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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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| Lessons learned from designing and evaluating an educational brain fitness program | | Author(s) | Roscoe Nicholson, Catherine O'Brien |
| Journal title | Working with Older People, vol 21, no 2, 2017 |
| Publisher | Emerald, 2017 |
| Pages | pp 100-106 |
| Source | www.emeraldinsight.com/loi/wwop |
| Keywords | Learning capacity ; Mental clarity ; Mental speed ; Courses [adult education] ; Qualitative Studies ; United States of America. |
| Annotation | This American case study aims to provide ageing services professional insights into older people's responses to brain fitness programs (i.e. courses) that may not appear in quantitative evaluations. The authors obtained qualitative data via observations, instructor interviews and feedback, open-ended responses on course evaluations, and participant focus groups. The (mainly White) participants come to brain fitness courses with a variety of expectations and preferences about content. Some are looking for educational content, some wanted to learn memory strategies, and others are looking for drilling or brain games. Participants responded very positively to descriptions of brain fitness research and scientific details. However, presenting such content posed a challenge to non-expert instructors, and efforts should be made to reduce this burden. Instructors can play a valuable role in goal setting, but instructors and participants felt that small rewards for meeting goals were unnecessary. Both instructors and participants felt that peer-to-peer interaction is a particularly valuable component of such courses. Overburdening participants should also be avoided. Organisations offering the course were also found to be adapting the course to better fit the organisation's capacities and the desires of participants. Due to the characteristics of the participant population, it is not known which, if any, of the findings apply to a less well-educated, lower income populations, or populations from other racial or ethnic groups. |
| Accession Number | CPA-170609211 A |
| Classmark | DE: DF: DG: GP:VE: 3DP: 7T |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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