Two universities join from Korea – Yonsei University and Sungkyunkwan University (SKKU). From Norway comes theUniversity of Oslo, while the University of Cape Town joins from South Africa.
From the UK come the University of Aberdeen, and two institutions from the University of London: the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and Royal Holloway.
The new additions follow last month’s announcements of two more partners for FutureLearn – the University of Groningen from The Netherlands, and the National Film and Television School from the UK.
This marks a major step in FutureLearn’s strategy to grow its roster of international partners. FutureLearn now boasts a total of 38 partners, comprising of 35 higher- and specialist education institutions and three cultural organisations – the British Council, British Library and the British Museum.
Simon Nelson, CEO of FutureLearn, said, “As our free online courses continue to attract signups from around the world, it’s important that we become more and more reflective of our global learner base. I’m delighted that these prestigious universities have selected FutureLearn as the platform for their free online courses. The benefits to our learners are undeniable; offering access to a growing collective of world-leading academics and centres of higher education.”
Martin Bean, FutureLearn Chairman and Vice Chancellor of The Open University said, “It is wonderful to see more partners working with FutureLearn and offering learners even more choice. Having studied with FutureLearn myself, I know how exciting it is to be able to choose from a wide range of high-quality courses from some of the best universities and organisations around the world. I look forward to working with all of our new partners to continue to develop this exciting and accessible way to learn.”
FutureLearn is wholly owned by The Open University, a 44-year veteran in distance and online learning. The site went live in September 2013 as the first UK-led provider of free online courses from leading universities, following the rapid development of massive open online courses (MOOCs) in the global higher education sector.