Keywords

1 Introduction

At present, our country is in an era of rapid web2.0 and rapid social change. As the worldwide technological revolution has led to the changes in the mode of production and economic structure, it has also profoundly affected the changes in family intergenerational relations and family socialization process. With the popularization of the use of mobiles communication equipment, people’s living habits, learning styles, communication channels, modes of thinking and social relations have been greatly changed. Young people, as digital natives, have a high degree of acceptance and ability to learn new emerging technologies and devices. In contrast, the elder, as digital immigrants, are slow to learn and use hard-to-learn mobile communication equipment e.g. smartphones, less interests and difficult to accept the problem. The impact of young people on adult parents have become even more pronounced. In other words, we are in a “pre-symbolized” society called by Margaret Mead that the elder have to learn from their children that they have no experience [1]. In the case of using smartphones, what is undeniable is that young people use significantly more than their parents, especially in the field of daily life. The “Report on the Internet Utilization of Minors in China 2013–2014” published in 2014 shows that parents who take the initiative to consult minors about Internet knowledge have 56.1% and 22.7% of them, sometimes and often. There is a phenomenon of intergenerational learning in reverse socialization between parents and children, that is, elders ask knowledge and skills to their younger. The emergence of this phenomenon has broken the monopoly of elders over knowledge and authority over a long period of time. The adolescent generation is not only a passive recipient of knowledge and authority, but also an active agent for knowledge creation and dissemination. It also has great influence on parents, children and families.

Furthermore, from the perspective of human-computer interaction, we believe that the reverse socialization of intergenerational learning can be well reflected in the introduction of gamification into the use of smartphone by the elderly. Hamari et al. indicate that gamification is a desired way to support user engagement and enhance positive patterns in service use [2]. Deterding et al. highlight that the affordances implemented in gamification will lead to some positive outcomes of product/service use [3]. To our best knowledge, since the discovery of this phenomenon in our country, only a small amount of direct research on intergenerational studies has been published in conferences and periodicals. There is almost no application of gamification to this research. Therefore, we would like to explore whether the youth-dominated reverse social intergenerational learning can better motivate the elders to use smartphone, especially the influence of gamification on teaching. In this paper, some of our experiments adopted gamification design and observed the learning process of using smartphone by young people to teach the elderly. We conducted a preliminary experimental with 15 elderly people who have never had a smartphone before. We aim at answering these two questions:

RQ1::

How does the influence of the intergenerational learning on the elderly’s use of smartphone?

RQ2::

How does the influence of gamification design on the process of intergenerational learning about the smartphone use by the elderly?

2 Literature Review

2.1 Intergenerational Learning

Intergenerational learning is first and foremost an interdisciplinary term in the fields of psychology, medicine and public policy [4]. With the development of information technology, it gradually penetrates into the fields of management science, pedagogy and information science. The concept of intergenerational learning is divided into three stages: the earliest can be traced back to the older generation, such as family, elder or grandparent, to extend the wisdom and values to the next generation, but did not form a standardized rule [5]. For example, Hoff defines intergenerational learning as a process that is very common among generations in the family and that delivers the knowledge, skills, guidelines and values to the next generation of systems [6]. Secondly, in order to solve the problem of being young as a result of geographical divisions due to work and family needs the gap between one generation and the older generation, the definition of intergenerational learning is no longer confined to the relationship between family members, extended to the family outside, that is, New Extrafamilial Paradigm [7], such as Ropes believes that intergenerational learning in business organizations is an interactive way that can promote the relations between generations and acquire new knowledge, new skills and new ideas [8]. In 1999, the UNESCO Institute of Education held a meeting in Dortmund to broadly define the intergenerational learning as a purposeful, continuous exchange of resources and learning tools between the older generation and the younger generation [9]. The intent is to adapt the concept to multiple perspectives and to promote cooperation. Bostrum believes that when people from different generations are learning together, there is an interaction of knowledge, skills, attitudes and values [10]. At this stage, researches on early childhood education, education for the aged, family relations and other aspects have begun to be explored [11,12,13]. Generation study in the modern sense began to emerge. Generation study gradually became a key area of focus for European and American countries. Intergenerational Program, Learning Practice [14] and Intergenerational initiative embody the meaning of intergenerational learning. Hatton-Yeo and Batty recognize that learning is a process that runs through life and that people may have different needs and interests at different stages of their lives, with the potential to share learning and transcend generations [15].

Therefore, the key to “intergenerational” terminology lies not between generations, but between interpersonal relationships. Finally, with the rapid development of instant messaging tools, the younger generation gradually occupies the leading position in knowledge transfer. Intergenerational learning not only includes lines under the communication, but we should also try to embed information and communication technologies, computer collaboration technologies and various smart devices in the process of knowledge transfer, so that the development of intergenerational education can get rid of the limitations of geographical, time, educational level and other factors to enhance learning convenience, innovation and scalability, while emphasizing the content of learning. We should also pay attention to the cultivation of intergenerational information literacy [16,17,18]. Klamma et al. defined intergenerational learning as “the process-based experience and experience of one generation with another generation” and emphasized that intergenerational learning should not be confined to face-to-face communication and ignoring the drive of emerging information technologies effect [19].

