Cyber School for Grandparents: an Intergenerational Educational Program to Bridge the Digital Divide

Systematic reviews of qualitative studies on older adults ICT users highlighted that the principal drives for use were the desire to keep in touch with family and friends and to enter into intergenerational communication, whereas main obstacles are their distrust in terms of perceived utility, privacy concerns as well as technical difficulties. As regards the learning context, old persons prefer to rely on their own social network to acquire digital competence and spontaneously refer to their younger family members that may act as "warm" experts on ICT use. ICT use among older adults may thus be favored by properly designed educational interventions, focused on their interests, needs and concerns about technology.

The educational program will be delivered to 3 classes of the local Human Science High School. Students will be asked to involve at least one grandparent willing to participate in the initiative. To assure the active participation of the entire classes, if some students were not able to involve any grandparent, community-dwelling older adults would be enrolled among those participating in ongoing studies at the Golgi Cenci Foundation.

Compared to the previously reported intergenerational programs on ICT use, the present initiative shows relevant innovative features: the educational lessons will be embedded in the students school program instead of being offered on a volunteering basis, the students will independently plan and implement the cyber sessions for their grandparents outside the school as extracurricular activities and, whenever possible, the program will involve familial dyads.

The course is composed of 3 different modules: theory (2 lessons), method (2 lessons) and practice (6 lessons). Theoretical lessons will deal with the aging process and its effect on cognition and learning process, issues and peculiarities of older adults ICT use, andragogy and strategies to favor the learning process of new skills.

During the methodological lessons, students will be instructed on the importance of data collection for research purposes and on the specific features and administration modalities of the assessment tools to be compiled by their grandparents.