Extraordinary times

Two weeks ago (Monday 9th March), I stood at the front of a class and said "In the unlikely event that UCL closes before the end of term..." and within a week all face-to-face teaching had been cancelled. Such is the experience of exponential change. I know I'm not alone in realising that views I held a matter of days ago were untenable. I am guessing that this process of revising beliefs and attitudes isn't over yet.

The last day I was in the office was just two days after that wildly incorrect assessment. I'd planned to work at home the end of that week anyway. Since I work at home quite often I was already set up for most things, but there were a few items I hadn't brought home. The most critical turned out to be my interoperable collection of "so 1990s" Filofaxes. I ordered one. I've lost continuity in my note taking, but by asking all my team to remind me what we'd agreed in our previous meetings I'm catching up quickly. Home delivery worked brilliantly too.

Improvised desks are sprouting up in our house, such as a standing desk made up of an old bookshelf with a small "laptop desk" which is located right next to the wifi router for use during the more critical online meetings.

I had to do a rapid rethink on all my teaching: lectures got recorded ahead of time so that I wasn't totally reliant on our home broadband at the critical time (that worked easily once I'd mastered the uploading software for the virtual learning environment). Class quizzes worked well remotely. Class discussion with over 30 students was challenging. When I had a smaller class a few days later, I mercilessly brought each student into the discussion, keeping a list of who had contributed and who hadn't yet. Not as good as face-to-face, but not bad either.

This coming week, I'd have liked to do a discussion exercise with digital postits in class. I considered several alternative tools for this; some required too much set-up for a single session; some work better asynchronously than in real time; I've ended up just sharing an online document that all students can contribute to, and we'll see whether we can build a discussion around that. It's all a bit of an adventure.

Many of our MSc students are having to rethink their projects for this summer because we have to assume they won't be able to travel or to do any collocated data collection. That's yet another challenge. But at least we can all access library resources from our homes because of all the work that has been done to make them remotely accessible.

I seem to be spending most working hours in online meetings. Many of these work as well as traditional meetings. More importantly, we're using the same videoconferencing technologies for social events: for sitting around in the evenings with friends and family – not just one-to-one like phone calls, but collecting in groups, socially close while physically distant.

None of this would have been possible, even a few years ago. Even if the foundations of the Internet were established in the 1960s and the early World Wide Web around 1990, the tools that we're now using on top of these structures have all been developed within the past few years. And they are getting easier to use and to fit into our lives very rapidly.

If SARS-COV2 had emerged three years ago, I don't know how we would have dealt with ageing parents who believed that they could live independently but actually needed a lot of support (to which they were unrelentingly hostile). Since then, my father has died and my mother is now in a care home, living with advanced dementia. I wouldn't want to visit (even if permitted) for fear of passing on COVID-19 to the wonderful residents or staff. So last week we tried using FaceTime to chat (with support from Jo the manager). I wasn't hopeful that Mum would engage at all, but she seemed to recognise me (at least as a close female relative, if not necessarily as her daughter). We had a good few minutes' surreal chat interspersed with Mum singing then, as I made to say goodbye, she leant forward and kissed the phone. It was strange, and yet poignantly lovely to have this kind of connection when we can't be together. Even if both the phone and Mum's lips then needed a clean!

On Friday, we had a take-away. It seems important to support our local restaurants as they are forced to close and take-aways are the only option. I wonder whether it will continue to be a safe option at all in the coming weeks.

Schools closed on Friday (20th March), which is going to add to the stresses of our children continuing to work while also home schooling. Family have been recruited as remote teachers. Granny will be doing reading and writing; Grandad is starting with some "horrible history"; Auntie will be teaching French; and I'm concocting some science lessons. If we thought remote teaching of students was challenging, remote teaching of small boys ia likely to be substantially more so, but at least it will mean regular contact, and we'll all learn something new in the process.

There are also lots of online classes sprouting up: I'm looking forward to yoga and zumba this week even if they will require us to reorganise furniture even more (in addition to the improvised desks) to make space to move.

We know we are really lucky: we can work fairly effectively from home and we have a garden for fresh air. Mum is safe and well looked after; the rest of the family are all well so far, even if the youngsters are restless. We are aware that many other people have much greater challenges and stresses and grief to deal with. I am truly grateful to all key workers: in healthcare and in keeping essential services (including food, medication and internet provision!) available.

