Taking Charge at Any Age: Learning and Wellbeing by Older Men through Community Organisations in Australia.
This paper examines and compares learning narratives associated with older men’s participation in three community organisations in an Australian rural setting: an adult and community education provider, an emergency service organization and an aged care facility. The interview data are from a larger Australian study of learning in community settings by older men (age 50+ years of age). The paper examines what factors influence older men’s learning and wellbeing through community organisations. It concludes that preferred learning for older men in community organisations is typically through group participation in practical situations for pragmatic purposes. Community organisations aside from education providers are shown to provide critically important opportunities for older men to actively redefine and recreate personal meanings and rapidly changing identities beyond those developed through paid work. Introduction Australia is experiencing an increasingly older population. One of the fastest growing cohorts is older men of working age who are not participating in the paid workforce or who are retired from paid work. These men are less likely than other adults to engage in formal learning, including through adult and community education (ACE) organisations. Such men are also vulnerable as they age to social isolation and problems with health and wellbeing. Education and training discourses typically presuppose that adult education participants are either younger individuals preparing for paid work, or pursuing learning ‘out of interest’ through ACE providers. This research looks specifically and deliberately at older men’s learning through community involvement in two organization types beyond ACE: fire and emergency services and an
Up Here It's Different: Community Education in Rural East Donegal.
‘Up here it’s different’ This familiar advertising slogan used to attract visitors to the rugged beauty of Co. Donegal, was correct in highlighting that things are different in Donegal, although not for the reasons we might connect with tourism. For many, Donegal evokes nostalgic images of old, rural Ireland such as close community bonds, unspoilt landscape, strong agriculture and fishing industries. Unfortunately such idyllic reminiscences are somewhat at odds with the realities of life in Donegal, often described by residents as ‘the forgotten county.’ While a beautiful landscape and a strong sense of community in many parts of the county are positive features, its overwhelming lack of development throughout the ‘Celtic Tiger’ era is evidence of its neglect in comparison to many other counties in the Republic of Ireland. According to Haase and Pratschke (2008), Donegal is the most disadvantaged local authority area within the whole country, situated within the most disadvantaged region in Ireland – the Border Region. Haase and Pratschke also state that the county of Donegal has a Relative Index score of -10.0 and is termed a disadvantaged area, compared with the national Relative Index Score of 2.1. Relative Index Scores among electoral divisions (EDs) in Donegal range from -58.3 (Island of Aran) to -8.6 (Letterkenny Urban District) to 7.4 (Bundoran Rural ED, Donegal’s most affluent area; Bundoran Urban ED has a Relative Index Score of -1.7).
Content strategy in LibGuides: An exploratory study
Abstract Since its inception in 2007, Springshare's LibGuides has become a popular content management system (CMS) with academic libraries. The challenges of managing LibGuides content through a cohesive content strategy have not been well documented. The researchers conducted a survey of academic libraries that were using the LibGuides platform in Fall 2019 to determine how institutions are managing content challenges. Of 120 respondents, only 53% of the respondents indicated that their institutions had content guidelines that LibGuides authors were expected to follow. The top three most observed elements of these content guidelines were page design (80%), content reuse policies (77%), naming conventions (73%), and navigation (3%). 15% of respondents' institutions did not review guides once they were published. Of those that reviewed guides post-publication, authors (84%) most frequently reviewed their own guides. These findings imply that LibGuides are largely cared for on an honour system. Guidelines tend towards quantifiable elements and omit more abstract concepts.