Students of Secondary Schools and their grandparents over 65 years old
The Cyber School for Grandparents is an innovative intergenerational educational program aimed to bridge the digital divide by training secondary school students (aged 15-17 years) to become cyber tutors for their grandparents.
Social participation and social relationships are relevant aspects of older adult’s psychosocial well-being. In this regard, specific interest is devoted to Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) which enable to connect people and to support their social participation.
Despite the number of older Internet users constantly increased in the last decades, older adults still display reduced Internet access compared to younger generations. Italian elderly people are severely penalized by this “gray digital divide”. The pandemia due to COVID-19 spread has exasperated the situation, leading to the paradox of having people putatively most beneficent of use as those most excluded, due to scanty of competencies and of suitable and agreeable learning occasions.
Students and teachers of Secondary Schools and their grandparents, VET and Adult Education institutions and organizations; adult training centers, policy-makers, social innovation experts, other education stakeholders and general public.
The educational program has been delivered to 3 classes of the local Human Science High School. Students have been asked to involve at least one grandparent willing to participate in the initiative. To assure the active participation of the entire classes, if some students were not able to involve any grandparent, community-dwelling older adults would be enrolled among those participating in ongoing studies at the Golgi Cenci Foundation.
The course is composed of 3 different modules: theory (2 lessons), method (2 lessons) and practice (6 lessons). Theoretical lessons have been dealed with the aging process and its effect on cognition and learning process, issues and peculiarities of older adults ICT use, andragogy and strategies to favor the learning process of new skills.
During the methodological lessons, students have been instructed on the importance of data collection for research purposes and on the specific features and administration modalities of the assessment tools to be compiled by their grandparents.
In the practical module, students have been guided in the implementation of the one-to-one cyber sessions for their grandparents, which have been then conducted independently during extracurricular hours and customized according to the needs and interests of each senior involved.
Pre-post outcome measures have been remotely collected both for students and for seniors. Assessment will be performed through online surveys shared within the web-based platform adopted by the school to perform remote lessons during the COVID-19 pandemic (Google Classroom). All the instruments selected are suitable for self-compiling both by young students and older adults. The students helped and supervised grandparents to manage possible technical and/or sensory difficulties with the online compiling procedure.
Moreover, students have compiled an online diary for each of the 4 practical modules, before the next group lesson scheduled, comprising both an activity and a learning log. The activity log consists of structured questions on the number, frequency, duration, content and modality (in-person or remotely) of the cyber sessions performed with the senior mentee. The learning log has comprised broad guiding questions to reflect on the learning process favoured by the activities and to record the student’s observations.
Eligibility Criteria
For students: attending one of the 3 classes involved in the project
For seniors: be a grandparents of the students involved and willing to participate in the initiative.
No specific inclusion criteria were set regarding age, ICT proficiency, socioeconomic, health or mobility status of the grandparents, since the program was expressly designed to be as inclusive and personalized as possible, in order to favor a wide participation.
However, context information on these relevant aspects have been collected and reported, since they are well-known factors affecting technology use among older adults.
Finally, at the end of the experience, students and grandparents satisfaction and opinion on the experience has been assessed using a questionnaire with both close-ended and open-ended questions.
Outcome Measures (with questionnaires)
114 participants
Compared to the previously reported intergenerational programs on ICT use, the present initiative shows relevant innovative features: the educational lessons have been embedded in the students school program instead of being offered on a volunteering basis, the students was independently plan and implement the cyber sessions for their grandparents outside the school as extracurricular activities and, whenever possible, the program has involved familial dyads.
As regards the learning context, old persons prefer to rely on their own social network to acquire digital competence and spontaneously refer to their younger family members that may act as “warm” experts on ICT use. The main obstacles are their distrust in terms of perceived utility, privacy concerns as well as technical difficulties.
Systematic reviews of qualitative studies on older adults ICT users highlighted that the principal drives for use were the desire to keep in touch with family and friends and to enter into intergenerational communication.
The project could be up scaled by proposing new training courses on the basis of the results of evaluation questionnaire filled out by each participants at the end of each training course (see section outcomes misures).
ICT use among older adults may thus be favored by properly designed educational interventions, focused on their interests, needs and concerns about technology.
Golgi Cenci Foundation – info (at) golgicenci.it
Copyright © 2022 DIGI-Activeing
