MOOCEP: A Method for Building Massive Open Online Courses for Elderly People The Analysis Activity Paul Rodriguez-Ch Faculty of Engineering Universidad de Cuenca Cuenca – Ecuador paul.rodriguezc@ucuenca.ec Priscila Cedillo Dept. of Computer Sciences Universidad de Cuenca Cuenca – Ecuador priscila.cedillo@ucuenca.edu.ec Paola Beltran Faculty of Engineering Universidad de Cuenca Cuenca – Ecuador paola.beltranv@ucuenca.ec Jose Ortiz Faculty of Medicine Universidad de Cuenca Cuenca – Ecuador jose.ortiz@ucuenca.edu.ec Abstract— By the year 2060, the elderly population will double its current size in comparison to the results presented in the last census, according to the Administration on Aging (AoA). By that time an important part of the elderly population will be involved in technology. Moreover, it should be taken into account that the technological needs of elderly people will differ from those of the rest of targets. However, elderly people may not be fully aware of their situation concerning their lifestyle (e.g., own well-being, rights, nutrition); therefore, e-Learning can be used to improve their knowledge and integration with peers. Hence, the Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) can work as online resources designed to help expanding the knowledge of elderly people by means of technological tools. Even though a complete method to build MOOCs for elderly people has been proposed previously, this paper details the analysis phase, which constitutes the first step in the method. This proposal will help MOOC developers during the elicitation of the requirements towards building effective MOOCs focused on elderly people. In order to demonstrate the feasibility of this proposal, a MOOC related to nutrition recommendations for elderly people will be presented. Keywords—elderly, e-Learning, andragogy, MOOCs, method, analysis. I. INTRODUCTION Nowadays, a lot of research is focused on improving the lifestyle of the elderly [1-4]. These studies have been growing potentially during the last years in response to an increased population of elderly people who have a lot of interest in socializing or participating in activities involving technology (i.e., social networks, e-Learning) [1]. Consequently, it becomes imperative to develop and improve applications, technological artifacts, and tools that contribute to improve their lifestyle. Education needs to be present throughout the lifetime of people. Lately, most research has been focused on supporting lifelong learning problems [5]. Thus, the Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have been considered as a potential environment with the ability to educate a large amount of people in a flexible way [6]. MOOCs are contextualized as massive: because they are designed for thousands of participants; open: because they are at everyone’s disposal and no high standards of education are required; and online: because physical attendance is not necessary [7]. In addition, elderly people represent almost the 10% of total users of MOOCs [6]. Hence, it is necessary to improve the MOOCs in order to develop an adequate environment for elderly learning. Despite much research being addressed in order to build effective MOOCs, they do not consider any methodology to build MOOCs that take into account the needs of elderly people. There are approaches [8, 9] that show methods to build these artifacts; however, they are not focused on elderly people and they do not consider andragogical techniques. In respect to these techniques, Knowles [10] has stated assumptions that show how learning considerations have to be oriented in order to suit adult education. In a previous paper [11], the creation of MOOCs for elderly people was contextualized by means of a method called MOOCEP (Massive Open Online Courses for Elderly People) in order to create andragogical and accessible MOOCs for them. This process was based on the Instructional Design Model [12], which has been defined by the use of Software and Systems Process Engineering Meta-Model Specification (SPEM) [13], to define each activity, artifact, guideline, and role. The method includes an activity which allows the selection of the most appropriate accessibility criteria for elderly people [14] and a process which considers the selection of andragogical techniques and strategies [2, 15-17] to be included into MOOCs oriented to this target. This paper explains the analysis activity of the MOOCEP method to understand how andragogical techniques can be included during the Requirements Elicitation (RE) of e- Learning Systems. This paper is structured as follows: Section II presents a brief review about related works. Section III presents the theoretical framework about requirements elicitation for e-Learning systems, as well as andragogical techniques and strategies. Then, Section IV shows a brief review about the entire method for building MOOCs for Elderly People (MOOCEP) and presents the analysis activity explained in detail. Section V, illustrates the analysis activity. Finally, Section VI presents the conclusions and future work. 978-1-5090-5920-1/17/$31.00 ©2017 IEEE