FutureLearn has grown rapidly to become a leading provider of online courses for learners around the world. It is a business at the forefront of the revolution in digital higher education.

With a course creating partnership of 138 leading universities and teaching institutions the service has attracted almost 7 million registered learners.

One challenge of achieving such scale so swiftly is the complex decision of where to focus development. Central to that choice is the question of how to steer development of the course portfolio to continue growth and to enhance commercial performance.

I joined the FutureLearn team on a long term engagement to lead the development of a content strategy approach and apply the method to the ongoing development of the course portfolio.

As a data lead business, the strategy is founded on platform usage statistics, user research and signals of demand from the global market. The approach has become a central part of the business and planning cycle for FutureLearn.