Abstract
Recently information technology is being rapidly introduced into office work environments. At the same time, percentage of older people in the population is growing and will affect the structure of labor force. In this vein, training of middle-aged and elderly workers in computer operating skills is becoming more important. One of the training methods that is expected to be effective for such technology training is exploratory training. An experiment was carried out to investigate the validity of exploratory training in comparison with traditional instructional training when applied to the training of middle-aged and elderly persons in computer operating skill. Both young and older subjects participated. Subjects attended either exploratory or instructional training courses to learn skills to perform information search and input tasks in personal computers. Then the subjects performed some sample tasks and performance indices such as operation time, task accuracy, task cognition, and exploratory behavior were measured. The results show that validity of exploratory training for older subjects is different between people who are currently employed and those who are not. From the view point of operation time and task cognition, exploratory training seems to be more effective for people who are currently employed, while instructional training seems to be effective for people who are not. From the view point of task accuracy, instructional training is superior for both younger and older, currently employed and not employed. Training validity and task accuracy are not significantly different between age groups, while operation times differ significantly. The results suggest that effectiveness of exploratory training is influenced by the trainee's knowledge even if it is not directly related to the task. Subsequently, the trainee's occupation and background knowledge need to be considered in relation with the skill to be acquired when a training method is selected.
