Who are we?

On this course you will be supported by myself, Lisa Harris and my colleague Alison Truelove. We will be joined by Mentors Max Walkowiak (MSc Alumnus), and Millie Britton (undergraduate student and Digital Learning Assistant) from the University of Exeter Business School.

We are also delighted to welcome Giles O’Halloran as a Mentor. Giles is fascinated by the future of work. He has been a keen observer of the changing nature of work and the workplace over the last two decades as both an HR and Career Transition professional. He is a freelance coach and consultant in the gig economy, and is also a lead tutor for the CIPD. He has spent the last ten years writing for a leading career transition publication on employability and the changing nature of careers. He is also passionate about the development of the digital workspace and helping people develop their digital skills portfolio.

We all strongly believe in helping people to achieve their potential in a rapidly changing environment – one that offers you significant opportunities, and also challenges.

We would also like to thank the following people for their contributions to this course:

• Nic Fair, PhD student in Web Science and Digital Educator from the University of Southampton. Nic is the Lead Educator on FutureLearn’s Learning in the Network Age MOOC.
• Giles O’Halloran, freelance coach and consultant in the gig economy, also a lead tutor for the CIPD.
• Dawn Lees, Andi Smart, Adam Lusby, Sarah Dyer, David Boughey, Claire Dinan, Steph Comley, Jason Flower and Ollie Chanter from the University of Exeter.
• Our team of Student Digital Mentors Ben Wood, Shuyi Tang and Luke Henderson.
• Our industry experts Andy Stanford-Clark, Kaitlin Gould and David Ferguson.

We will be working together to encourage you to use this course as a way of collaborating and building your professional digital networks, and encouraging you to put your learning directly into practice. For example, you can:

• Contribute your own ideas, resources and experiences to the various discussions and activities

• Set up and/or develop your own professional digital profiles via a blog

• Experiment with different communication formats such as infographics or video

• Respond to the posts of your fellow learners and reflect on the learning you have gained through this process

You can also raise questions, share useful resources or your own posts on Twitter at any time via the course hashtag #FLfutureofwork.

Please take a moment to introduce yourselves via the comments section at the bottom of the page – where are you from and what has motivated you to take this course?

Guidance on posting your comments

Make sure you read the comments of other learners. If you can relate to a comment someone else has made, why not ‘Like’ it or leave a reply? You can filter comments by ‘Following’, ‘Most liked’ and ‘Your comments’.

If you want to see recent activity on the course, select the Activity icon at the top of the step. If you’re following someone, you can filter this list to show the comments of people you’re following, or see if anyone has replied to a comment you’ve made.

Communicating online – some guidelines on good practice

• Comments should be brief and to the point; no more than two or three short paragraphs. This is a conversation, not a monologue!

• Read your comments and replies all the way through before you post them. If you post in a hurry you may regret it later – you can’t delete but you can edit your comments for up to 15 minutes after you have posted them

• Criticise the idea, not the person – and be polite when you do

• Don’t write a reply that you wouldn’t say face to face

• Remember that your fellow learners vary in culture, age and experience

• Not all learners have English as their first language, so always try to write clearly

• Explain any acronyms you use and avoid jargon if you can

• If you see a message that you think is offensive click its ‘Report’ flag icon. It will be reviewed by the Moderation Team and removed if necessary.

Checking your progress …

When you’ve finished this step just select the pink ‘Mark as complete’ button. You will then be able to see at a glance which steps you have completed on your ‘To do’ list.