Unpacking Live-Streaming-Based Learning Paradigm Among Older Adults: Infrastructure, Practices, and Experiences

As a flexible, scalable, and affordable learning paradigm, live-streaming-based learning (LS learning) has become increasingly popular among older adults, supporting their learning needs, but remains underexplored in existing CSCW literature. Given older adults’ unique learning characteristics in terms of motivations, expectations, and learning abilities, it is critical to deeply examine their LS learning behaviors and experiences to inform better design. Our study addresses this gap through a qualitative empirical study in China to unpack older adults’ LS learning in terms of infrastructure, practices and experiences. We identify a human-technology integrated infrastructure alongside a volunteer-based, self-organized, autonomous collaborative community, which work together in fostering a supportive LS learning environment for older adults and meeting their additional emotional and social needs. We elaborate on these findings, highlighting the unique characteristics of older adults’ LS learning and discussing how we can better design to support older adults’ LS learning.