Digital Television as a Usable Platform for Enhancement of Learning Possibilities for the Elderly

Abstract

The use of television (TV) for learning purposes has been a topic of interest for several decades. Although digital TV represents a highly up-and-coming platform for education, there is a plethora of issues from various areas. The primary goal of this article is to present details associated with the investigation of how elderly as a distinctive group of users perceive the usability of t-learning applications while communicating by diverse types of interaction tools and t-learning applications. These applications are focused on cognitive training, physical education, and game-like application dealing with building of family trees. A total of 119 subjects attended in the experiment. All participants participated in a group of appointments that involved 24 sessions for almost 3 months. The activity during these individual sessions demanded from 20 to 30 min of time, accumulating to between 8 and 12 hr in total. There were three hypotheses tested, focused on usability, and influence of age and gender. Evaluation of usability uncovers that t-learning applications have a higher chance of acceptance by the elderly when the content deals with mentally oriented tasks rather than physical exercise. In this way, it is proved that t-learning does not represent a suitable platform for stimulation of the elderly to undertake physical exercise.