Migration of clusters from pre session to post session: an analysis of elderly students' perceived digital literacy #ecil2018

I arrived a bit late for the talk by Makiko Miwa on Migration of clusters from pre session to post session: an analysis of elderly students' perceived digital literacy, so apologies for a partial liveblog. When I arrived she was reviewing the literature on the topic. Then she described the digital literacy training set up by them "Peronal computers for beginners" (a 12 hour intensive session, spread over 2 days). It is offered at least once a year in 50 study centres in different parts of Japan. In fact the classes did not just consist of over 65s (people take classes to retrain as well as taking classes to learn in retirement). There are 10-15 people in each class. It was originally taught by faculty, but they have trained locally based people to deliver the course.

The course includes basic use of a PC, use of Word, ppt, email, key resources online (e.g. online radio). The purpose is to improve online skills and enable people to have the skills to take other online courses. There are 20 learning goals, which is also used as a checklist for learners (see photo) to self-report their skills. Participants are asked to fill in the checklist before and after the training session. In the data analysis they did cluster analysis (Hartigan-Wong) and compared pre- and post-session clusters. Data was collected from 1417 students (who had completed both questionnaires) between 2014 and 2017.

In brief, the cluster analysis shows that the perceived capabilities of the students improve after the training course. The lowest confidence was to do with things like data security to start with, the least improvement was to do with library use and to do with engaging with the online course application. Miwa also showed how the clusters had migrated, looking at the pre and post questionnaires (see 2nd photo).
They looked at age, and there was a significant relationship between higher level confidence and (lower) age. Analysis of free text words showed that the lower-level group use words like difficulty, and in the higher confidence group it was words like thinking, presenting. One of the conclusions was that "Some of the older novice students did not learn enough to be able to manipulate the PC by themselves".