Summary
Joen Severi ry is an association that provides peer support and guidance to help older people in their digital lives and participation in the society. An association provides individual and group guidance, workshops and events on digital technology (mostly mobile phones, laptops, desktop computers) use, support activities of peer tutors, and connects older people who are interested in digital technology. Peer tutoring is based on understanding and meeting the needs, interests and competences of older people as learners to use digital technology, and therefore improves older people’s access to lifelong learning. Peer tutors are volunteer older people who are eager to guide other people in the use of digital technology. Joen Severi ry seeks to develop new activities to support wellbeing of older people and paying attention especially to older people who live alone. Their activities are provided in North Karelia region in Finland, both in cities and rural environments.
Planning and Implementation
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What was the challenge you were trying to address?
Public services and free time activities have been widely digitized in many countries. Paying public transportation fees, taking care of bank transfers, booking a meeting with a doctor, staying in contact with family members and friends, among others, are increasingly digitized that require digital literacy skills. Older people get most support in using digital technology from their family members which is often timely flexible. However, many older people feel that their grandchildren, for example, use digital technology too fast and use unfamiliar technical terms while helping and teaching digital literacy skills for older people. Therefore, support from their peers to develop digital literacy skills is often highly appreciated since it better meets the needs, expectations, and interests of older people.
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Who were you trying to impact?
Older people in general, Older people with chronic health conditions or disability, Older people with vulnerabilities
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What sectors were you targeting?
Education, Health, Information and Communication
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Who else was involved?
Government, Civil Society Organization, Older People's Association, Academia, Health Care, Social Care, Private Sector
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How did older people participate?
Older people were part of the process at multiple or all stages
Lessons learned
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Please describe how collaboration worked in your initiative.
Joen Severi ry receives funding from the national Funding Centre for Social Welfare and Health Organisations (STEA). Joen Severi ry collaborates with social and health care sector by providing older people to share their experiences and perceptions as experts by experience in tutoring digital literacy skills. National collaboration includes collaboration with other associations that provide digital support. Also local and regional networks are active in developing practices of delivering digital literacy skills support to all citizens. In practice, various actors organize events where digital literacy skills tutoring is provided and volunteers are recruited for peer tutoring. Joen Severi ry collaborates also with private sector, including companies who introduce their e-services.
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What was the impact of your initiative on older people, their families, and/or their communities?
Both peer tutors and peer tutees have reported to develop digital literacy skills and receive support to their wellbeing from participating in peer tutoring sessions. Wellbeing of older people was supported through social and emotional dimensions of digital literacy skills training sessions, including meeting new people, gaining new acquaintances and friends, and increasing stimulus and activities in their lives. Especially guidance of digital literacy skills learning provided with the feelings of joy, pleasure, and success through helping peer tutees to learn new digital literacy skills. Peer tutors also experienced having feelings of being necessary while tutoring which increased meaningfulness in their lives. For tutees, learning digital literacy skills supported feeling greater belonging to society, togetherness, and having new encounters. Older people participating in digital literacy skills peer tutoring have reported to gain more positive attitude towards digital technology. Older people experienced to have increased courage and self-confidence as well as willingness to use digital technology.
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What issues did you face, and how did you address them?
Some older people who enter peer tutoring session feel insecure and have a low self-confidence as a learner and user of digital technology. These emotions and fears are acknowledged during peer tutoring, and older people are supported to learn digital literacy skills regardless their initial reactions. When digital literacy skills are strengthened, older people gain stronger self-confidence as a user of digital technology and even positive emotions, such as gratitude for tutors and happiness of learning new skills that decrease the fears and negative emotions related to the topic. For peer tutors, one issue is to observe whether an older person tutee is learning new digital literacy skills, or instead, just got the problem solved. Problem solving is often enough to let the older people progress in their use of digital technology. However, to support further learning of digital literacy skills, peer tutors feel responsible to support learning of digital literacy skills of older people. Peer tutors may feel that they solve tiny bits of the great field of issues around digitalization of the current world. Also, issues are concerned with staying up to date in the ever-faster development of digital technology where safety is crucial. Common, shared rules to use digital technology and guiding their use have been developed to support safety around the use of digital technology.
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What lessons did you learn from implementing this initiative?
1) There is a huge need for digital literacy skills peer tutoring for older people. The need will remain also in the future since the digital technology are further developed with a rapid speed and their use is covering almost all aspects of life. Digital technology also provides a meaningful tool for many older people to spend their free time, use e-services and stay in contact with their closest ones. 2) Older people can learn digital literacy skills even though they may first feel unsure of it. In peer tutoring sessions, both peer tutees and peer tutors learn various skills and gain support to their wellbeing. It is crucial to let and encourage older people to use digital technology by themselves, when possible, to support their digital literacy skills learning.
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Do you have any other reflections you would like to share?
Older people emphasize the various benefits that peer tutoring provides to them. Peer tutoring may help forming their identity during the retirement phase since it provides them opportunities to feel necessary and helpful for the others, to widen their own lifeworld with new encounters and dealing with technical issues, learn new things and have a meaningful way to spend their time. This case study is made in close collaboration with older people peer tutors, employees of the Joen Severi ry association and a researcher from the University of Eastern Finland, School of Educational Sciences and Psychology.