Sketches in Cyberspace: Using Student Drawings of Elders in an Online Social Gerontology Course

ABSTRACT

Much of the literature on teaching gerontology derives from experiences in face-to-face settings. There is limited discussion of either the applicability of teaching techniques drawn from the traditional setting to the online environment or the development of novel strategies to engage distance students of aging. We developed and assessed an exercise designed to stimulate an online, asynchronous discussion of ageism in a Web-based social gerontology course. The exercise required students to analyze patterns found in sketches of elders drawn by themselves and their peers. The activity, which was favorably evaluated by our students, provided a springboard for discussion of the origins and consequences of ageism, as well as issues at the intersection of gender and age inequality.

KEYWORDS:

• Distance learning
• Web-based course
• ageism

Notes

1. Additional examples of the sketches from the smaller data set, as well as other patterns in the data, are found in Barrett and Cantwell (2007).

2. A minority of sketches (less than 5%) depicted a female and a male (e.g., an elderly, heterosexual couple holding hands). Regarding the inclusion of an “other/indeterminate” category, although some prior studies have not included this category (e.g., Lichtenstein et al., 2005), we found this necessary because of the substantial minority of figures (approximately 20%) that did not clearly depict a woman or man, as indicated by breasts, hair loss and style, and dress—most of which are best described as “stick figures.”

3. Coders were instructed to only classify facial expressions as smiles or frowns if they were clearly indicated; otherwise, they were to code them as “other/indeterminate.” Figures 1 and 2 provide illustrations of sketches coded as frowns.

4. Because the collection of most of the sketches from students in our online class occurred only a day or two before the online discussion, we did not conduct a systematic analysis of these sketches involving multiple raters and the calculation of interrater reliabilities. As a result, we relied on the sketches drawn by our online students only in cases in which there could be little dispute regarding the features depicted (e.g., regarding physical impairments, sketches in which elders were drawn in wheelchairs or holding canes). We also note that the statistics we calculated to describe the patterns in the sketches do not include the sketches drawn by our online students; however, they represent a very small proportion of the total number of sketches and, therefore, are unlikely to influence the overall patterns we describe and discuss with the class.