Lifelong Learning is a complex environment where strategic planning, coordination and collaboration between partners are needed. Lifelong learners form a rather diverse student population with a variety of backgrounds, evolving needs and varying accessibility requirements. Making lifelong learning happen in practice requires learners becoming more aware of their own studying and thinking processes, and tools and guidance that support the planning of learning throughout life. To this end, technology should be used effectively to assist lifelong learners to access, compose and manage their learning under varying circumstances and settings, such as institutional, informal and work-based. Models also need to be developed and frameworks need to be extended that would allow local, regional, national and international systems to work together to provide lifelong learners coherent access to e-infrastructures within and across institutions. This paper explores a lifelong learning dimension in the context of the MyPlan project, which aims to create a personal space where learners are supported in planning their learning throughout life. It investigates the role user modelling can play in this context to support personalisation when searching for new learning opportunities and receiving recommendations, and to facilite learners’ reflection both on their own individual learning experiences and learning from the experiences of others.

This paper appears in the Proceedings of the Workshop on Personalisation in E-Learning Environments at Individual and Group Level, 11th International Conference on User Modeling (UM 2007), Corfu, Greece, 25-29 June 2007, pp. 8-15.