Celebrating progress: our first year of courses and what lies ahead
As part of our first birthday celebrations, Matt Walton, our Head of Product, looks back at our first 12 months of courses and discusses what lies ahead for FutureLearn. A …
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Making FutureLearn
The Web We Want at FutureLearn
Matt Walton, our Head of Product, reflects on Sir Tim Berners-Lee’s the Web We Want campaign and how it relates to what we do at FutureLearn. I recently spoke at …
Category: Making FutureLearn
How to write a course about something that hasn’t happened
Over the last four weeks, Alan Convery of The University of Edinburgh has been running the free online course “Towards Scottish Independence? Understanding the Referendum.” Here, he discusses the challenges of …
Category: Learning, Making FutureLearn
Interviewing developers: the FutureLearn way
Matthew Valentine-House, a Developer at FutureLearn, discusses how we interview developers and shares his own experience of the process. One of the hardest and most important parts about building a team …
Category: Making FutureLearn
Could free online learning help solve the STEM skills shortage?
Matthew Shorter, Content Advisor at FutureLearn, discusses the STEM skills shortage, how free online learning could be part of the solution and what young people at the British Science Festival …
Category: Making FutureLearn
Why I want to bring social learning to a live arena at SXSWedu 2015
Professor Mike Sharples, Academic Lead at FutureLearn, outlines his proposed session for SXSWedu 2015 and asks for your vote in the Panel Picker. I, along with over 1,000 others, have pitched …
Category: Making FutureLearn
Refactoring our Rails app out of single-table inheritance
James Coglan, a Developer at FutureLearn, explains a common problem with STI and how we refactored our Rails app to solve it. Single-table inheritance (STI) is the practice of storing …
Category: Making FutureLearn
How to make a Statement
FutureLearn Product Manager, Simon Pearson, goes to inspect our Statements of Participation hot off the press. For most of our free online courses, you can now buy a Statement of …
Category: Making FutureLearn
How to clean data using approximate string matching
Chris Lowis, Data Lead at FutureLearn, shares a quick tip for tidying up data using approximate or fuzzy string matching. At FutureLearn we’ve taken a very agile approach to development. …
Category: Making FutureLearn
6 reasons we love our home at the British Library
FutureLearn has now been based at the British Library for six months. To celebrate, the team share six of their favourite things about it. Tucked away next to the Humanities …
Category: Making FutureLearn
Guerilla user testing at FutureLearn
Alla Kholmatova, an interaction designer in the FutureLearn product team, explains how the team uses guerilla user testing to help make FutureLearn better. If you happen to visit the British …
Category: Making FutureLearn
Sprint reviews: what they’re for, why they’re useful and why they should involve everyone
Head of Product (and sprint review ring master) Matt Walton, explains what a sprint review is, why they’re really useful and how FutureLearn’s are a little bit different. FutureLearn’s product …
Category: Making FutureLearn
How we write readable feature tests with RSpec
Chris Zetter, a developer in the FutureLearn product team, talks about how the team writes feature tests after moving from Cucumber to RSpec in the pursuit of maintainable and readable …
Category: Making FutureLearn
Why run an internal hackday
Melinda Seckington discusses FutureLearn’s first ever hackday, why she planned it, how it went and what was gained. I should have seen it coming that the first post I’d write …
Category: Making FutureLearn
My first week at FutureLearn
Product manager, Tess Cooper, reflects on her first few weeks working at FutureLearn A few weeks ago I joined FutureLearn as a Product Manager. The product team consists of around …
Category: Making FutureLearn
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