How to get the most out of this course

This course will explore the global and local environmental challenges that human society faces today and introduce you to the concept of upcycling as well as how to start up an upcycling business.

The course materials include video case studies of upcycling businesses from around the world, as well as articles and commentary from academics in the upcycling and business fields. During each week of the course, you will have the opportunity to share your views and ideas through comments and discussions with your fellow learners. This is a great opportunity to gain feedback from others and improve your knowledge. Who knows – you may even connect with other learners with similar thoughts and interests! To help you get the most out of this course, we have included a brief outline of the FutureLearn platform below.

How to use FutureLearn

This may be the first course that you have undertaken on FutureLearn, or perhaps it is the first course you have taken online. Don’t worry: the platform is designed to be easy to navigate.

The first icon on the left, at the top of this page, takes you to your to to do list for the course you’re in. This shows all the steps for that week. You can take a look ahead to see what’s coming up in the following weeks and if you don’t manage to complete all the steps in a week, you are always able to catch up. You can learn at your own pace but we encourage the conversation to happen around the current week’s activities. If you still haven’t completed the course at the end of the final week, don’t worry. Your course materials will remain on the site indefinitely.

The second icon lets you see any recent commenting activity on this course.

And the third icon takes you to your progress page. Any scores for tests you have taken are also reflected in your course progress page.

You can learn whenever and wherever you like, on any desktop, mobile or tablet device. You will be learning by watching videos with leading academics as well as reading teaching material. You will also learn from other people taking part in the course, by reading their comments and replies. At any time you can add a comment, or write a response. Learning from conversations is an important part of the FutureLearn approach.

Anyone on a course can comment and discuss the course material with other learners. To see all the comments on a particular step, click the pink speech bubble icon and the comments will be revealed. The number next to this icon tells you how many comments there are for this step. Don’t forget, whilst robust debate is encouraged, it’s important to be respectful of your fellow learners, and follow the FutureLearn code of conduct.

You can then filter comments by who you are following, by the most liked comments and by your own comments.

You might like to read 6 tips and tools for social learning on FutureLearn to help you get the most out the platform’s social learning features.

If you still have a question have a look at the list of FAQs.

Next steps

When you are ready to move on, click ‘Mark as Complete’. You can monitor your progress through the course by selecting ‘Progress’ at the top of page. This will show you the steps you have completed and will provide your score for the end of course test.