| dc.description.abstract | Every day the Internet brings us a variety of new opportunities. Recently it had significant influence on the field of education by providing the possibility of online learning for all the Internet users, for free and at their own pace. The relatively new type of online education, Massive Open Online Courses
(MOOCs), is becoming more and more popular every day. According to the literature MOOCs can help to make education more accessible for people with diverse abilities, but in order to make it possible, universal design principles should be used in the process of MOOCs development.
According to previous studies, MOOC courses could be very beneficial for seniors. Unfortunately, different negative factors, such as age related issues and a lack of experience, create a lot of ICT barriers for elderly people, who use Internet and computer technologies. The literature review of the current thesis showed that the issue of elderly users’ engagement with MOOC content was not sufficiently addressed. This research attempts to put bigger emphases on MOOC content types in order to investigate issues faced by elderly in relation to each of the types. In order to achieve the goal, the combination of user testing observation and in-depth semi-structured interviews with 14 elderly participants were applied.
The research was performed in few steps. First, the extensive literature review was conducted. Then the methodological and practical decisions were made in order to decide, which methods and techniques should be used to achieve the goals of the research. In the next step, the user-testing and interviews were conducted. Then all the collected data were summarized, analysed and discussed in relation to literature review findings.
The results of the study show that elderly users express positive attitude towards MOOC as a way of learning new things. However, some adjustments need to be made in order to make the MOOC content universally designed, since the elderly users face a number of barrier, related to different content types, which make it harder for them to take full advantage of MOOCs. The results also describe seniors’ perception of the different types of MOOC content presentation and their preferences. The set of recommendations for potential improvement of MOOC content and its presentation for senior users in universal design context was elaborated. | en |
