Abstract:

Digital technologies are increasingly becoming part of everyday life challenging older adults to use internet-based services in healthcare, finances, continue (or long-life learning) education, and others. At the same time, university level education needs to exploit digital technologies to continuously stay in touch with cutting-edge research and innovation such as to produce leading specialists across all disciplines. In this context, gamification is considered to be an effective tool in educating older adults and students alike [1,2]. In this work, we are considering gamification from both perspectives by gathering the opinion of older adults involved in the CAREUP project and of students at University Politehnica of Bucharest. We need this comparative analysis to see what is valuable to them, how they do (perceive?) practical application of games in everyday life and finally, help to bridge the intergenerational gap.

The CAREUP project (Integrated Care Platform Based on the Monitoring of Older Individual Intrinsic Capacity for Inclusive Health) is funded by the Active and Assistive Living European program which is dedicated to promoting and using digital technologies to the benefit of older adults. CAREUP is developing a holistic digital platform which support older adults to adhere to healthy aging through self-monitoring of their physical and mental capacities. Gamification elements aid mental health assessment, training and motivate users in adhering to a healthy lifestyle. Pilot testing will involve real life settings and long-term testing. As a preamble to this study, we gathered older adults’ opinion on gamification as an incentive for an active and healthy lifestyle. We are presenting our results alongside with the perception of university level students on the usefulness of gamification in education and its potential impact on incentivizing students in acquiring new skills.

Smartly designed questionnaires composed of closed and open questions administered to 15-20 older adults above 60 years of age and to 15-20 students (20-25 years old), are allowing us to gather specific opinions of each group but also comparable results between the two seemingly disjoint categories of gamification consumers.

Keywords:

Gamification, older adults, university education, digital education.