Quality Assurance (QA)

The quality of FutureLearn courses is of great importance to us, our learners and our partners. This is why all partners are contractually obliged to ensure that all of their courses meet FutureLearn’s Course Criteria. This covers learning design, accessibility and technical standards. By providing a detailed Course Criteria, our intention is that partners deliver courses which require as little feedback for amendment as possible, and ready for learners to start.

The quality assurance (QA) process should be seen as a final check to ensure a course is ready for learners to start, rather than an opportunity to get significant feedback on a course or make lots of revisions. The QA process is particularly important for new courses, but applies to later runs of each course as well. All open courses must pass QA before they start.

QA process

The images below describe the process for all partners in full:

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Once your course has been submitted for review, you may find it useful to look at our 'Running your Course' guidance whilst you wait. This section gives lots of advice about how to effectively facilitate the running of your course, how to set up a facilitation team and how to review the data collected as the course runs.

Reruns for all partners

Hopefully once your course has run for the first time, it is unlikely to need changes significant enough to warrant full quality assurance for subsequent runs. However there may be occasions where a fuller QA may be advisable, for example if you have made significant changes to the course structure.

If you feel your course rerun needs full quality assurance, please agree this with your Course Development Manager or partnersupport@futurelearn.com as soon as possible. We reserve the right to refuse a full QA of a course if we do not think it is necessary and/or do not feel enough notice has been provided.