The Older Adult Self-directed Learning Group program led by Lin Li-Hui, professor of the Department of the Adult and Continuing Education, has two goals. First, this program aims to help leaders actively encourage the elderly to participate in learning activities. Through their learning groups, the elderly have more opportunities to meet and interact with others, learn new knowledge and skills, enrich their lives and therefore lower the possibility of age-associated diseases.

Second, its Leadership Training Program is to encourage the elderly to join the trainings of aging education professionals. By shifting their roles from receivers to leaders, the elderly could use their strengths in the learning groups they are leading. They then together promote the ideas of aging learning and in turn, the self-directed learning groups could sustain its management.

Since its launch in 2015, the program has stably and gradually extended to many cities in Taiwan.

Even influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2022, there were 184 applications of the self-directed learning groups in total (167 applications approved). Also, almost 450 people applied to join the trainings for leaders (180 applicants approved). In the end, 149 of them passed the trainings and become qualified leaders of the Older Adult Self-directed Learning Groups program.     

This shows that more and more leaders have been approved by the elderly learners. They actively apply grants awarded by the Ministry of Education and give back what they learned to the elderly learners. They also have brought more participants to join self-directed learning groups, to inspire their willingness to learn, to promote the spirit of the self-directed participation and diverse learning and to enrich their lives.