Cyber School for Grandparents: an Intergenerational Educational Program

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

Social participation and social relationships are relevant aspects of older adult's psychosocial well-being. In this regard, specific interest is devoted to Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) which enable to connect people and to support their social participation.

Despite the number of older Internet users constantly increased in the last decades, older adults still display reduced Internet access compared to younger generations. Italian elderly people are severely penalized by this "gray digital divide". The pandemia due to COVID-19 spread has exasperated the situation, leading to the paradox of having people putatively most beneficent of use as those most excluded, due to scanty of competencies and of suitable and agreeable learning occasions.

The Cyber School for Grandparents is an innovative intergenerational educational program aimed to bridge the digital divide by training secondary school students (aged 15-17 years) to become cyber tutors for their grandparents.

The intervention will take place during the 2021/2022 school year, as part of the curricular activities of 3 classes at the local Human Science High School. The intervention was designed to be personalized and inclusive, in order to meet the need of each student-senior dyad, regardless of their starting digital skills and attitudes toward technology.

The primary aim of the present mixed-method feasibility study is to qualitatively evaluate students' participation and learning throughout the course and to measure grandparents' pre-post changes in mobile device actual use, self-reported proficiency and attitudes.

Secondly, eventual pre-post changes on aging stereotypes and psychosocial well-being of the participants will be explored.

Study Overview

• Status: Completed
• Conditions: Intergenerational Relations; Aging Well
• Intervention / Treatment: Behavioral: Cyber School for Grandparents

Detailed Description

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.

In the practical module, students will be guided in the implementation of the one-to-one cyber sessions for their grandparents, which will be then conducted independently during extracurricular hours and customized according to the needs and interests of each senior involved.

Pre-post outcome measures will be remotely collected both for students and for seniors. Assessment will be performed through online surveys shared within the web-based platform adopted by the school to perform remote lessons during the COVID-19 pandemic (Google Classroom). All the instruments selected are suitable for self-compiling both by young students and older adults. The students will help and supervise grandparents to manage possible technical and/or sensory difficulties with the online compiling procedure.

Moreover, students will compile an online diary for each of the 4 practical modules, before the next group lesson scheduled, comprising both an activity and a learning log. The activity log consists of structured questions on the number, frequency, duration, content and modality (in-person or remotely) of the cyber sessions performed with the senior mentee. The learning log will comprise broad guiding questions to reflect on the learning process favoured by the activities and to record the student's observations.

Finally, at the end of the experience, students and grandparents satisfaction and opinion on the experience will be assessed using a questionnaire with both close-ended and open-ended questions.

• Study Type: Interventional
• Enrollment (Actual): 120
• Phase: Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

Study Locations

• Italy
  • Milan
    • Abbiategrasso, Milan, Italy, 20081
      • Golgi Cenci Foundation

Participation Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

• Ages Eligible for Study: Child; Adult; Older Adult
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: Yes

Description

Inclusion criteria:

• For students: attending one of the 3 classes involved in the project
• For seniors: be a grandparents of the students involved and willing to participate in the initiative.

No specific inclusion criteria were set regarding age, ICT proficiency, socioeconomic, health or mobility status of the grandparents, since the program was expressly designed to be as inclusive and personalized as possible, in order to favor a wide participation.

However, context information on these relevant aspects will be collected and reported, since they are well-known factors affecting technology use among older adults.

Study Plan

How is the study designed?

Design Details

• Primary Purpose: Prevention
• Allocation: N/A
• Interventional Model: Single Group Assignment
• Masking: None (Open Label)

Number of Arms

1

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm	Intervention / Treatment
Experimental: Intergenerational educational program	Behavioral: Cyber School for Grandparents; Educational program for secondary school students to become cyber tutors for their grandparents or for senior citizens, who are interested to learn new digital use and skills.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Digital literacy (seniors)	Mobile Device Proficiency Questionnaire Short Form (MDPQ-SF): self report, 16 items on the 5 dimensions of the European digital competence framework evaluated on a 5-point Likert scale (range: 16-80)	5 months
Attitude toward Internet use (seniors)	Attitude Toward Computer/Internet Use Questionnaire (ATCQ): self report, 15 items measuring 5 attitude dimensions (comfort, efficacy, interest) toward Internet use on a 5-point Likert scale (range: 15-75)	5 months

