FutureLearn Meetups

FutureLearn is all about learning together, through conversation. So – provided you’re at least 18 years old – why not meet up with fellow FutureLearners in your local area to start an informal study group, or just to chat about your experience as a lifelong learner and get to know each other better?

If you fancy giving it a try, you can use our page on Meetup.com to organise your own meetup or join another. It’s fast, free and simple to do, but here’s a quick guide to get you started.

About ‘communities’ and ‘meetups’

‘Communities’ on Meetup.com are the wider group of learners in a particular geographical area. Each community can host one or more meetups.

Finding and joining a meetup

When you visit the FutureLearn Meetup page, it will suggest communities (cities, towns and neighbourhoods) that are nearest to your location. If your area is not listed you can start a new community.

Choose the community closest to you to see a list of meetups for that area. They are listed by date, with the meetup happening soonest at the top. You can ‘RSVP’ here to say you’d like to attend, or click in to find out more information and ask questions about the arrangements. If there is no location or date set, you can suggest one to the rest of the group.

Starting a meetup

You can either:

• Start a meetup in an existing community (e.g. your town)
• Create a new community, and then start a new meetup

Starting a meetup in an existing community

This is easy. Just choose the community for the place you’d like to hold the meetup. Once there, check to see if there are already any meetups planned for your course. If there aren’t, press the ‘schedule a new meetup’ button at the top of the list, and away you go!

If you want to create a general group for your course, just use the course title, e.g. Community Journalism. But you might want to do something more specific, for example Managing People – breakout group, or Start Writing Fiction – first time writers. Alternatively, if you’d like to meet fellow FutureLearners, you could just call it FutureLearn Meetup!

You should give your meetup a description so that other people will know what it’s about, and you might like to suggest a location (though you don’t have to at this point):

You can discuss a location later with other learners who join the community, if you wish. Then you just need to make sure you turn up!

Creating a new community

By default you will be encouraged to start a community in the area closest to you. However you might not be in the area you want to start the new community right now. If that’s the case, you just need to search for the community first via the search box at the top right of every page (see below).

If there are no communities listed for that area, you can just start a new meetup for the area, following the steps above. You can even be vague: by default a meetup for the general area will be created. You don’t have to specify an exact location straight away.

Tips for your meetup

• You can get notifications of new meetups in a community by clicking ‘join us, get updates!’ in the left-hand information strip for that community.
• To make a meetup a success, it needs people! Post the link to your meetup on FutureLearn, and share it on social media using the course hashtag (which you will find on any FutureLearn course page). You could also tag it with #FLmeetup, and tweet it at @futurelearn so we can help promote it.
• Remember, FutureLearn is not involved in the organisation or running of your meetup. You should use common sense when meeting up with people you’ve never met before – make sure it’s in a public place and make sure someone else knows what you’re doing.

Start your meetup! Visit meetup.com/futurelearn.