2.2 Reverse Socialization

Research on reverse socialization began in the mid-1950s and has been more than half a century old. The concept of reverse socialization was first proposed in the field of household consumption. There are two kinds of English expressions of reverse socialization: “reverse socialization” and “retroactive socialization”, but the two expressions are nearly 20 years before and after the proposal is made. The concept of “retroactive socialization” was first proposed by Riesman and Roseborough, meaning that children can learn consumer-related skills from peers and the media and influence his or her parents with those skills [20]. However, in the nearly 20 years since, very few studies have adopted this concept. Bell, who first proposed the idea of the two-way influence of parents and children in socialization, was considered a mountain to the study of reverse socialization, yet Bell himself did not come up with the concept of reverse socialization [21]. Ward proposed the concept of reverse socialization as the process by which children may influence their parents’ knowledge, skills and attitudes about consumption [22]. Since then, the term “reverse socialization” has been widely adopted to denote reverse socialization.

The author thinks that reverse socialization includes two kinds of processes: one is the active learning process of the socialized subject to the object, and the second is the influence and pressure from the socialized subject that have a direct or indirect influence on the attitude and behavior of the socialized subject influences. The domestic (Mainland) reverse socialization research began in the late 1980s, Zhou put forward the concept of “cultural feedback” [23]. The concept of “localization of culture” has also become synonymous with the study of reverse socialization in China. At present, there are three kinds of perspectives for the definition of reverse socialization in China: From a sociological point of view, reverse socialization is the socialization of the previous generation by young people and youth, that is, the socialization of knowledge and skills that traditional recipients put into practice for educators [24]. From a cultural point of view, reverse socialization is Margaret Mead called “after metaphorical culture”, “metaphorical culture” is also a youth culture, which means that youth has become the authority of life groups, the elders to the cultural form of youth learning, also known as youth model culture. The third uses the concept of cultural nurturing proposed by Zhou, referring to cultural nurturing, which is a process of extensive cultural assimilation to the younger generation in the era of rapid cultural change [23].

3 Research Design

We conducted a preliminary experiment to investigate our research questions raised above. The purpose of this experiment is to let the experimental subject use some functions of the smartphone independently after learning, specifically for “use camera”, “add address list”, and “dial” these three basic functions of smartphone. After that, we evaluated the results based on the completion of the tests.

3.1 Participants

First of all, this paper selected nine groups of families to participate in this experiment. Each family is composed of the elderly who has not been exposed to smartphones, and their children who can use smartphones. Meanwhile, we ensured that the selected elderly have a certain willingness to learn how to use smartphones before the experiment, and their cultural level is similar, which reduces interference caused by conflict, stereotype and learning ability.

3.2 Data Collection

After screening suitable experimental subjects, 15 groups of elderly were randomly divided into three groups: A, B and C. Each group contained 5 elderly families, including group A as control group, group B and group C as experimental groups. During the experiment, elderly of group A learn three functions of the smartphone by themselves through the manual and independent exploration. Elderly of Group B learn through reverse socialization intergenerational learning, and their children teach them by the traditional way of oral teaching and specific operation. Elderly of group C learn through reverse socialization intergenerational learning with gamification designs. Here, different from the teaching style of the group B, gamified styles are designed as following methods: In the intergenerational learning process, children describe to their parents the situation related to the daily life preferences or habits of the elderly to enable elderly to integrate into the situation, such as “playing chess”, “watching flowers” and so on, which can trigger the demand of using “use camera”, “add address list” and “dial”, to make the teaching more realistic and practical. After elderly are familiar with the operation of smartphone, they repeated training by setting different situations to enhance proficiency, and by setting the countdown, operation is completed within the time limit to strengthen the memory of the operation process of the elderly. At the same time, children need to offer encourage or rewards constantly during the teaching, in order to improve the elderly to complete the learning achievements. After the 3 days, 3 h a day of learning and training, we arranged the same requirements of using smartphone to 15 groups of elderly people, and let them use the same smartphone in 10 min to finish, and after that we evaluated the overall completion degree and time of the test results, and then analyze it.

After the end of the experiment, we interviewed the elderly in 30–60 min per person around the contents of their learning experience, the feeling of using smartphone, and will to continue using smartphone in the future, and sought their advice on the use of smartphones and the way to learn, finally we recorded the interview results and carried on the analysis.

