Abstract:

The Covid pandemic shook the world in 2019–2020, by forcing people to shift from on-site work at offices to working completely on-line from the solitude of their isolated homes. This meant that numerous public services disappeared from the face of the earth and moved on-line, which meant that their customers were expected to have at least the very basic digital skills in order to reach these virtual services. The shift to virtual services had a particularly strong impact on the long-term unemployed individuals, whose daily routines were significantly disturbed by forcing them to stay away from their work activities centers, which increased their isolation from society, and affected their mental health. These customers of the work activities centers are often characterized by some level of mental or physical illnesses, and tend to have little or no digital skills, which both contributed negatively to the effect of the digital isolation. Needless to say that the lack of digital skills correlates strongly with lack of societal participation.

In order to break the digital isolation of the long-term unemployed citizens, and to increase their societal participation, the rehabilitative work activities center of the City of Helsinki decided to respond to these problems by establishing a low-threshold and easy-to-access program to teach digital skills. This program was targeted to fit the specific needs of the customers of the work activities centers. In 2022, a survey was conducted among long-term unemployed customers to understand the customers and to identify any thresholds and obstacles in their digital skills and learnability. In addition, the level of digital skills was measured in several studies.

Based on findings from these surveys and test results, the existing process of guiding customers, and the course structure were completely renewed during 2023. In order to understand the customer's digital skills level, an interactive and gamified solution is nowadays applied to each curriculum. This solution measures the level of digital skills while being a fun way to acquire new skills. Customers are then guided to a course matching their level of skills. Finally, the instructors receive a report of the skills level in general. As a result the attendance and satisfaction rates have already increased significantly.

This paper will describe the process of setting up a program for teaching digital skills to the digitally illiterate, long-term unemployed citizens. We will also reveal some of the difficulties in arranging this program, and discuss the possibilities it can offer for independent studying.

References:
[1] DESI, The Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI) report 2018 – Human capita, 2018
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[3] R. Hänninen, J. Karhinen, V. Korpela, L. Pajula, O. Pihlajamaa, M. Merisalo, O. Kuusisto, S. Taipale, J. Kääriäinen, T-A. Wilska, Digiosallisuuden käsite ja keskeiset osa-alueet Digiosallisuus Suomessa -hankkeen väliraportti, VALTIONEUVOSTON SELVITYS- JA TUTKIMUSTOIMINNAN JULKAISUSARJA, 2021
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Keywords:

Digital skills, societal participation.