General information
| Name of the good practice | Connect Seniors to the Digital World: Seniors@DigiWorld |
| Name of the organisation or institution in charge of the project | Stiftung Digitale Chancen |
| Address, City |
Stiftungssitz Berlin: Chausseestr. 15
Geschäftsstelle/Redaktion Bremen |
| Country | Germany |
| 1st project year | 2016 |
| Is the project ongoing? (time alive) | 2018 |
| The good practice is to be found at web.address | https://digital-seniors.eu/index.cfm |
| Website of the organisations |
https://www.digitale-chancen.de/index.cfm/lang.2
|
Short description of the project, of the method
Today Digital Media is essential for communication and participation in society. Although senior citizens could benefit from digital opportunities, they are the population group which is often not yet online.
Therefore the project «Connect Seniors to the Digital World», or in short Seniors@DigiWorld, wants to empower senior citizens to use tablet computers independently and profit from this usage in daily life. For this purpose multipliers will be trained, who work in libraries, telecentres as well as retirement homes. As first contact person social workers, voluntaries or staff of senior residences can support their clients to find their way to the digital world. During the project a training for multipliers will be developed and tested in Lithuania, Romania, Spain and Germany starting January 2018. The background of this project is the experience of the projects Tablet PCs for senior citizens and Digital Literacy 2.0, both implemented by the foundation.
The tablet can be used intuitively and provides access to a variety of digital offers such as information, communication opportunities, orientation help and diverse forms of entertainment that have an added value for the users. Throughout Europe, people over 65 are the population group that is underrepresented when it comes to using the Internet. The access via simple operating options of digital devices, namely the tablet PC, supports them in using the opportunities and offers of the Internet.
Four organizations that promote adult education from Lithuania, Romania, Spain and Germany are developing a training for multipliers working with senior citizens in the two-year project “Connect Seniors to the Digital World”. Especially multipliers that work with senior citizens often are the first contact persons for the target group.
General objective
The “Seniors@DigiWorld project has developed a course and guidelines for all those who are interested in training seniors in non-formal learning centres, retirement homes and institutions. This project attempts at providing a simple to use methodol-ogy for teaching ICT-related issues to seniors and also to guide eFacilitators, trainers, librar-ians and related staff through their journey while introducing seniors to tablet technology.
Interested teachers are provided with the necessary knowledge and tips for sup-porting seniors in their use of tablet technology. The online course and the guidelines will show them step by step how to implement an offer of training.
Participants will learn about the skills and competences a trainer needs and how they can motivate senior citizens to use digital media for their benefits.
The course is structured in three phases according to the thematical focus areas. The first phase contains the first face-to-face meeting, the online learning phase and the online workshop and is intendedto promote digital skills and media literacy among the participants. The second phase comprisesonline-learning and a face-to-face meeting and focuses on facilitating learning methods. The third phase bothdeepensthe learning content of the first and second phases and supportsthe participants in practically applying the acquired knowledge and skills.
Target groups – participants
This project attempts at providing a simple to use methodology for teaching ICT-related issues to seniors and also to guide eFacilitators, trainers, librarians and related staff through their journey while introducing seniors to tablet technology.
The Learning Concept is useful for institutions, organisations and trainers that want to train multipliers in supporting seniors in the use of tablet PCs.
The Curriculum is useful for institutions, organisations and trainers that want to train multipliers in supporting seniors in the use of tablet PCs. Both outputs should be considered together.
The online course is relevant for multipliers (self-study and training materials), for trainers of multipliers (as part of a blended learning training), and for senior citizens (self-study and detailed instructions).
Two groups are the main target groups of the guidelines: the decision-makers in non-formal learning settings dealing with seniors (libraries, senior centres, retirement homes) and the multipliers –both experienced and beginners.
Which resources were necessary for the project?
The online course (free, available on www.digital-seniors.eu) is divided into 3 phases (technology, pedagogy, practise). In each of these, as well as learning, you will find materials that you are free to download and reuse.
Teachers will find the guidelines that will help them to understand the context and seniors’ needs, describe some good practices and other trainers’ experiences, and finally, ex-plain how you can offer the educational activity we propose.
Online course focuses on older adult edu-cation and presents to the learners methods and approaches of how to support senior cit-izens in using tablets. It also provides advice on how to find ap-propriate materials and highlights the importance of copyrights, licenses and intellectual property.
A course was created on the basis of the study’s results and on a blended learning approach (digital-seniors.eu/course). Within the project, the course was piloted with 47 participants in the four partner countries. The course included three face-to-face training sessions, two online workshops and eight weeks of self-learning on the online learning platform Edueca (www.edueca.eu, hosted by CIDET). The course, available in English, German, Spanish, Romanian, and Lithuanian on the online platform, was developed to contain all learning materials and content. Thus, it can stand alone after the duration of the project as a training offer for multipliers – without the need for face-to-face sessions – as well as a supplement for trainers of multipliers.
Complementary to the course, the project partners developed guidelines, in which they evaluated and summarized the experiences from the first implementation of the blended learning course in four countries. The guidelines are available in the four partner languages and in English and provide good practices, convincing arguments and helpful recommendations to multipliers and decision-makers for setting up and conducting a training and supporting offer that empowers senior citizens in using tablet PCs in non-formal learning settings.
Why it has been selected as good practice
The following learning concept presents the basis for the qualification for multipliers. It takes the results of the learning needs study and already existing innovative learning methods into account. It lays out the training plan that is oriented to the learning needs of the multipliers as well as the learning interests of the senior citizens. Thus the concept is developed to prepare the multipliers to integrate the support of senior citizens with tablet PCs into their daily working life.
The learning concept addresses first and foremost the multipliers in order to reach the project’s goals in a long term. The learning concept is not created directly for the senior citizens. By training and preparing multipliers who then work with the beneficiaries we can reach more people more efficiently. On the other hand, the senior citizens need continuous support from their contact persons rather than a temporary limited training.
Project is aimed at organisations that provide training courses, conduct regional and national training campaigns, and implement projects to qualify multipliers. It gives advice to training providers on how to exploit the outputs developed in the project, based on the piloting experiences of the consortium. The outputs – learning course, curriculum, online courses, learning materials, and guidelines – together comprise a comprehensive training resource which can be used as a whole or from which training providers can pick suitable parts.
