The welcome area is the page learners will see when they’ve enroll in a microcredential.
It includes:
- a list of courses and their start dates - if courses have started, learners can go into their course from this page, and see a progress bar
- the educators and learning outcomes
- additional resources
- assessment information.
It is automatically generated for each microcredential run.
It contains five tabs: Learning, Resource, Assessments, Announcements and Support. Only the Learning tab is always visible to learners. The other tabs are displayed when relevant information has been entered.
If you would like to add information to the welcome area, or preview it, please contact FutureLearn at least one week ahead of the desired publication date.
Information in the welcome area
Information |
Tab |
Optional? |
Courses |
Learning |
Auto-populated |
Program description |
Learning |
Auto-populated |
Educators |
Learning | Auto-populates from the Microcredential description page |
Learning outcomes |
Learning |
Auto-populates from the Microcredential description page |
Program guide |
Learning | Yes |
Reading list |
Resources | Yes |
Seminars |
Resources | Yes |
Additional information |
Resources | Yes |
Assessment information | Assessments | Yes |
Announcements | Announcements | Yes |
Support & other services | Support | Yes |
Learning
The learning section is always visible on the welcome area.
It displays the list of courses that make up the microcredential. Once the courses have started, learners track their progress, and use this page to go to each course. The ‘Go to course’ links are displayed once each course is open for learning.
The Learning tab displays the microcredential title, description, educators, and learning outcomes. This information is automatically populated from approved microcredential description page copy.
This section optionally displays a microcredential guide in PDF form, if one has been uploaded. Organisation admins can upload a document via the 'Upload a document' option, available on the 'Edit program run' page.
Resources
The resources section is optional. It is displayed if information is entered in the ‘Reading list’, ‘Seminars’ or ‘Additional information’ sections.
The ‘Resources’ tab will only be displayed to learners in the welcome area if one or more of these sections has been filled in.
Assessments
The assessments section is optional but recommended. It will only be displayed in the welcome area if information is entered in the ‘Assessment information’ section.
This section will automatically display any exercise steps that have been set up as ‘assessment’ exercise steps. If the portfolio tool has been enabled for the program, the page will also display a notice about the portfolio, and its submission deadline.
Announcements
The announcements section is optional. Educators can post announcements or notices, Contact courses@futurelearn.com to enable this section.
The ‘Announcements’ tab will only be displayed in the welcome area if it has been enabled.
In the ‘Announcements’ tab, an empty text box is available to insert text to kick-start a discussion, or post an announcement. Pin the comment to the top if it is important.
The section is only displayed to learners when at least one post has been made by an educator.
They’ll see the educator’s comment, as below, and they can click ‘Reply’ to respond with a comment of their own.
Support
The support section is optional. It is only displayed if information is entered in the support section. The heading will automatically be generated as ‘Other services from [partner name]’.
Provide links to academic and health/wellbeing support pages on your own institution's websites, or other support services.
Provide contact details for where learners can ask questions FutureLearn may not be able to help with, i.e. disputing grades, deferrals, assessment failures, etc.
Additional note for microcredentials
Information about the welcome area can be included on a microcredential discovery page, forming part of the ‘Syllabus’.
The “After learning’ section, can provide information about what learners will receive upon completion of the microcredential, such as the number of credits, digital certificate, transcript etc.
Optionally the weekly breakdown within the individual courses can also be displayed in the welcome area once the course has been through Quality Assurance review. Contact courses@futurelearn.com to enable this.
Download a demo video of the welcome area
How learners access the microcredential welcome area.
Terminology on this page that you aren’t familiar with? Check out our glossary.
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