An example slide deck used to transfer skills and build confidence with members of a research team who will be peer facilitators who administer a survey over Zoom.
Bring older adults who have used Zoom as a program participant to a comfort level where they can host a zoom meeting for a participant interview as a peer facilitator of a research project. This is a slide deck that accompanies a training designed to be offered over Zoom. Also available as an editable PowerPoint PPTX file.
The slide deck that accompanied an hour-long lunch-and-learn session to share promising practices with artists, facilitators, and program developers on what works and doesn't work when engaging older adults in online programming. Also available as a PDF with sample videos included (60MB) and an editable PowerPoint document (PPT).
The guide that was sent (in print) to older adults that participated in the evaluation of the direct[message] keyboard and online platform activity. Provided as an example of the formatting, language choice, and design that the research team identified for the older adults that would participate.
Direct[Message], a community-based research (CBR) project developing a digital platform supporting older adults engagement with the arts through digital technologies, faced the challenge of redesigning the research protocol after the COVID-19 pandemic was declared in March 2020. The redesign, which brought challenges and opportunities, allowed the research team to embed the project with process goals considering older adults’ experiences of social isolation, and exploring how these experiences might be mitigated by greater access to the arts through technology. This article explores the redesign process undertaken by the Direct[Message] team and presents preliminary findings from this multiyear study.
In the four episodes of direct[message] Community Stories, the project's community consultants discuss what they like to be called, how the names of things influences what they'll participate in, employment, wisdom, and social media.
Direct[message], a five-year project to increase access to artistic experience for older adults, was guided by a panel of older adult community consultants from the project cities of Guelph, Hamilton, and London.
An Instructional Guide to Accessing Information on the Web. This pamphlet will guide you through the
steps to: 1. Identify your digital device 2. Connect your device to wi-fi/internet 3. How to find more tutorials that explain how to use technology online. 4. How to cater your device to your needs.
As well as common terms, symbols, and websites. Sources for information and how to find them
To increase access to virtual project activities, selected videos from the direct[message] digital literacy tutorial series were redeveloped to overlay an Arabic translation delivered by Suad Badri, a trusted Arabic-speaking community member and older adult community consultant for the direct[message] project.
A series of appropriately-paced, stepwise, visually-engaging tutorial videos on learning to use and develop comfort with devices (phones, tablets, laptops, and desktops and the three most common operating systems of each) and with digital communications technology to develop skills required to connect with online arts events developed for older adults
We set specific goals for recruitment (10 older adults in each of three cities: Guelph, Hamilton, and London) and we used an equity reference recruitment model to maximize the variety of perspectives in our sample, reach older adults who identified with historically marginalized populations, and adjust our recruitment efforts progressively.
An exemplar agenda for a project update meeting on a multi-year, multi-team project. We found that as different parts of the project progressed different working groups would get out of sync with each other's progress or feel left out, and we'd assume knowledge not everyone had during meetings. Preparing a "where we've been and where we're going" presentation was very useful to realign the team, and once we had the presentation we found it was a great resource to use to update external partners on what we were doing.