Footnote: Week 2 was still a period of adjustment...

"When I get older..."

The topic of "healthy ageing" is seen a very important. For example, in the UK, there is a challenge of "5 extra healthy years by 2035". It's not clear how that will be measured, or indeed whether it means 5 extra years of life (that will be healthy ones) or targeting improved health within the current lifespan.

At UCL, we had a panel discussion on this theme at the 2019 annual symposium, and the House of Lords Science & Technology Committee is currently conducting an Inquiry into Ageing: Science, Technology and Healthy Living. I had the interesting experience of appearing before this committee last week. The discussion was wide-ranging, but inevitably didn't cover all the themes that are important: it's a huge topic!

Here are a few themes we didn't talk about that I think are important in this discourse:

• Expectations of ageing. There isn't a single experience of ageing. Yes, there can be challenges, such as cognitive impairments (e.g., dementia) and managing multiple morbidities, but this isn't a universal experience. For example, Angela Soper and Ivor McCourt are both climbing at a high standard in their 70s, and many people have great fun as they age, whether it involves demanding physical activity or not.
• Wisdom has a value that complements the qualities of younger generations, and most people have valuable things to contribute to society, provided that structures are in place to empower people to contribute in whatever ways they can.
• There isn't a single date on which we become "old", and good design should be accessible to most people regardless of their age. Indeed, people are likely to find a technology useful in older age if (a) it doesn't carry a stigmatising label of being "for older people", and (b) it is something that they have found useful for some time (and are familiar with).
• Theories such as Self Determination Theory highlight the importance of experiences such as autonomy, competence and relatedness in contributing to quality of life. Autonomy and competence can be promoted or diminished through technology design and the infrastructure that surrounds it. For example, local government services that can only be accessed digitally without providing support for people with limited digital skills are disempowering. Conversely, technology that is easy to use and that gives people access to services they might not be able to access otherwise is empowering.
• Loneliness is one of the most important factors in poor quality of life and cognitive decline in older age. This is predicted to be a growing problem in the UK, and loneliness is associated with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and dementia. Poorly designed technology and infrastructure contribute to loneliness, but there are some great opportunities to design technologies that bring people together and increase people's sense of connectedness.

Designing for people of all generations is just that: designing for people, recognising that everyone has their abilities and their needs. There's a quotation that goes something like: "Growing old isn’t so bad when you consider the alternative." For some people (e.g., in pain or managing dementia), this might not be true, but hopefully appropriate technologies can help to make later stages of life a positive experience for many people. So can cliffs and swings and other "low tech" stuff!

Image by Claudia Peters from Pixabay

Don't forget!

Our mother has advanced Alzheimer's disease. Our father had vascular dementia. For a long time, we found it difficult to locate resources that helped to understand the diseases, our parents' experiences, or what we (as their children) could do to support them. We found quite a lot of material that was patronising, overly general, or overly technical.

The following are some of the resources that I have found most helpful to date (in no particular order):

• Wendy Mitchell's personal narrative of her experience of early onset Alzheimer's gives an amazing insight into the challenges and strategies that one person established to overcome them.
• There are many variants of dementia, with different causes and patterns of progress. These are well summarised by Dementia Australia.
• Alzheimer's disease is the most common form of dementia. This article in Nature Education gives some insight into the specifics of AD.
• Five "pocket" (i.e., brief!)  films about aspects of Alzheimer's capture the science in neat little chunks.
• The Dementia UK site gives more insight into managing and living with AD. Follow links from there to find out about other kinds of dementia.
• A personal narrative by a child of someone living with dementia emphasises the value of good care homes and their specialist care.
• As someone loses abilities, it's useful to find products that are specifically designed to support (and bring pleasure to) people with dementia, such as Unforgettable.
• In the UK legal aspects of supporting someone with dementia include setting up legal power of attorney while they still have mental capacity to do so, and possibly applying for attendance allowance to help towards the cost of care when it becomes necessary.

Maybe one day I'll link these notes to theory of information seeking, but for now it's just a place to gather some links.