Participation in adult learning and education requires the availability of, and accessibility to, learning opportunities provided by educational institutions. One fundamental element is time. Adult learning and education participation can only be realized by successfully matching individual time-availabilities with the temporal organization of provided courses. To address this required matching process, this study contributes to research literature as one of the first studies that investigates the impact of timing and course duration on participation counts (longitudinally). For this, we use organizational data from public adult education centers (Volkshochschulen—VHS; the main adult education providers in Germany) from 2007 to 2017. Methodologically, random- and fixed-effects models are applied. We find significant positive effects on participation counts between increasing program breadth in terms of temporal formats and increasing average course duration.

参与成人学习和教育需要有教育机构提供的学习机会。一个基本要素是时间。成人学习和教育参与只能通过将个人时间可用性与所提供课程的时间组织成功匹配来实现。为了解决这个所需的匹配过程，本研究有助于研究文献，作为调查时间和课程持续时间对参与计数（纵向）影响的首批研究之一。为此，我们使用来自公共成人教育中心 ( Volkshochschulen-录像机；2007 年至 2017 年德国的主要成人教育提供者）。在方法上，应用了随机和固定效应模型。我们发现在时间格式方面增加计划广度和增加平均课程持续时间对参与计数有显着的积极影响。