As the aim of the studies was to gain more insight into the elements that play a role in learning and technology acceptance and adoption, a qualitative approach was chosen. Two case studies will be described in the next sections. The first case study aimed to explore the attitudes and experiences of people using mobile technologies. In this study, a mixture of semi-structured interviews and open discussion was used. Interviews and discussion took place while using and demonstrating mobile technologies. An interview protocol was used by the researchers to make sure all the questions related to the components described above were addressed. In the open discussion participants were encouraged to talk about their experiences, both with the mobile technologies used during the study, and their previous experiences with technology in general. The second case study focused on the difficulties people encounter when using new technologies. In this study a more experimental approach was taken, in which participants were given several tasks to perform. Older adults were recruited on the basis of their prior experience with information technology.
All sessions were recorded and videoed, and subsequently reviewed by the investigators. The analysis of the first case study focused on what participants could tell about the four model components (learning effort expectancy, exploring and experimentation, usability, and learning and facilitating conditions). The second case study analysed and classified the errors that the participants made when performing the tasks.
As older adults are such a diverse group, there cannot be any
claim that the groups are representative, nor do we claim that