60+ Online:

Abstract

Seniors are amongst the most digitally excluded in Australia. Despite the increasing popularity of social media, seniors often lack access to technology and to basic digital skills. Thus many seniors do not derive the social benefits and service realisation that arise from online forms of communication and engagement. One barrier to digital inclusion for seniors is learning how to make use of digital and online tools in a way that incorporates their specific needs, interests and capabilities.
 The 60+ Online project fostered digital inclusion amongst 22 Australian seniors with varied digital skills and from diverse socio-economic and cultural backgrounds. Within workshops, researchers encouraged seniors to learn basic digital skills, addressed seniors’ concerns about confidentiality and privacy, and introduced them to safe and regulated online social media platforms. Seniors were encouraged to draw upon personal and community interests to inform storyboarding and digital story development. Digital stories were generated and edited using personal mobile technology. Social media sites (a closed Facebook page and personal Instagram accounts) facilitated sharing of digital skills development and experiences outside the workshops. Regardless of digital skill levels at outset, every senior who completed the workshops ‘graduated’, and produced their own digital story. These digital stories were showcased at festivals, City Council events, and hosted on YouTube.
 This article outlines the framework used for this project, from the first co-design workshop to YouTube dissemination. We provide links to workshop resources and tools (iPads, smartphones and apps used) in order to provide a model for digital inclusion that may be replicated for other disadvantaged or vulnerable groups in diverse community-based settings.

Educational Concepts of Digital Competence Development for Older Adults—A Scoping Review

“…The selection of learning content should be based on the needs of the learners, address specific everyday problems as well as life circumstances, and take social processes into account [ 1 , 3 , 11 , 14 , 19 , 27 , 40 , 45 , 46 , 47 , 48 , 49 , 50 , 51 , 52 , 53 ]. This can be done by involving them in the participative development process itself.…”

“…This can be done by involving them in the participative development process itself. To realize this, needs assessment or co-creative workshops can be identified in which the content of the curriculum is discussed and debated with the target group in advance [ 1 , 27 , 40 , 47 , 48 , 50 , 52 , 53 , 54 ]. Barrie et al (2021) identify the direct involvement of older people as key to creating a positive learning environment and confronting ageism [ 13 ].…”

“…In the evaluation, several theories can be found that have guided the development of the learning offer—Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory (SCT) [ 34 , 45 , 55 ], the Attentional Control Theory (ACT) [ 35 ], which addresses the reduction of anxiety in order to release cognitive resources for learning, as well as geragogical principles [ 14 , 15 , 36 , 48 ]. The gamification approach [ 9 , 49 , 56 ] as a mediation/learning concept can be found as well as interest-led [ 40 , 47 , 51 ] and problem-based approaches [ 2 , 35 ].…”

Older people’s news dependency and social connectedness

“…Research in relation to older people and digitisation has focused on digital exclusion and the ability of older people to learn media skills and communicate effectively and confidently. Studies have been conducted to examine what interventions can be used to increase elderly online participation (Davis et al, 2018; Poscia et al, 2018). Jones et al (2015) found the use of volunteers to train older citizens in how to use the Internet led to an increase in social contact for the participants.…”

Accounting for diversity in older adults’ digital inclusion and literacy: the impact of a national intervention

“…Approaches that are able to address the specific needs of local communities with sufficient participant buy-in (Baker et al ., 2017), as in the adoption of ‘living lab’ models, have been highly successful (Hughes et al ., 2018). Also with older adults, there is strong evidence to show the importance of taking an interests-based approach to skills, literacies and digital participation (Beh et al ., 2018; Davis et al ., 2018), as well as adopting a ‘blended’ approach (both in-person and online learning) to digital literacy workshops (Martínez-Alcalá et al ., 2018).…”