“Senior Courses UP!”-Presentation https://seniorcoursesup.eu/
Goals: What do you want to achieve by implementing the project?
The main goal of our project is to counteract the digital exclusion of elderly people and adults with fewer opportunities. To achieve it, we plan to create a mobile application, which will be the main product of our activities. It will help us organize training for seniors on the use of mobile devices, and then allow them to self-study.
Implementation: What activities do you intend to implement?
As part of our activities, we want to implement:
– kick-off meeting,
– meetings with seniors to adjust the application to their comments and needs related to its functionality,
– technical meeting to exchange comments of seniors from all partner countries and mapping the shape of the application,
– recruiting educators who will help us effectively educate the largest possible number of seniors in comfortable conditions (small study groups),
– training for educators – the first of them will take place in Poland, while the next ones will take place online;
– two evaluation meetings during the project duration,
– dissemination conferences in each of the partner countries, including one large in Poland, open to speeches of other people involved in the scientific or practical education of the elderly and combating digital exclusion,
– final meeting to summarize the whole project.
We estimate that a total of our participants in all our activities will be over 500 – both in international activities and those that will be held with seniors in our countries. Among the participants we distinguish members and employees of our organizations, recruited educators – both those trained during our international training, and those whose training will take place online, technicians responsible for writing the application and matching it to the expectations of our seniors, the seniors themselves, who will be both help us to develop the application as well as those who will participate in our trainings on the use of mobile devices. Among the people taking part in our activities, we also distinguish participants of dissemination events with an indication that the application indicates the minimum number – the meetings will be open, and only the area of available conference rooms will limit us. All of our groups of participants will include people with fewer opportunities. Seniors, educators and participants of dissemination events will include people with disabilities. In addition, among conference participants and seniors we anticipate the participation of people facing social, economic and geographical obstacles.
What are the expected results and other effects of the project?
As part of our project, we will work out the following results:
– the first of them will be an application for mobile devices with the Android system (we decided on it due to the greater availability of devices with this type of system among seniors);
– the second result will be a case study to monitor how participation in our project (independent variable) affects the quality of life of seniors (dependent variable). This will allow us to get very detailed results about our project;
– the third is a complementary survey that allows you to get results for a broader group, but at a higher level of generality – it will examine how the level of digital exclusion among participants in our training has changed in an innovative way. In this case, we do not see the reasons for digital exclusion mainly in the lack of access to infrastructure and tools, but the lack of competence to use them;
– the next result will be the development and preparation of good practices arising from our project;
– the last element will be a collection of research and good practical, as well as additional substantive, technical and multimedia elements in the form of a report.
The project will affect not only our direct recipients, but also decision-makers, people involved in the activation of elderly people and researchers dealing with the subject of excluded people. The application and research will become a long-term result – both the application and the page where we will place our report, thanks to the knowledge we will have, will be constantly maintained and updated, also after the end of financing under the project.
Participants
The project participants include members and employees of our partner organizations – their tasks will be divided according to the planned activities of the project, according to the competences of each participant.
The next group of participants are educators who will be intermediaries at the key moment in creating ours application – they will be selected through open recruitment meetings with the support of the campaign through channels our organization’s social media. We want educators to be as open as possible to modern technologies and used them on a daily basis, thanks to which they will be able to transfer knowledge to seniors more effectively. Therefore, the process recruitment will take place, inter alia, with the use of online tools. The entire process will be standardized and unified in all partner countries. People recruited in each country in the first stage will be participate in our training course in Poland. Then there will be a second round of recruitment during which educators those trained during TC will train other educators using online tools (Zoom). This will serve in developing a coherent network of trainers who will be able to efficiently and effectively train the best possible number seniors in such a way that they learn in as small and comfortable groups as possible.
Seniors are the key group of participants. We will recruit interested participants for using traditional forms such as leaflets, posters, information about training provided in local cultural places, and offices, and above all through word of mouth marketing. Each of our partner organizations has a permanent contact with senior organizations in their countries, therefore the recruitment of participants will also be supported by coordinators, members and supporters of this type of organization. Seniors will take part in each of our stages application development, they will also be the group we study as part of conducting surveys and case studies. We care about their inclusion already at the stage of specifying the expectations (at the moment, based on our discussions, we have established the main ones
elements and the general outline of the application), and then during prototyping, user path research, testing as well as during its dissemination and training in the use of mobile devices. Finally, it is thanks to contacts with previously cooperating with us on other projects, we are able to then promote the results and the products of our project also among a large number of senior organizations from all over the region and neighboring regions that due to quantitative restrictions, they will not be able to participate with us at all stages of the project.
The last group of participants are participants of dissemination conferences. The first part of the conference in Poland i at the same time, conferences in Bulgaria, Portugal and Romania will be directed mainly to educators and organizations non-governmental organizations, coordinators of senior organizations, etc. and will take the form of presenting the idea, course, the results achieved so far and the exchange of good practices. The second part of the conference in Poland will be addressed to students and scientists, and it will consist in presenting and discussing our survey research and case studies study and research report. Apply for each of these parts and events in other partner countries there will be online registration on a “first come, first served” basis, except for participants wishing in the second part share your research on topics related to adult education.