Permissions, roles and profiles

Permissions
Roles
Profiles
Course run permission types
Primary Educator
Certificates
Microcredential and degree permissions

This article contains information about the levels of permission that exist on FutureLearn and what they allow you to access. For instructions on how to assign and remove permissions, please see How to assign permissions and roles - please note that you will need to sign into the Partner Site with your institutional email address to view this article.

When your course proposal is approved and your course shell is set up, the first task is to invite educators or team members to access the course in Course Creator via permissions.

Every partner is different. Some are building courses in large teams. Some are lone educators.

Decide early who will be working on course development. Be clear about their responsibilities. This will help when assigning permission and roles.

If you are working with a third party they may have never worked with Course Creator. It's your responsibility to introduce them to its features.

Permissions

Permission is required before a role can be assigned.

Course Creator is the FutureLearn platform used to build courses. Each partner has their own organisation area. Gaining access to your organisation's area within Course Creator requires permission.

Roles

To be assigned a role, you must first be granted permission.

Roles are a label that appear next to a team member’s name if they comment on a course, or if they are selected as the person who is providing feedback within a quiz or test.

There are four main roles that can be assigned to team members:

Lead Educator or Educator: An academic with a specialist knowledge of the course subject.
Mentor: An academic with a good understanding of the course subject, who can help guide discussions.
Host: A facilitator who understands the FutureLearn platform and can act as a guide to learners.

Profiles

Everyone with a login for FutureLearn has a profile; learners, partners, and staff. Profiles can be populated to include a photo and short bio.

Educator profiles are the FutureLearn profile of an educator involved in a course, added to the Course Description Page (CDP) under the heading ‘Who will you learn with?’.

Example educator profile

If a team member is assigned as providing feedback within a quiz or test their profile image will appear next to their name.

When a staff member receives a permission invite email, they will be prompted to register or sign in to FutureLearn. At this stage, or at a later date, they can populate their profile and settings.

Example - register to accept invite

Locate and edit your educator profile

Setting up a profile/amending a profile can only be done by the individual.

Once registered/logged into FutureLearn, on the landing page, click on the square in the top right containing your username initials and select 'profile' from the drop-down.

Complete your profile

Include a photograph and two-sentence bio. Do not include links or contact information in your bio.
The image should be a head and shoulders image of you.
Select if you wish for your profile to be public, semi-private or private.
Once saved, your image will appear in the top right hand corner when you are logged into FutureLearn. Click on your image square, and select ‘settings’ to amend the notifications you can receive, your timezone and email preferences.
Notification options are: Notify me by email when I have new followers or notify me by email when someone replies to my comments. Neither are compulsory.

If educator profiles are included on the CDP or within a step of a course, learners can view them and choose to ‘follow’ the educator. Do not link to the profile within a course step, or suggest to learners to ‘follow’ the staff member if they will never be facilitating or responding to learners.

Course run permission types

With the below permission, team members can see locked test steps and retain long-term access to the courses covered by their permissions without having to upgrade.

Permission Type	What this permission level can and can't do in Course Creator
Author	Can view and edit content of individual courses. Can also access stats and view survey results.
Reviewer	Can join and view individual assigned courses at any time, including when it's in draft but cannot make edits.
Facilitator	Like a reviewer, but also with access to facilitation tools, and can comment in any study group (degrees). Cannot make edits to course content.
Co-creator	Co-creator is like a facilitator but can edit content.
Marker	Like facilitator, but can also set up and mark tutor marked assignments and add feedback to portfolios.

Download a table for more detailed information about each permission.

Organisation wide permissions

Organisation admin	The only permission that allows you to view and manage all courses by the organisation, submit proposals and access the certificates tab. We usually advise only 1 or 2 team members have this level of permission.
Learning Manager	Can view, invite and manage learners in Learning Manager
Student Recruitment Representative	Can download lead generation reports
Integrations Admin	Can view configuration settings for API and LTI integrations with student record systems

Primary educator

The primary educator is the educator whose name is used in the default signature for all course emails. They also appear as the default person delivering feedback on quizzes, polls, and tests but this can be manually changed when you set to build the assessment. Set the primary educator before the course goes live, contact courses@futurelearn.com to assign this.

The primary educator is often the Lead Educator for the course but this doesn't have to be the case.

Certificates

Only one name appears on certificates and this person's name, title, and signature are manually added in the certificates tab.

Microcredential and degree permissions

Permissions	Access
Program Author	Can edit the trailer on the program page Can add educators to the program page Can set the program start date / enrolment deadline Can add program run resources (assessment information, reading list, seminars, additional information Can add portfolio Can add enrolment information terms and conditions Can add enrolment information eligibility screener Can set program price Author access also given to component courses of the program
Program Reviewer	Can view the program runs but not edit Can view step content of all course runs in the program before the run is published, from the learner side only
Program Facilitator	Can view the program runs but not edit Can view step content of all course runs in the program before the run is published, from the learner side only Access to the “Facilitation” tab at course run level (including Facilitation Dashboard, Facilitation Dates, Study Groups and can add comments on Small Group Tasks)
Program Tutor	Access to learner progress pages and published results within Learning Manager. View only access to only the open steps of the component courses of the program Access to the “Facilitation” tab at course run level (including Facilitation Dashboard, Facilitation Dates, Study Groups and can add comments on Small Group Tasks)
Program Marker	Access to work submitted for assessment. Can view the facilitation dashboard and comment in all study groups Access portfolio submissions Manage tutor marked assignments (e.g. Turnitin) for courses in the program.
Program Learner Admin	Can view the personal details and update the external IDs and results of learners enrolled on the microcredential/degree. This also grants the ability to upload results and update learner IDs. Program Learner Admins can also view unpublished final results.

Terminology on this page that you aren’t familiar with? Check out our glossary.

Contact FutureLearn

Partner_permissions_matrix__for_knowledge_base_.pdf
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Contents

Permissions

Roles