High Impact Practices Student Showcase Fall 2023

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Course Code

LDR

Course Number

3215

Faculty/Instructor

Dr. Debra Edgar

Faculty/Instructor Email

debra.edgar@ucf.edu

About the Author

Rishi Nair and Nicholas Mistry are LEAD Scholars at UCF. They worked with Seniors First, an Orlando-area nonprofit, to create a trivia program for senior citizens to interact with each other and combat social isolation, while testing their knowledge. They would like to acknowledge Dr. Debra Edgar, Maureen Sullivan, Kelly Fiori and the rest of the Seniors First team for making this event possible.

Abstract, Summary, or Creative Statement

The state of Florida is home to one of the largest retiree and Veteran populations in the country. As people age, they are more prone to suffer from physical and mental conditions that preclude their ability to live a fulfilling life. This could result in social isolation and loneliness, which has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. We partnered with Seniors First’s Project Connect program to improve social interactions among the elder community with virtual trivia events. These weekly games helped us identify areas of emotional need, such as improving self-esteem, introducing memories of seniors' lives when they were younger, and engaging in friendly competition. Additionally, seniors improved their self-esteem over weeks of playing Jeopardy-style events; we predict this is due to greater familiarity with the types of questions and people they interact with. However, we identified a dire need for stronger history, geography and current events-related education in the elder community. Thus, we started combining these categories of questions to make our events more interactive, which resulted in much higher levels of enthusiasm. Overall, we hope to bridge the knowledge gap and strive for a happier elder community

Keywords

seniors; social isolation; Orlando; elderly; elder; trivia; mental health

Combatting Social Isolation in Greater Orlando


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