LIfelonglearning

LETS TALK ABOUT NORDPLUS

The project A Lifetime of Learning: Mapping Competence Development in the Workplace NPAD-2025/10300, funded by the Nordic Council of MInistry  is an ongoing Nordplus project. Duration time 09/2025 - 08/2027.

This project brings together partners from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden to map learning methodologies in workplace settings, focusing on the healthcare and technology sectors. By identifying and analysing real-world cases, the project aims to document how skills are developed in work environments, both through partnerships with educational institutions and through internal training developed by the organisation itself. The findings will provide insights into best practices, trends, and effective learning methods that can be adopted across the Nordic region.

The project is particularly relevant given current challenges such as labour and skills shortages caused by ageing populations and rapidly evolving job requirements. By exploring work-based learning models, the project seeks to document workforce adaptability and productivity andto share this knowledge. Through structured interviews, workshops, and conferences, the team will collect and compare data across the five countries. Results will be disseminated through webinars, reports, and a final publication, ensuring that findings are accessible to policymakers, businesses, and educational institutions.

Project aim
In “A Lifetime of Learning: Mapping methods of competence development in the workplace”, we bring together partners from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden to document learning methods developed and implemented in the workplace. We will focus on the healthcare and technology sectors. These sectors are broad to allow for the selection of target groups during the initial stages of the project.

The project is a mapping initiative across the five Nordic countries, aiming to identify examples of competence development methods where the workplace is the primary learning arena.

Each partner will identify and document cases in the specified sectors. These will be analysed and used to identify trends. This will give us insight into how learning occurs in the workplace within healthcare and technology, which can then be disseminated through our respective networks. The project will aim to map transferable knowledge that is useful across sectors and national borders.

Background
The Nordic countries face challenges due to ageing populations, declining birth rates, and shortages of both labour and competencies. Up-skilling and re-skilling workers through workplace learning is crucial to retaining talent, increasing productivity, and filling skills gaps. The need for lifelong learning (skills, knowledge, and attitudes) is prevalent in the healthcare and technology sectors. These two sectors are experiencing labour and skills shortages across the Nordics and internationally. Therefore, maintaining productive workplaces while simultaneously ensuring high-quality skills development is essential. Learning and competence development in the workplace can no longer be something that only large multinational workplaces invest in.

In the technology sector, changes happen faster than skills can be developed. In healthcare, we do not have enough personnel to cover the population’s needs. We believe, however, that training, suitable methods for competence development, and education are key to addressing these challenges. Ensuring that suitable methods for work-based learning are high-quality, effective, and well integrated will help employees gain the necessary skills while remaining productive.

Nordic/Baltic added value
This project builds on the NordPlus priority of lifelong learning and the tradition of Nordic cooperation projects, enabling cross-border learning and the exchange of practice.

The countries in this project have, to a high degree, similar societal structures and face similar labour and skills shortages. There are also similarities in political and societal dialogue around the need for lifelong learning and how significant the workplace is as a learning arena. There is also extensive pre-existing cross-border business and cooperation. Our previous experiences show that the Nordic countries have such close relations, both formal and informal, that it is possible to identify trends in work-based learning and training that are relevant across national borders.

Defining effective and sustainable learning methods in the workplace, with quality as a central factor, will facilitate a transnational exchange of experiences, promising practices, and valuable knowledge.

Activities
The project team will have five physical working meetings during the project’s lifetime. At each meeting, the partners will coordinate the mapping and analysis of findings. As soon as we have the first intermediate results from our investigations, expected after three months, we will arrange workshops or conferences directly connected to the meetings to disseminate the results and create a dialogue (quality control) concerning the identified experiences with key stakeholders that we identify during the scoping phase of the project.

Webinars will be arranged between the meetings to broaden the dialogue about the learning methods and discuss the project experiences. Before, between, and after the meetings and seminars, partners’ experiences from previous Nordic projects and collected experience will be incorporated into the project website, containing Nordic Network for Lifelong Learning (NLL) webpage blogs, descriptions, analyses, and the final publication. For the preparation and marketing of the seminars, 8–10 webinars will be held and recorded, allowing asynchronous access to the material, projects, and experiences.

