ICT Skills 4 All project: EMPOWERING OLD CITIZENS FOR A DIGITAL WORLD
Project Funded by: ERASMUS+ KA2 "Strategic partnership for adults”
Project Duration: 24 months
Start Date: 01/09/2018
End Date: 31/08/2020
Website: https://up.pt/ictskills4all/
In our transforming society lack of digital skills in the elderly population is synonymous to social isolation; inability to access information and services, including health services; loss of autonomy, and an increased sense of inadaptability.
ICTSkills4All – Empowering old citizens for a digital world aims at fostering digital skills, self-confidence and online safety of old adults aged 55 years and over who have minimal or no engagement with digital technology.
In order to do so, the ICTSkills4All project wants to develop an ICT Learning Programme, which includes:
A dedicated online platform with information, training tools and resources addressed to those who have low digital skills;
Face-to-face support using the inter-generational and peer-to-peer approach addressed for those who have no digital skills. The aim of this phase is to provide these people with the basic digital skills that allow them to access the platform.
In the face-to-face piloting, it will be tested which one is the best methodology between the inter-generational approach, where university students help the elderly, or the peer-to-peer approach, where the elderly with no digital skills are assisted by colleagues with more skills. The pilot activities will take place in four partner countries: Portugal, UK, Latvia and Poland.
RESULTS:
At the end of the first year of the project, two reports have been produced.
The first report is about existing online resources dedicated to improving digital skills among older adults, at regional, national, European and international level, covering the efficacy of such resources. This revision was performed by all partners who provided data crossing different databases. The public content of such resources has been analysed as well as several Graphic Design aspects, focusing Senior Centered Design and assessing if the identified resources meet the needs of the older adult user.
The second report consists of a revision of existing inter-generational and peer-to-peer in person educational programmes performed at regional, national, European and international levels and in different databases. It includes programmes, in which their efficacy in terms of digital skills improvement in older adults was evaluated.
After selection of the documents, a revision of its contents was done, with particular emphasis on the programme content, instruments used to evaluate their impact, and the results obtained in terms of digital skills’ improvements.
These two reports will be used by the ICTSkills4All project partners for the development of online content and of inter-generational and peer-to-peer educational programmes.
What is next?
The online platform will be launched soon including the open online courses/modules. Moreover, at the same time, the training materials will be released to support inter-generational and peer-to-peer in-person pilot courses.
During the last year of the project, policy recommendations will be produced as well as the final version of the educational programs based on the evaluated results of pilots.
Target group:
This project directly addresses older adults aged 55 and over who have minimal or no engagement with digital technology. The short-term impact goal is to train at least 160 elder adults without digital skills. Two pilot groups, one testing the inter-generational approach and the other testing the peer-to-peer approach, will be run in each pilot country (UK, Poland, Portugal, and Latvia). Each of them will involve 20 adults, plus 5 teenager per group in inter-generational pilots and five old adults with digital skills in peer-to-peer pilots.
Project Partners:
University of Porto, Portugal – Project Coordinator
Cybermoor Services, United Kingdom
