Abstract:

Data presented in 2010 show that the elderly population represents over 19 million people in Brazil. It is predicted that the number of elderly will exceed 63 million people by 2050. The country will have more the older people than the teenagers in the population. Now, a larger number of persons see the aging as a time to retire, illness and decline of abilities and potentialities. But aging is the result of a life trajectory and it is necessary to change the image that the population has of the elderly. In addition, it is also important to keep the elderly physically and mentally active, meeting needs for prevention, stimulation and training of physical and emotional development. The UniversIDADE (university can be translated in Portuguese as “universidade” and age can be translated as “IDADE”) is a program of the University of Campinas (UNICAMP) aimed at senior citizens, that is, to the people over 50 years. The program started in 2015 and offers various activities such as workshops, sports, organized courses, etc.

The activities are organized in four areas:
1) art and culture,
2) sports and leisure,
3) physical and mental health,
4) socio-cultural and income generation.

An interesting feature of the program is that activities are offered on a voluntary basis by teachers, students, university employees or professionals in various fields (biological, social, cultural, psychological, philosophical, economic, medical, sports, health, etc.). Considering the volunteer activities of the proponents of the activities, the university offers the program with a limited financial contribution, allowing the gratuity to benefit the users. The workshop "The Internet as a participatory learning tool: Open and Massive Online Courses (MOOC)", from the socio-culture area, has been offered since 2015 for groups of 12 participants. One recommendation for enrollment in the workshop was for participants to be able to surf the internet and know how to download files. The workshop had 40 enrolled in the 48 places offered for 4 classes, one per semester. The number of participants was increasing over the time, passing from 6 in the first class to 14 in the last.

Currently, the workshop proposes a workload of 15 hours in 5 weekly meetings of 3 hours each. This presentation will characterize the public reached by the workshops and will reflect about MOOC and the importance for the participants. As a result, it was possible to conclude that the participants cannot be considered as reference for the age group, since many had some kind of link with the UNICAMP (ex-employees, ex-teachers or ex-students), presenting a cultural level and educational formation greater than the general population. Faced with the social progress in the use of modern communication technologies, another aspect is the importance of social inclusion linked to digital inclusion, since both are linked and should be more and more in line. The use of technologies must be promoted to the elderly.

Keywords:

Mooc, adult education, technology.