UR gets help from JU researcher

Swedish Television is currently broadcasting the fourth season of the popular TV program "Seniorsurfarna". The program is produced by UR, an educational TV channel, and is using educational material developed by Ulli Samuelsson, Associate Dean of Education at the School of Education and Communication (HLK) at Jönköping University (JU).

In addition to being Associate Dean of Education at HLK, Ulli Samuelsson conducts research on IT use and digital competence from an educational societal perspective. Research focuses on what can enable digital participation among older people.

Last autumn, Ulli Samuelsson was contacted by UR (Swedish Educational Broadcasting Company) to create a teacher's guide for the fourth season, which is currently being broadcast. She has an idea as to why she was contacted for the assignment.

"I suspect that this has to do with the fact that I have appeared in several official contexts as a lecturer on issues related to older people and digitalization, not least at the Internet Foundation. I have lectured at their specialized webinars and also the Internet Day," says Ulli.

Programs featuring popular celebrities

The popular TV show follows popular celebrities such as Marianne Mörck, Claes Malmberg, Ewa Fröling and Siw Malmkvist as they take on the challenge of becoming more digitally literate. The host Kattis Ahlström gives the participants various tasks to try to solve. The program is produced by UR, whose mission is to provide programming in the field of education for increased knowledge and learning. Therefore, there is a solid educational material linked to the program, which Ulli Samuelsson had to design for the fourth season.

In the training material, she has created different exercises that match the actions of the celebrities in the program. There are several different themes on the website, including "the mobile phone as a tool for everyday life", "communicating with and via the phone" and "the mobile phone for life and health", as shown in the program. Under each theme, the visitor will find a list of concepts, questions to answer and exercises to practice. Tasks range from finding the flashlight on your phone to downloading the 112 app and activating the location service.

“It has been a lot of work to develop the training material, but at the same time extremely fun and rewarding. It's been many years since I worked so concretely with digital skills and it was a interesting and inspiring experience. I am passionate about ensuring that our seniors in society do not end up outside in a world that is almost completely digitized,” concludes Ulli Samuelsson.