The Digital Empowerment of Vulnerable Senior Living: A Case Study of Mobile Public Library-Led Digital Literacy Training of Older Adults in Social Housing

The proposed research explores digital literacy training solutions to address the tremendous gap in the digital empowerment of vulnerable seniors living in social housing projects, specifically at City Housing Hamilton (CHH), with the help of digital literacy training resources available at Hamilton Public Library (HPL).

This particular group of older adults experiences poverty and generally lacks the financial resources to obtain computer devices and access the Internet. These seniors often struggle to use information technology devices in their daily lives. Better access to digital literacy training by these older adults is required for them to succeed and thrive in daily life.

The proposed research will allow a post-doctoral fellow to be hired for one year to explore potential digital literacy training solutions for this community of seniors under the supervision of the academic research team (Detlor, La Rose, Laganse) and the general guidance from leadership at CHH (Silverthorne) and HPL (Weaver). Design thinking will inform the digital literacy training solutions to be explored. These will include design, testing and evaluation of over-the-phone training, and the establishment of new digital literacy training solutions at HPL for the CHH community. The post-doctoral fellow will also help with the planning and development of a mobile/informal “pop-up” solution that can deliver flexible, sustainable digital literacy training to older vulnerable adults at a time and place that is convenient to them and when it is needed most.

Outcomes of this research will yield both theoretical contributions and practical recommendations. Importantly, this project will set a firm foundation for the SSHRC Partnership Grant application currently under development by the recruited fellow’s primary supervisor (Detlor), particularly in the two areas of: i) digital literacy training assessments for older adults and ii) mobile/informal “pop-up” trailer solutions that provide much needed “on-the-spot” digital literacy training for seniors.