4 Results and Discussion

First of all, we analyzed the results of the experiment. From the view of finish time, the elderly of group C learning through gamified intergenerational learning finish respectively in 2′58′′, 3′11′′, 3′26′′, 3′54′′ and 4′04′′, followed by the elderly of group B learning by traditional intergenerational learning are respectively 3′59′′, 4′19′′, 4′38′′, 4′56′′ and 5′02′′, and the elderly of group A learning by themselves are respectively 5′18′′, 5′44′′, 6′21′′, 8′06′′ and 10′00′′ (experiment time is 10 min). We can see that the group C significantly completed the fastest time, group B is the second, while the elderly of group A are generally slow, and even one of them had not completed at the end of the experiment. From the view of degree of completion, group C and group B completed the requirements accurately, while only two of group A completed the requirements and last one only completed the “use camera” and “dial”, and did not complete the “add address list” timely. It can be seen that the group A learning by themselves compared to the group B with children’s participation, group B is significantly faster and finish better than group A, which shows that the effect of reverse socialized intergenerational learning is better, and proves the importance of children’s participation in the teaching of using smartphones for the elderly. At the same time, the comparison between groups B and group C shows that the overall speed and speed of each item of group C are generally faster than group B, which can be seen that the gamification designs of learning effect is significant, and there is an obvious improvement in the proficiency of elderly people using smartphones, and proves that the reverse social intergenerational integrated into gamification designs has a positive effect on the elderly using smartphones (Table 1).

Table 1. Testing timetables for the use of smartphones for older people
Full size table

Secondly, after finishing interviews, the answers to the three questions about “learning experience”, “using experience” and “will you continue to use” are summarized in Table 2.

Table 2. A summary of interview
Full size table

As for the use of smartphones and the way to learn using smartphones, the elderly also give some suggestions in the interview. After combining with the existing theories of intergenerational learning, gamification and reverse socialization, this paper innovates and lists the following suggestions:

  1. (1)

    Participation of children. Children play a vital role in the process of reverse socialized intergenerational learning. With the company of children, elderly people are more likely to accept new things. Beginners are hard to avoid learning difficulties, but before their children, there is no emotional distress, such as loss of self-confidence, etc. Also, their children are more patient and can greatly improve their self-efficacy of smartphones.

  2. (2)

    Gamified learning. Through the gamification elements, such as increase the sense of presence by increasing the situation used in the experiment. It let elderly people know what is the use of the smartphone’s function and where it is used, and highlight its practical significance. It also adds interest to the boring teaching operation directly, and cater to the interests of the elderly and the needs of their life to make the utility of smartphone deeply rooted in the hearts of the elderly people to achieve better teaching effect. Meanwhile it can integrate into the youth culture, to make the gap between the cultures and habits of the intergenerational closer.

  3. (3)

    Help and prompt the specific application. Because many manual introduces the smartphone hardware level operation and some basic operation, and it is considered that the users have had the relevant empirical basis, but it does not consider the elderly who had never contact with the smartphone and its application. It is possible to set up a more obvious help interface for teaching and guidance in the application to reduce the operation error which lead to elderly people’s using problems.

  4. (4)

    The audiovisual of guide. For an instruction manual with whole words, the elderly are difficult to see the instructions on it because of the presbyopia and other vision problems. Video teaching with specific steps and voice interpretations is more acceptable to the elderly, which can reduce the error between the understanding and operation, and can be repeated to watch and reduce the difficulty of learning.

In summary, combined with the reverse socialization and intergenerational learning theory, in the future, we can try to develop specialized smartphone function teaching software, and let children participate in the learning process, make elderly learn smartphone effectively by watching the video, and with gamification designs like setting situation. And then it can improve the use of smartphones in the elderly group, and achieve the purpose of intelligent old-age care.

5 Conclusion and Implications

From the gamification point of view, our goal was to investigate the impact of the reverse socialization of intergenerational learning on promoting the use of smartphone for the elderly. We conducted a quasi-experiment to respond to our research questions. The research findings show that, first, the 15 elders were divided into three groups, guidance and gamification design of young people as a control experiment variables, the data found that the C group was the best effect, B followed by the second, the last group A; Second, we compare A with B, B with C, found that guidance and gamification of young people are helpful for the elderly to use their smartphone; Third, it is interesting to note that, the gamification design should be viewed as a journey rather than an event, our presume can be combined with other research studies. Since elders may get boring after a period time of usage, the gamification design should make the whole learning process more novel and unique. In other words, gamification design is one of the keys to the success of this experiment. In addition, our study was not without limitations. The theoretical mapping between application of theory and the gamification design in experiment needs further literature supports and discussion. The stereotypes and lifestyle habits of some elders may be the problems that affect and limit the experiment. In summary, our research gives a guidebook that will help young people to teach their elders to use their smartphone to enhance intergenerational relationships. In future studies, we will use this guidebook to dig deeper into the motivations of the reverse socialization of intergenerational learning to validate our findings.