FutureLearn seems to be in the final stages of getting ready for launch, as an invitation on its homepage is now allowing people to register their interest for courses that are due to start in September.
The FutureLearn website also hosts an interesting set of articles about the progress being made with the development of the platform to support the initiative. The most recently published article talked about their choice of a responsive design for the site. In simple terms, this is one which works in an appropriate and usable manner for all screen types automatically – mobiles, tablets and the still ubiquitous laptop and desktop computers. Given the difficulties that the Open University online environment has had over the last few years in keeping up with changes in the way students use technology to access content, it’s good to see such principles being designed into the FutureLearn platform.
However, learning is rather different to many activities carried out digitally. For example, learning is not a transactional or transient activity – like ordering a book online or browsing through a news website. For the FutureLearn platform to be successful it will need to cater for prolonged usage and the inescapable need to go back and review old material while new material is being digested.
Having a well thought out and implemented multi-media “bookmarking” strategy would be useful, but the most effective way to cater for this requirement is often still paper. The ability to easily print out selected parts of the material (for example, video transcripts or forum threads) and use them later on was one of the next to impossible things to achieve on the earlier MITx and edX platforms. And if I’m totally honest, I don’t believe that any digital platform, responsive or otherwise, could ever replicate the effectiveness of my dining room table as a study tool – shown below in the midst of revision for DD303 a couple of years ago.
So in amongst all of the digital wizardry and pedagogic advances FutureLearn promises, I really hope that the designers have remembered to include a print button!