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Launching your online or blended course

There are a number of things you’ll need to do in order to launch your course.

Requirements for launching an online or blended short course differ depending on the platform you are using.

UCL Extend

Launching a UCL Extend course is nominally a 4 stage process but can be amended depending whether your course is public or private. 

  • Submit for course review 
  • Submit course product information 
  • Submit completed legal documentation 
  • Enrol learners. 

To launch your course each stage must be completed. You must allow a minimum of 2 weeks to do this, and ideally longer.

Submit for course review 

  • Contact extend@ucl.ac.uk with the title of your completed course, intended launch date, and request for review.
  • Your review will comprise educational and functional feedback from the Online Learning team, and copyright feedback from the Library (where needed). The review documents (UCL login required; download a copy) include both required and advisory criteria, and required criteria must be addressed prior to launch. 

Provide course product information 

A course ‘product’ will be created to facilitate booking and payment (if required) for your course. 

  • The Online Learning team will ask you to supply some information in order to create the course product. Once this is supplied you are provided with a booking link. This link can be used to advertise via the Short Course Catalogue. 
  • If your course charges a fee, you must provide the payment type, fee, and any discounts. You will also need to supply a PTAE code in order to receive the income. 
  • If you want your course to be advertised via the Short Course Catalogue you must also complete the website form (UCL login required; download a copy). 

Note that a course product can be created much earlier in the development process to enable a longer marketing period. 

Provide completed legal documentation 

All relevant legal documentation should be returned to extend@ucl.ac.uk.

Enrol learners 

  • If a course is advertised via the Short Course catalogue, your learners can book free or paid courses using the booking link. Booking incorporates payment (where used), account creation on UCL Extend (where needed), and course enrolment (possibly on multiple spaces, but no group enrolment within the spaces). 
  • If a course is private, the Online Learning team can provide nominated individuals with course places to allocate. This is called the Manage Licences feature and is processed as a CSV upload. The process will register learners for UCL Extend using their email address, issue a temporary password, and enrol them on the course. 

Once each stage is complete the Online Learning team will make your course visible and move it to its permanent course category, which usually corresponds to your academic department or centre.

FutureLearn 

Launch of a FutureLearn course requires a range of tasks to be completed, all of which are itemised in the course development task sheet provided to you by the Online Learning team. The most important of these are: 

  • Submit certificate information 
  • Schedule course emails 
  • Submit for FutureLearn QA a minimum of 4 weeks prior to the course launch date and address feedback given. 

All other course information is gathered throughout the development process or handled by FutureLearn.