What does ‘Educators are active on this course’ mean?
Find out what it means when you see 'educators are active on this course'.
Our courses are created by experts from all over the world and they’ll often join in, actively supporting you in your learning. Want to know more? Here we answer all your FAQs about course facilitation at FutureLearn.
How will I know if educators are available?
Educators are active on this course
If you see this message before you join, or during your course, then there’s an active member of the course team supporting learners at that time. That could be an educator, or a mentor or host.
If you don’t see this message, your learning will be self-guided. This still means lots of rich interaction with peers and immediate access to the course.
What does a course facilitator do?
Being active includes reading comments, replying to learners, liking or pinning comments, or making small updates to the course content. These will only be small changes such as updating a link, fixing an error or rewriting a section that might now appear out of date. Courses are updated regularly, especially when the topic is evolving.
“Great lead educator who was willing to get involved and bring discussions to life” – FutureLearner
Will I get personal responses?
It depends on the educator: some like to get very hands-on and involved, while others work more ‘behind the scenes’. You may occasionally get a direct response from an educator, but it can vary between courses. Sometimes their main goal is to encourage peer interaction, so they may work in ways that are visible to some, and completely invisible to others.
At FutureLearn, we design courses to maximise learning with – and from – your peers, as well as the educators. You may find other learners have similar questions to you, and have a response from an educator. If that happens, we’d encourage you to ‘like’ their comment or the reply from the educator, to show it was helpful for you too.
“They make the learning experience friendly and personal” – FutureLearner
How do I report comments?
You can help filter out anything that shouldn’t be there by reporting comments. Anyone in a course can report a comment that’s inappropriate – learners or educators. If you see something that doesn’t follow our Code of Conduct, please report the comment by clicking the ⚐ icon. Educators can also make small changes if the course content was in any way causing comments to go a little off-track.
“Hands on, knowledgeable and caring attitude towards us” – FutureLearner
Can I join a course on different dates from the educator?
You can join before, during or after the period when the educator is active – start learning when it suits your plans. You’ll still see their interactions with others, which is all part of the FutureLearn social learning experience. And of course educators can’t be online 24/7 – they sleep, too!
Looking for more?
Our Help Centre Article should answer your questions.
See you in the comments!
