While perusing job listings on Museum Savvy, I was introduced to a website called FutureLearn, which offered degrees, microcredentials, and individual courses in fields ranging from computer science to literature. Intrigued, I signed up for a yearly subscription, hoping I could learn extra skills that would help market me better in my job search. 

I am currently taking courses in Object Based Python Programming, Interview Skills, and Creating Digital Video for Online Courses. Each course takes the form of various asynchronous videos, articles, and activities that take between two and three weeks to complete, with links to outside resources that can provide additional information. The courses are easy to navigate, with sequential links leading to the next segment of a course, and information provided in easy to understand videos and paragraphs. The videos were also closed captioned, which is good for accessibility and helped me complete lessons during slow times at work without disturbing others.

The biggest weakness of the courses was a lack of feedback from teachers and interactions with students. There are chat boxes at the bottom of each lesson page, but they only provide limited interactivity with other students, and there is no clear way to ask for help from the instructors if you run into a problem. I would recommend that FutureLearn add an option to contact the instructors to ask questions or raise concerns with the class, as well as a video chat feature where students can meet each other and the instructor or TA to debrief on the week’s classes and how everyone’s experiences have been so far. Overall, I think FutureLearn is a solid platform for building career skills, but it can be improved to enhance learning by building community and becoming more user friendly.