Online MOOC platform FutureLearn has announced it is partnering with five more universities worldwide to provide new free online courses to its users.
The Complutense University of Madrid, Durham University and the University of Manchester in the UK, Keio University in Japan and the University of New South Wales, Australia, have all joined FutureLearn’s portfolio.
“Social learning has made great strides through FutureLearn”
FutureLearn will work with the institutions to create the online courses, which will become available on the social learning platform from October this year.
According to a FutureLearn spokesperson, each institution has committed to create at least two MOOCs.
The latest mainland European partner, the Complutense University of Madrid, will launch its first course next year, entitled “Viral Diseases in Animals”.
Luis Hernández Yáñez, vice president for information technology at Complutense University of Madrid, has said MOOC development is one of the institution’s “strategic lines”.
“We want our courses to be available on the world’s leading e-learning platforms, and FutureLearn is one of them,” he said.
“We are sure our partnership with FutureLearn will help us be where we want to be.”
Keio University, the platform’s first Japanese partner, will create a course looking at Japan’s history of book production, available to users from next year.
Chief executive of FutureLearn, Simon Nelson, said adding these five institutions reflects the international reach of the platform.
“Social learning has made great strides through FutureLearn and I know our global community of learners will relish the opportunity to engage with leading educators from these five institutions as they pursue their goals for professional development and further study,” he said.
According to the FutureLearn spokesperson, 60% of the platform’s learners come from outside the UK.
“It follows that we would reflect that diversity in our course-creating partners,” they told The PIE News.
FutureLearn has seen almost two million registrations since it launched in September 2013.
With the addition of these five institutions, it now has 50 university partners in 14 different countries.
The platform also has a further 22 institutions as partners, including specialist organisations, like the British Council, the British Museum and the European Space Agency.
It has also partnered with centres of excellence, both in Australia and Denmark.
