This article refers to an empirical experience of an intergenerational training course dealing with digital competencies. In hardly any other area are the competencies as varied as in the field of digital competencies. While younger people are used to working and living in a digital world through their education and professional life, older adults in particular have little experience.

COVID-19 has led to further digitization now, for example in eGovernment. The lack of skills, especially among the 65+ generation, poses a risk that these people will be marginalized because they are no longer able to cope with daily life easily (and without outside help).  

These considerations were the intention to create courses especially for the 65+ generation. The focus was set on digital competencies of everyday life, like dealing with eGoverment, or to use digital communication channels, the Internet, and to handle other digital means.

From the beginning, the training was planned as an intergenerational activity where each generation can learn and benefit from the other. 

The training subjects covered the dealing with government and authorities, the other emphasis was the topic of digital photography and their use.

Purpose of the intergenerational approach

The major intention of the intergenerational approach was to energize older adults and to give a sense of purpose, especially when they're sharing their experience and skills.

Another intention was to help younger generations understand aging and face their own generation more positively. This focused on the different learning approach as well: older people were used to experience the classical "frontal teaching" (ex-cathedra teaching), with all the responsibility for the class by the teacher. The learners wee passive followers, doing the ordered assignment and proof their gained knowledge with a final exam. Younger learners had a different approach based on active learning with a learner-centered focus.

To exchange this experienced and to take some advantages of both approaches with them was another idea of this learning experience.

Approach to intergenerational education

The course addressed so-called digital immigrants, which means people not so experienced with digital competencies. It is a fact, that also younger people, who grew up with digital technology, are also members of this group. During the training, the trainer managed and monitoring the cooperative learning with a specific emphasis to create intergenerational groups.

It was significant for this training that the learners did not know each other before the course. The social contact was built during the training.

Technical approach

The course was designed as a Flipped Learning 3.0 course with Blended Learning as the delivery method. The trainer team used Moodle as the relevant learning platform.

The participants used various devices, mainly laptops, but some participants used tablets. For taking pictures, the participants used their smartphones.

During the training, it turned out that the many of the older participants were not as familiar with the basic capabilities of their tablets. In this situation, "support chains" were formed, where essentially the younger participants supported the problems together with the users of the tablets.

Involved age scope

The age of the course participants covered a range from 24 to 78 years. The majority was represented by the 65+ generation. The majority of participants was female.

Observations

The cooperation within the different aged groups worked great. The major elements of age-based knowledge and experience exchange was

• To learn about different learning methods. While the older adults preferred to print content and to comment it the younger learners used to read the content digitally and to discuss the findings or to immediately try out what they have learned. This (typical and expected) behavior was well recognized and discussed within the learners. The participants used some time to discuss the different ways to learn. Some older participants started to focus more on the digital reading, with taking handwritten notes to try out new experiences and knowledge.
• Older participants understood “to get help” in the way that someone others solved the problem for them. Guided by the trainers, the younger learners got instructed to supervise the older learners in their solution finding so that they had to do the assignment on their own. This showed the learners a more active approach – to do it by themselves – rather than to get shown how something works (which means a passive approach).
• Older participants influenced the younger ones to more critical questioning of the content to be learned and what was learned. This may be due to the older learners' greater life experience.
• The trainers could not recognize differences between the different aged learners during open discussions and critical analysis of learned content.

Conclusions

From the observations of the trainers and the evaluation of the learning outcomes, this intergenerational training worked excellent. It was clear from the beginning, that the trainers had a specific responsibility of monitoring and to keep in line the given intentions of the training.

The success of learning groups like described above depend on the composition of learners and their open approach to both the learning topics and the given group situation.  

 

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This blog post refers to the exchange of experience in the frame of the E4ALL Erasmus+ Project (E4All. More attractive and inclusive education for all generations, project number 2020-1-PL01-KA204-082020), web: https://www.advanced-training.net/ebi-eie/projects/e4all/.

About the author: Peter Mazohl is president of the European Initiative for Education (EBI), the Austrian Partner in this project. His impact is focusing on Flipped Learning 3.0, Critical Thinking, and Technology-enabled Training. Further Information about the project is available from the EBI's webpage.