How do I set up Learning Manager groups to use with Study Groups?

Enabling the Study Group feature in Course Creator

A FutureLearn admin needs to enable the Study Group function for each course that will require the use of a Study Group and also 'enable degrees' at an organisation level if you wish to choose which groups Learners are assigned to. These steps must be completed before the course starts. Please get in touch with your partnership manager to have them enable study groups for each course.

To action, go to the Facilitation tab of the course in Course Creator. From there, click ‘Study Groups’, and then click the ‘Switch Study Groups on’ button.

Creating the Learning Manager groups

Learning Manager Groups must be created before the groups are assigned to courses. 

This can only be done by a user with the Learning Manager permission.

1. In Learning Manager, under the Groups tab, click ‘Create a new group’.
2. Enter a group name. This is required and will be displayed to learners within the Study Groups.
1. Example: Pure Maths Group 1
2. Example: Applied Maths Group 1
3. Enter a group code.
1. Example: MA_PURE_GROUP_1
2. Example: MA_APPLIED_GROUP_1
4. The Mentors field is not used in Study Groups and should be ignored.
5. The Course Runs field is not used in Study Groups and should be ignored.
6. Click ‘Save group’.

Adding learners to Learning Manager groups

Learners invited to the organisation through Learning Manager or the University-initiated enrolment API can be added to a Learning Manager Group before they’ve accepted their invitation and created their FutureLearn account. Learners can be added and removed from the LM groups up until the start date of the first course that is using that group. After that date, they can be added but not removed.*

1. On the Groups page, find and click the name of the group.
2. Click ‘Add members to group’.
3. Find the learners that should belong to this group using the search tool provided. Learners can be found by either their name if they have a FutureLearn account linked to the organisation, or by their university ID. Occasionally, you’ll need to use the learner’s email address.
4. Click ‘Add members’. 

Assigning Learning Manager groups to Study Groups 

As this feature is currently in beta, this step needs to be completed with the help of a FutureLearn developer. This part of the process must follow after the Learning Manager groups are created but can be done before students are assigned to the groups.

Study Groups appear in the Facilitation tab in Course Creator only after the first learner has clicked the Study Group tab in the course, even if the below process is carried out.

1. First, the partner needs to create a CSV document that maps out which Learning Manager Groups should be linked with which program runs.
2. This document requires three columns: program_code, program_run_code and group_code
3. This document needs to be sent to partnersupport@futurelearn.com, where a support team member will ensure the script is run to connect the Learning Manager Groups with the requested programs. Please allow at least 3 days to action this.

Example document: 

Having learners join their group

Learners join these manually-assigned groups in the same way they do the regular Study Groups, ie. by clicking ‘Join Group’ on the Study Group tab on their course page.

If learners are added or removed from a Learning Manager group after courses using that group have started, the changes won’t be applied to courses where the learner has already joined their study group.

* Learners can still be removed from the LM group after the course has been started, but this won’t remove them from the corresponding study group if they’ve already joined it.