FutureLearn Features

As you work through the courses in this ExpertTrack you’ll see opportunities to add comments at the end of most steps. There might be a question or problem to discuss, an opportunity to share an experience or link to an interesting web resource, or just a chance to check in with others taking the course. ExpertTracks are unfacilitated, so you won’t see the educators in the comments – instead, it’s a space for you to work with other learners. The comments are a rich source of extra learning beyond the steps, so don’t forget to make the most of them.

If this is your first time using FutureLearn, take some time now to get familiar with the platform. If you’ve studied on FutureLearn before, you might find some useful features.

As you move through each course step, take some time to note important ideas to revise later for assessments. At the end of each step, you will see a pink ‘mark as complete’ button, which you can press when you are ready to move to the next step.

At the top of each page you will see three tabs:

The tab to the right, ‘Progress’, shows you what percentage of the course you have completed, and the results of any on-platform assessments.

The center tab is ‘Activity’, where you can see who has been active most recently across the course. You can filter this activity by all comments, comments you have bookmarked, your comments, and comments by learners you are following.

The left tab is ‘To Do’ which gives you a preview week by week of how the learning will be organized into activities and steps. This also shows your progress through the steps and activities using color-coding.

Following other learners

If you see a learner comment that interests you, perhaps from someone who has a similar background or opinion, you can Follow them by clicking on the prompt next to the learner’s name. This will then allow you to view the comments of learners you are following across the course via the activity tab. You can also filter comments on each step by clicking on the Show dropdown menu at the top of the comments and selecting Following.

Filtering and sorting step comments

On courses, learners often mention that there are so many comments that they feel overwhelmed or guilty for not reading everything, but don’t worry, we’ve developed a shortcut. You can filter step comments at the comments feed so that you can see only comments by learners you are following, or according to the most liked comments.

Liking, Replying, Bookmarking, and Reporting

At the bottom of each learner comment, you will see these options:

If you appreciate a comment, then Like it! Even better, if you have a related comment you can Reply to the learner and start or add to a conversation.

Bookmarking comments allow you to mark comments that you find particularly interesting and would like to come back to later.

Occasionally on courses, learners may write something that may be offensive or triggering to other learners. Each comment has a small flag icon with Report next to it. FutureLearn has a Code of Conduct that learners must follow. If you read a comment which contains something offensive to yourself or others on the course, simply click on the flag to report the comment with FutureLearn’s third-party moderation team. You will see a drop-down menu appear, where you can indicate the type of complaint and add extra information.

For more information about learning on FutureLearn, we have a Crowdsourced Guide to Learning and 5 Useful Tips and Tools for Social Learning.

Get the conversation started

Which of the platform features do you think will be most useful to you? We believe we learn best when we learn together, so let’s get the conversation started.

Please take a minute to introduce yourself and share your thoughts in the comments below.

Don’t forget to ‘like’ comments and reply to other learners!

When you’re ready, mark this step as complete and move on to the next step.