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FutureLearn changes coming 20 October 2021, which may impact your online course activity

On 20 October, FutureLearn will be making some changes to their data retention processes, and which course activity records they store, as part of UK GDPR compliance.

Which records will they be deleting?This change does not impact your FutureLearn user account and log in. The changes only impact your course records on FutureLearn, including any online courses you’ve enrolled on via teachcomputing.org

There are two scenarios in which FutureLearn will remove course records (ie course enrolment and steps completed and progress):

Scenario one:

  • You are booked onto any online course on FutureLearn, including those which are part of Teach Computing’s offer, and have been inactive on the course for a period of 365 days or more (ie not made any progress on the course in that time period or not logged in to your account)

Scenario two:

  • You’ve completed all courses that are part of a partner offer. In terms of Teach Computing, you’ve completed all of our available online courses that you’ve signed up for, and a period of 365 days has passed since you completed the last course.
  • We believe this will be a niche scenario as we offer a lot of courses, and are periodically launching new ones. If we do launch a new course, and you join it, then this will cancel out triggering the automated deletion process for this scenario.

How will I know if any of my activity is going to be deleted?

  • FutureLearn will send you a notification to the email address that they have against your FutureLearn account 14 days before they delete your course record(s).
  • The email will outline what you need to do if you do not want your activity deleted - but essentially it will entail logging in to FutureLearn and progressing any course(s) where you have been inactive.
  • If you do not resume making progress on the course(s) by the end of the 14 day period, they will delete your course enrolment and progress. You’d then have to rebook the course via teachcomputing.org, and mark the necessary steps as completed again, so you can pick up where you left off.

What does this mean for my online course progress and teachcomputing.org?

Details of any completed online courses offered by Teach Computing, either standalone or as part of one our certificates, are held in our Teach Computing database, so don’t worry, these:

  • Still appear on your Teach Computing dashboard - course history (unless you choose to rebook the course and start over)
  • And will count towards any certificates you are enrolled on

What we recommend our users do before 20 October:

  • Log in to FutureLearn and make sure your email address on your account screen (top right) is up to date, to ensure that you receive any FutureLearn automated notifications, and can action them as needed
  • If you have Teach Computing courses that you have enrolled on but not completed yet, and have not looked at in a while, you may want to complete the next step of the course to make sure your progress is retained
  • If you have completed lots of Teach Computing online courses on FutureLearn, you may want to go in and save any materials that you want to keep for your personal records as needed.