This blogpost deals with my experience of creating a online dialogue. Besides being a teacher, I also work in home care. Here, many resources are used to help senior citizens become self-reliant. I believe that you could release resources for example by using online dialogue to instruct elderly people on how to put on compression stockings using an aid.
So through my work in home care, I found two elderly people who were willing to be my learners and to be a part of the online dialogue. I visited them IRL where I told them about the project and made sure they were safe about the technical part. Then we agreed a time to meet at ‘Zoom’. At the meeting I taught step by step what to do. My participants should try to do the same as me. If there were any problems along the way, I tried to help by explaining it in another way
The challenge of teaching this way is to make the technique work. We experienced problems with the sound which was indistinct. I also think it would have been a big challenge if I could not have met IRL with the participants because they needed a lot of technical help before they were comfortable participating in the dialogue. All things considered, the online dialogue worked well and our participant got her compression stockings on. There is certainly some interesting potentials in using online dialogue that way.
Thank you for reading this blogpost. If you have any questions or want to share your thoughts and ideas you are welcome to leave a comment.
Written by Sisse Munk Pedersen
I very much like this contribution! I often read that communication tools are designed for the needs of younger user groups. It`s nice to see that elderly people are increasingly included in online dialogues. This post illuminates the potentials of online dialogues for senior citizens. The above described experiences can inform the designers of communication tools.