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Psychosocial well-being (students and seniors)	Mental Health Continuum Short Form (MHC-SF): self report, 14 item measuring 3 dimension of well-being (emotional, social, psychological) on a 6-point Likert scale (range: 0-70)	6 months
Aging stereotype (students)	Aging semantic differential: 9 pairs of polar opposite adjectives on aging individuals, to rate the intensity and direction of judgement from 0 to 7.	6 months

Other Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Students participation	Number of the cyber sessions organized with the senior, reported by students on the online diary (activity log)	4 months
Students learning	Qualitative evaluations of the responses to open-ended questions on the online diary (learning log)	4 months
Seniors mobile device actual use changes	Analysis of log data recorded by a specific app installed on the device (Rescue Time)	4 months

Collaborators and Investigators

• Sponsor: Antonio Guaita, MD
• Collaborators: Catholic University of the Sacred Heart; University of Milano Bicocca
• Investigators: Principal Investigator: Elena Rolandi, MSc, Fondazione Golgi Cenci

Publications and helpful links

General Publications

• Keyes CL. The mental health continuum: from languishing to flourishing in life. J Health Soc Behav. 2002 Jun;43(2):207-22.
• Roque NA, Boot WR. A New Tool for Assessing Mobile Device Proficiency in Older Adults: The Mobile Device Proficiency Questionnaire. J Appl Gerontol. 2018 Feb;37(2):131-156. doi: 10.1177/0733464816642582. Epub 2016 Apr 11.
• Nef T, Ganea RL, Muri RM, Mosimann UP. Social networking sites and older users - a systematic review. Int Psychogeriatr. 2013 Jul;25(7):1041-53. doi: 10.1017/S1041610213000355. Epub 2013 Apr 4.
• Ibarra F, Baez M, Cernuzzi L, Casati F. A Systematic Review on Technology-Supported Interventions to Improve Old-Age Social Wellbeing: Loneliness, Social Isolation, and Connectedness. J Healthc Eng. 2020 Jul 12;2020:2036842. doi: 10.1155/2020/2036842. eCollection 2020.
• Forsman AK, Nordmyr J, Matosevic T, Park AL, Wahlbeck K, McDaid D. Promoting mental wellbeing among older people: technology-based interventions. Health Promot Int. 2018 Dec 1;33(6):1042-1054. doi: 10.1093/heapro/dax047.
• Rolandi E, Vaccaro R, Abbondanza S, Casanova G, Pettinato L, Colombo M, Guaita A. Loneliness and Social Engagement in Older Adults Based in Lombardy during the COVID-19 Lockdown: The Long-Term Effects of a Course on Social Networking Sites Use. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2020 Oct 28;17(21):7912. doi: 10.3390/ijerph17217912.
• Jay GM, Willis SL. Influence of direct computer experience on older adults' attitudes toward computers. J Gerontol. 1992 Jul;47(4):P250-7. doi: 10.1093/geronj/47.4.p250.

Study record dates

Study Major Dates

• Study Start (Actual): October 14, 2021
• Primary Completion (Actual): June 7, 2022
• Study Completion (Actual): June 7, 2022

Study Registration Dates

• First Submitted: November 2, 2021
• First Submitted That Met QC Criteria: November 15, 2021
• First Posted (Actual): November 26, 2021

Study Record Updates

• Last Update Posted (Actual): September 13, 2023
• Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria: September 11, 2023
• Last Verified: September 1, 2023

More Information

Terms related to this study

• Keywords: Learning; Social inclusion; Educational intervention; Old adults; Technology use; Digital divide; Intergenerational relations
• Other Study ID Numbers: 04

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

• Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?: NO

Drug and device information, study documents

• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product: No
• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product: No