Learning online with Deakin

At Deakin University, we believe the best learning occurs when we make your learning outcomes clear, offer engaging experiences and enable you to provide evidence of learning.

This is why our FutureLearn courses are all about getting involved.

Getting involved

Our courses are pitched at adult learners from around the globe who have diverse life and work experiences. One of the key ways to optimise your learning in our courses is to engage, respond and participate in conversations with your fellow participants.

While our discussion steps offer a more structured opportunity to propose ideas, debate issues and discover global perspectives, nearly all steps in our courses provide opportunities for participating in conversations. Read Six tips and tools for social learning to get the most out of your FutureLearn experience.

Be mindful of others

Sometimes our discussions might ask you to share personal opinions or experiences that may be sensitive or controversial in nature. In such situations, you should only share your thoughts if you’re comfortable doing so.

While we encourage robust debate, we also ask you to observe the FutureLearn Code of Conduct and be respectful of other participants and their individual points of view.

Our learning philosophy

Deakin University is a pioneer in innovative online learning and several key principles underpin all our courses, which are designed to:

• challenge you with new and interesting ideas
• prompt you to engage with each other and with our teaching staff to tease out and test those ideas
• give you opportunities to test your knowledge and show us what you’ve learned.

Recognition of your learning

In our free and open courses, not only can you learn more about topics that interest you and share your ideas with other like-minded people from all around the world, you can also obtain proof of your learning with a FutureLearn Statement of Participation or a Certificate of Achievement.

Based on a simple test, the Certificate of Achievement provides evidence of your interest in and understanding of your chosen study area. Available in both printed and digital formats, it can be easily shared online.

To be eligible for the certificate, you must mark at least 90% of the steps in this course as complete and achieve 70% or above in each course test. You can view your progress on the Progress page.

Getting started

If this is your first experience with FutureLearn, you may want to watch this video to find out more about how it works.

Your task

At the end of each step, our experienced and qualified educators will provide you with a specific task that will prompt you to extend, share and reinforce your learning. Participating in these tasks is a critical step in getting the most out of Deakin’s FutureLearn courses.