enable the highest potential of learning motivation. The different areas considered are building on each other. They are indicated as (1) “Access and Motivation”, (2) “Online Socialization”, (3) “Information Exchange”, (4) “Knowledge Construction” and (5) “Development”.
With a “how-to” introduction and individual possibilities to choose learning content, the benefits of the portal shall become clear. By applying different degrees of difficulty, the OWL ensures that learners are successful according to their own prerequisites (1). Different types of forums ensure social interaction (2). A structured moderation enables a valuable exchange of information, which makes it possible for the learners to inquire and deepen their knowledge together (3). By a huge variety of tasks that promote critical thinking, creativity and practical application, the portal builds links to personal experience. Therefore, the user is challenged on a balanced level. An assessment and competence-based access to the portal motivate the user further to construct knowledge (4).
Finally, the last stage (5) strengthens the participants‘ responsibility for the learning progress – as well as of their own as of their group. Within that level of motivation, the participant is eager to continue and requires less support compared to the other stages.
Setting up the web-based platform according to the five stages guarantees a minimum measure of motivation. Regarding the large amount of content and several different ways to approach the participants’ needs, the portal ensures that users stay oriented and meet their individual expectations.

Keywords: Motivation, learning accompaniment, structure and orientation;