How to Design Technology Training for Seniors

As a follow up to my post, Tips in Helping Seniors with Technology, here are some additional ideas on how to effectively train older persons, whether it’s one on one or within a class:

1. The more you understand about the senior, the easier it will be to plan your training.  First consider their age; seniors 60-70, 70-80 and 80+ will likely have very different concerns.  Furthermore, seniors within the same age range may be very unlike each other, and will respond to training differently.
2. Help the senior to prioritize.   Many seniors who I’ve worked with start with a long list of questions and need assistance in deciding what to learn first.
3. Keep the training focused and targeted on a specific task.  Repeat an idea in multiple ways to insure understanding before moving to other areas.
4. Take the time to ask why the older person wants to learn about technology, e.g. what they want to accomplish.  If you understand their motivation, it’s much easier to design a training they will benefit from.
5. Patience is key.  If you find yourself becoming irritable with having to explain a concept multiple times, end the training session early and start again when you can be a better teacher (the problem isn’t the senior).
6. Make group sessions as interactive as possible.  Encourage the seniors to ask questions and to share their own knowledge with the class.
7. If you’re working with a senior services organization such as Dorot or Selfhelp Community Services, learn as much about what other services / programs the senior is already involved with.  This will help you to optimize your training.
8. Regularly get feedback on how well you’re doing.   Especially if you work with a senior over an extended time period, you may need to adjust your teaching style to accommodate their learning preference.
9. Remember the overall value of increasing the senior’s social interactions with other seniors, with younger persons and with the community.  This may be as important as whether they ‘get’ the specific knowledge you’re teaching.
10. Remember the basics in helping seniors to concentrate: minimize background noise, provide good lighting and use large font sizes.  Also, keep the training sessions short as many seniors (as do many younger people) may not be able to stay focused for a longer class.

During your training, students may express sadness that their life is more limited than when they were younger.  If so, offer this suggestion which I heard at last week’s Caregiving Symposium (mentioned in this post), “Mourn what you lost but remember what you can still do.”