Development
​Our 4-week Media Literacy for Older Adults course has several different components including a pre/post test, a video of older adults sharing their first-hand experiences with scams/misinformation/conspiracy theories/phishing emails, discussion questions, a PowerPoint with general information on scams/misinformation/conspiracy theories/phishing emails, a social media group (either Facebook or LinkedIn), a best practices handout, a checklist handout, examples of scams/misinformation/conspiracy theories/phishing emails, focus group questions on the course for the final session, and a survey/questionnaire to evaluate the course. For this section, we will be showcasing two materials that we developed for this course: lesson plans for each of the sessions and the social media community of learners.
Lesson Plans (4 sessions)
To help instructors plan and execute our courses, we developed detailed lesson plans for each of the 4 sessions. These include many important areas needed to implement the lessons such as goals and desired outcomes, activity types, participants’ needs, deliverables and tangible outcomes, and other necessary information for the instructor(s).
Social Media (Community of Learners
The social media group is an important aspect of our design as it aids in the out of classroom interaction amongst the learners. We hope that through the use of a social media group, users get to practice in-context learning, utilize their peers to help them grow as learners, and build a community of learners that they can maintain beyond the scope of the course.
