In the face of the sudden outbreak of COVID-19 epidemic, offline learning for elderly education across the country was forced to stop. The school running units of elderly education have to transfer teaching from offline to online, and start to explore the online education model for the elderly. In this context, the autonomous learning model has gradually attracted attention. This paper discusses the educational needs of the elderly, the development trend of elderly education in the world and the characteristics of autonomous learning groups for the elderly. It also analyzes the difficulties faced by the elderly education under the regular situation of COVID-19 epidemic prevention and control and finally proposes the development path of the elderly education based on the autonomous learning groups.