Abstract:

The University Program for Seniors has been taught for more than 10 years in the Campus of Ourense at the University of Vigo. It finds to incorporate students older than 55 years with different cultural background to the university system. This qualification represents a singular university experience since it is focused on elderly people who could not access to the University previously or who had a previous experience at university but find to complete his/her knowledge.

The main objectives of this Program are:
(1) to facilitate the access of elderly people to university life experiences,
(2) to promote the participation of elderly people in the current society and help them to adapt to the changes,
(3) to encourage intra and intergenerational relationships and
(4) to provide the mechanisms to lifelong learning.

The University Program for seniors is designed according to three principles:
(1) Principle of contents adequacy, which founds to adapt the comprehension capacity of students to the scientific rigor.
(2) Principle of personalized learning, which stablishes that each subject should considers the specific situation of the students (learning rate, interests, motivation…).
(3) Principle of academic and sociocultural integration: It finds to complete the academic training with sociocultural activities. In order to achieve these principles the University Program for Seniors is structured in three years and all subjects are optional.

Thus, a minimum number of credits have to been passed in each course to finish the Program.

The aims of this study are, on the one hand, to know the motivations of students to study the Program and, on the other hand, to analyze the degree of satisfaction, adaptation and the level of satisfaction in the competences acquired by the students. Thus, it is possible to know if both the objectives and the principles previously described were achieved. Different analysis were performed to examine the learning experience of seniors students. From their results, it was found that the main reason to course the Program was to obtain new knowledge in order to adapt themselves to the social changes. Most of them consider that this aim has been fulfilled. In addition, students consider that its adaptation to the teaching methodology is simple and progressive and that it is adapted to their previous knowledge.

Keywords:

University Program for Seniors, University of Vigo.