In this article we will cover how to send invitations using Learning Manager, both for inviting staff to become Learning Managers for your account, and for inviting staff to individual courses.
For a quick demonstration of Learning Manager please see our guide- Learning Manager demonstration, for answers to the most common questions regarding this system you can use our Learning Manager FAQs.
Table of contents:
Invitations
Learning Managers
Once your Learning Manager account is set up, you will need to decide who at your organisation will have access to Learning Manager as a Learning Manager- which means they can send out course invites and view the progress of learners on their courses.
An invite like the one in the screenshot below will be sent via email to your admin user. Once they click on the ‘accept this invitation’ link they can either add this permission to their existing FutureLearn account (if they have one) or they can sign up for a FutureLearn account with their email address.
[Alt text: screenshot showing an email which invites the recipient to become a Learning Manager]
Once they have access to the Learning Manager dashboard, Learning Managers can invite learners to courses by sending them an invite link via email.
Inviting learners
Learning Managers get access to the below dashboard, via which they can send out course invites and manage the learners enrolled via this account. We will cover cost reviews and course overviews later on in this article.
[Alt text: the Learning Manager dashboard, with the categories of Invite and enrol learners, Manage your learners, Costs, and Courses all shown]
Sending a course invite
We have made a short demonstration video on how to send course invites using Learning Manager, which you can view below:
When inviting learners by email, you can paste up to 1000 email addresses at a time. Each learner will receive an email containing a personal invitation link to the course that expires 6 months after creation, or when the chosen run of the course closes for enrolment - whichever occurs sooner.
The invite email
The link in that email will send the learner to a page on FutureLearn with the name of the course to which they have been invited, asking them to accept the invite and join the course. From there they can either create a new account on FutureLearn (if they don't already have an account) or login to their existing account.
[Alt text: screenshot of the options to either register or sign in to join a course to which a learner has been sent an invite]
Course invite links
As well as sending learners invites via email, you can also set up a URL which allows multiple learners to invite themselves to a course. This does not have to be sent via email, but can be shared however you like- you could add it to an internal webpage for example.
To set this up you go through the same steps in the above video up to choosing the course you will be inviting learners to join, but instead of entering in emails in the Recipients box you would use the 'share a link' option to create a new link for this course.
[Alt text: screenshot of the course invite page, with two options of either sharing a link or sending an email to have learners join a particular course. The option to reuse an existing link or create a new link is highlighted]
Once you click create link a URL will be created for you, which you can copy from that page, and return to anytime by going to the invites page for that particular course.
When a learner visits that link they will see the same page with the course name and the accept and join course options as we saw via the email method above.
Editing the expiry date of an invite link URL:
To start you would select Courses from the
[Alt text: screenshot of the selection options of Home, Learner, and Courses]
From there you can select any of the courses on which you have enrolled learners. From there you can view the enrolled learners, the status of any invites you've sent for that course, and view your existing invite links.
To edit the expiry date of an invite link click on the 'Edit expiry date' link to bring up the edit tool.
[Alt text: screenshot showing a sample course with an expiry date of 26/12/2023 which can be updated to any future date]
To see a video demonstration of Learning Manager, please go to Learning Manager demonstration.
If you have any questions about Learning Manager please read our answers to Learning Manager FAQs to see if they have been answered there. If you would like to inquire about placing an order for Learning Manager please fill in your details on our contact form, and one of our team will be in touch with you to discuss next steps.