EuCoNet Club

 

Bancaja

Vice-rector's Office of University Extension - University of Alicante

Students' Association of the Permanent University – University of Alicante

 

Concepción Bru Ronda upua.direccion@ua.es

Felipe Castejón felipecastejon@gmail.com

 

 

Before the challenge of providing most Europeans with Internet access, there was the reality that many European older adults were being left aside from this technological development. Age was an obvious factor of exclusion by the end of last century. With the aim of giving a solution to this problem   in 2003  the European Project EuCoNet (European Computer Network) came up. The direct result of this project was the   original iniciative started in 2003-04 THE EUCONET CLUB,, promoted by a group of voluntary students from the Permanent University of the University of Alicante, members of the international work and research group EuCoNet. The purpose of this iniciative was helping other students of the UPUA to get started with computing, adquire some basic knowledge to be able to use the computer in the studies of the Permanent University (for example, the platform of the Virtual Camus) and lose their fear to the computer. On the other side, the EuCoNet Club also promotes the contact between the students and establishes a culture of technological voluntary service.

 

Started in 2003 in the Permanent University of the University of Alicante, the iniciative has the collaboration of teachers of the Diploma Senior as academic coordinators, although the main characters of the Club EuCoNet are the tutor students and participating students.

The computing service and the Venue of Alicante of the University have facilitated the access to classrooms with the new technologies for this iniciative, as well as a support and monitoring system to the EuCoNet Club, that will help maintaining and updating the contents and improving the required software and hardware.

 

Process: organization, methodology, coordination of resources       At the beginning of each course, once the people have been registered in the Permanent University, those students who have shown interest in being part of that Club are invited to a informative meeting in which they will join the club and the following aspects will be established:

The registration is free, but one must be student of the Permanent University during the current course, or belong to the Students and Alumni Association of the UPUA.

The way of learning of the iniciative includes both active self-learning and help from the tutors.

A website has been created in Spanish, English and Catalan and different workshops and seminaries have been carried out to facilitate the acquisition and deeping in computer knowledge, in a way even better that the one of other courses, given that the student is the main character of his own learning and goes at his own pace. The continuous increase of the number of participants shows the success of the iniciative, which results are the different materials for other older adults and members of the Club, making its spread easier:

This good practice has as a result a Social Net before at RedNing and now at Facebook that is defined as Learning and perfecting the new Information and Communication Technology (ICT) for Older Adults.

 

As a suggestion for improvement it has been proposed to increase the hours (now 4 per week), and the number of tutors, as well as carrying out intergenerational activities. 

The Permanent University of the University of Alicante has organized meetings at a local level with other centers and associations, in order to share the knowledgement with other interested organizations. The materials elaborated by the EuCoNet Club are available at the following website.

 

All documents can be downloaded here: