• Institution: University of Zagreb 
• Country: Croatia
• Lecturer: Nives Mikelic Preradovic 

• Curriculum: Information Sciences
• Course level: MSc
• Credits: 6 ECTS
• Number of students participating: 3

The societal problem is that senior citizens do not feel like active participants in society because they are not up-to-date with current technology trends.

Community partner: Institute for the Promotion of Health and Quality of Life. The Institute organizes workshops for citizens of all ages on various topics (IT, art, financial literacy and various other ICT-related workshops).

The role of community partner in the project:

• Supporting the education of older citizens
• Organization of educational workshops
• Supervision of students

Resources or knowledge that the partner brings to the project:

• Informing students about the mission of the Institute and their role in the service-learning project
• Technical support (rooms, computer and projector)

Students have organized workshops for senior citizens.

The target group of the project is elderly people (predominantly retirees) who are interested in improving their information skills for various reasons (e.g. to follow the trends followed by their grandchildren). It was expected that the participants have at least basic knowledge in using smartphones, but more complicated systems pose a problem for them.

The experience was connected to students’ academic learning since their brought their teaching competencies and professional knowledge from their study group to the project. All three students are on teaching majors and study at the Department of Information and Communication Sciences. The personal goal of each student was to improve their teaching competencies in order to learn to work with the elderly. They also planned to develop social responsibility and empathy towards different age groups, improve the ability to work in a team which is an important and valuable skill because working with colleagues can facilitate the completion of complex tasks and practical skills related to teaching that require practice.

The students had to undertake the individual reflection activities (student journal / blog /vlog) and group reflection activities (critical project e-portfolio on Moodle).

Each journal needed to bring the personal experience of each student, used knowledge and skills and newly acquired knowledge and skills, a list of relevant literature resources used, specific contributions a student made to the community, connections between their e-S-L experience and their study

The critical project e-portfolio on Moodle needed to represent the critical reflection of the project team & other teams in the course, students were expected to use multimedia (video, pictures, interactions) in the creation of portfolio and to post comments on each other’s projects).

The goals of their SL project were:

• digital empowerment of senior citizens who own smartphones with an emphasis on education about current trends in technology
• to teach senior citizens how to use digital tools that serve as a substitute for analog services – easier access to personal documentation and access to library services

The primary goal of students was to familiarize the workshop participants with the functionalities of digital tools in order to develop an interest in integrating them into everyday life.

The team members identified the need to educate elderly citizens in the use of the following digital tools and systems: e-Citizens, ChatGPT and eZaKi library application.

Students expected participants to use digital tools independently without student intervention, which was only partially achieved – they were able use the tools independently in the Institute, but their independent use of the tools could not be verified except in the case when the participants explicitly emphasized that they used the tools after the workshop.

Students were most surprised by the amount of questions from the participants. Workshops were constantly interrupted because someone had a question for students. However, they realized that this is a good indicator because it shows that elderly are listening and participating, but this was not something students were used to and they learned that it is important not to get into various digressions, which used to be the case sometimes and an unplanned discussion can develop. It was challenging for students to judge when it is time to stop the discussion and bring them back to the topic of the workshop.

The first problem that appeared at workshops was the access to the e-Citizens system – most users used mobile banking, but each token worked in its own specific way (code expiration time, different token names, different applications). Also, not all participants used mobile banking, but there were individuals who used credentials from FINA or Certilia and had problems logging in.

Another problem was the excessive need for an individual approach to each attendee when problems arise in using the system, for which a longer duration of the workshop should have been provided.

This can be avoided with proper student preparation. When teaching elderly people, they need to pay attention to the fact that their sensory abilities might be weaker, so they should present clearly and loudly, pay attention to the size of the font and repeat crucial information several times. Elderly can also be self-centered and sometimes have unrealistic expectations, so the workshops should be adapted to their specific needs.

Also, students have wrongly assumed that most of the participants are active members of the libraries of the city of Zagreb. They thought that their assumption was logical, given that retired people have more free time than people who are employed, and because of the platitude “I’ll read when I retire”. Most of them renewed their membership about 30 years ago, which made the eZaKi workshop a little complicated, as they devoted a large part of time to explain how to renew membership through the eZaKi application. The majority of participants showed great interest, because they were quite vocal and expressed their satisfaction before/after/during the workshops They were very grateful for the time dedicated to them and fascinated by current technologies such as ChatGPT, but they were also very critical of government services, which was highlighted at the workshop on the e-Citizens system. The students were most fulfilled when the participants told them about their hobbies and how the tools we presented to them can help them improve them.

Lessons learned:

Students discovered that they enjoyed working with elderly and adapting to their needs. They readily accepted to send them additional materials after the workshops. They have perfected public speaking and concise expression of their train of thought and simplified their explanations. Also, they adopted teamwork and felt good in their roles. In the evaluations, they expressed the hope that their project will result in changes in society in the form of more workshops for retirees, or perhaps some of them will decide to devote themselves to the education of the elderly in the future careers. They achieved the goal of making the participants feel that their digital gap has decreased, i.e. that they are not a forgotten part of society. In addition to opening the door to the world of artificial intelligence and digital services such as e-Citizens and eZaKi for them, the students gained an insight into teaching work with elderly people, which was also their biggest challenge, while the main success was visible in homework that the participants brought to the next session of the workshop and through conversations about how much they started to use certain e-systems in their everyday lives.

The evidence for the students’ claims that introducing certain technologies would make life easier for the elderly was the feedback they received during the workshops: on several occasions the elderly participants said that they did not know that they could access information such as their medical reports or extracts from land registers online, they did not know that they could listen to e-books through the eZaki system or extend the loan of books.

The students recognized the importance of inclusive education, to ensure that all participants understand the content being taught and are satisfied with the work methods. They learned that patience and flexibility are important because elderly have a lot of questions, they need the new information to be repeated for them several times. Self-reflection and a positive attitude towards the concept of lifelong learning, the understanding that it is a concept that improves the quality of life and that learning does not stop when you leave school were singled out as important lessons for students from this experience.