DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION IN CONTINUING EDUCATION: ADDRESSING REGIONAL ACCESS CHALLENGES IN ARMENIA

Abstract

This article examines the urban-rural dimensions of access to continuing education in Armenia, with particular attention to how digital transformation risks deepening rather than resolving existing geographic inequalities. Without deliberate equality measures digital expansion can substitute one form of exclusion for another. Drawing on academic research into continuing education management in Armenia and practitioner evidence from program implementation across the country’s regions, the analysis documents how geographic inequality in continuing education access is shaped by factors that digital transformation alone cannot resolve. The data-monitoring and governance approaches of European countries, Estonia and Finland in particular, China’s experience with scaled digital delivery, and Georgia’s parallel challenges as a comparable post-Soviet context are examined for what they offer the Armenian case. The article argues that effective regional access to continuing education requires a holistic policy approach–one that addresses digital infrastructure, local conditions including device access, connectivity, and people’s everyday constraints, as well as rural development together rather than separately. It closes with conclusions that point toward joined-up policy action grounded in a clear understanding of the barriers facing rural populations and those with the least access to resources and time.