 The CLEAR-AGE: Empowering Older Adults to Navigate AI-Driven Disinformation is a Nordplus Adult collaboration and development project addressing the growing impact of artificial intelligence on today’s information environment and its consequences for older adult learners.

The aim of the CLEAR-AGE project is to strengthen critical information resilience among older adults in AI-driven information environments through non-formal adult learning in care and social service settings.

The project’s main objective is to strengthen older adults’ digital, media and critical thinking competences, with a specific focus on recognising AI-generated disinformation and manipulative narratives. At the organisational level, the project aims to enhance the capacity of
adult education providers to address AI-related challenges through inclusive, practice-oriented. Key activities include the co-creation of learning modules on AI, disinformation and media logic for older adult learners; pilot trainings and workshops in partner countries; mobility and
peer learning for adult educators and NGO staff; and the development of case-based learning scenarios grounded in real information crises. Community dialogues will further support collective information resilience and civic participation.

Expected results include open-access, practical learning resources for older adults, improved learner confidence and critical information skills, and strengthened organisational competences in adult education. The project will foster sustainable Nordic–Baltic cooperation among adult
education and civil society organisations, contributing to long-term democratic resilience and lifelong learning.

At participant level, the project aims to strengthen older adults’ digital, media and critical thinking competences, enabling them to recognise AI-generated disinformation, misleading narratives and manipulative content, and to engage with digital media in a more confident and informed
way in everyday life. At organisational level, the project seeks to strengthen the capacity of senior care institutions, social service providers and NGOs to address AI-related information risks by developing and piloting practical, age-appropriate learning methods that can be integrated into everyday support and care practices. At sectoral and regional level, the project aims to strengthen Nordic–Baltic cooperation, support
the exchange of practice-based knowledge and contribute to more informed and resilient communities by improving responses to AI-driven disinformation affecting older adults.

Participating organisations in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania work closely with senior care homes and community-based learning environments and share a common need for practical, age-appropriate methods to address these emerging challenges. Adult educators and
care staff report a lack of accessible tools to explain AI-related risks in an empowering and understandable way. By pooling Nordic–Baltic expertise, the project responds to these identified needs by developing and testing inclusive, non-formal learning approaches that support older adults’ confidence, critical thinking and information resilience in AI-driven digital environments. Nordic/Baltic added value The Nordic–Baltic context provides clear added value for addressing AI-driven disinformation affecting older adults. While Nordic and Baltic countries are among the most digitally advanced in Europe, available data from Eurostat and DESI consistently show a strong age-related digital divide: older adults remain the group with the lowest levels of digital confidence and critical media skills, despite high overall digitalisation. This creates a shared regional challenge that cannot be effectively addressed through isolated national initiative.

Background
The rapid development of artificial intelligence is reshaping today’s information environment, enabling the widespread use of generative content, deepfakes and algorithmic manipulation. These developments pose particular risks for older adults, especially those living in residential
care settings, who often have limited access to tailored digital learning opportunities and face higher exposure to disinformation. 

Generative AI, deepfakes and algorithmic content distribution increasingly shape how information is created and consumed, while older adults often face higher risks due to limited access to tailored digital learning opportunities and lower confidence in digital media. The project adopts a non-stigmatizing, empowerment-based approach, positioning older adults as active learners and contributors to resilient, informed communities.
The CLEAR-AGE project directly builds on the experience and evidence gathered by the Lithuanian College of Democracy through the national project “Overcoming Digital Barriers Together” (2024–2025), which involved approximately 200 older adult participants in non-formal
learning activities. Follow-up evaluation and research from this initiative clearly indicated that while basic digital skills can be strengthened, older adults remain highly vulnerable to AI-driven disinformation, emotional manipulation and misleading online narratives.

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