What We Learned When We Released University Learning into the Wild
A ten-year reflection on Deakin, FutureLearn, MOOCs, microcredentials and the messy middle of learning innovation.
Ten years ago, Hannah Brown and I were working together at Deakin University on a cluster of projects that, at the time, felt bold, exciting and a bit unruly.
This week I’m at EduTech in Sydney with Hannah, and being here together has prompted a lot of reflection.
Back then, we were working on FutureLearn, Degrees on FutureLearn, MOOCs, microcredentials and a whole range of innovation projects that sat slightly outside the usual processes of university life. We were trying things, testing ideas, solving problems as we went, and in many cases building the airplane while flying it (don’t sit in the back row).
Looking back now, what strikes me is not just what we built, but what we learned along the way.
The energy of building from the ground up
I had joined Deakin from one of Australia’s major banks, where I had spent ten years running global digital learning infrastructure. At Deakin, I moved into the corporate education arm and began working on digital learning, Cloud Campus and the shift from paper-based learning materials into digital formats.
When Hannah joined Deakin, she was in the marketing division and worked on Deakin’s first Cloud Campus campaign, helping position MOOCs on FutureLearn as part of the university’s public story.
At the time, Deakin had a huge appetite for innovation. There were visionary leaders. Professor Beverley Oliver, in particular, brought a strong interest in disruption, digital learning and microcredentials. There was a sense that the university was willing to explore new territory. As a young university with a strong distance education history, Deakin was not weighed down by quite the same traditions as some older institutions. That gave us room to move.
We moved
We launched MOOCs on FutureLearn. We moved into Degrees on FutureLearn. We explored shorter forms of learning, stackable learning, social learning and industry-connected models. It was exciting, but it was also chaotic.
The timeframes were tight. We cared deeply about academic rigour and quality, but we were also talking about minimum viable product because, truthfully, nobody really knew what the perfect model looked like. There was no benchmark. We were making it up, testing it, learning from it and adjusting as we went.
One thing in particular made it feel really intense. We were experimenting in public. When a MOOC went live, it was live. Anyone could access it. Anyone could comment. Anyone could see what we had built. This was not innovation tucked away safely behind closed doors. It was open, visible and global.
Taking university knowledge out into the wild
For me, one of the most significant things about Degrees on FutureLearn was the sense that we were taking university knowledge out from behind the ivory wall and putting it into the wild.
That was the part that really inspired me, breaking a degree into smaller pieces and making some of that learning available for anyone to access. Some pieces were still clearly connected to formal study, but others opened up learning in ways that felt genuinely exciting.
It connected strongly with something I had believed for a long time, that knowledge creates opportunity, and that the internet has the power to widen access in ways previous generations could hardly imagine.
For Hannah, part of the magic was seeing a whole master’s degree broken down into two-week chunks. They became almost like Lego pieces of learning. Smaller, more flexible, easier to imagine being put together in different ways.
The FutureLearn platform also showed us something universities had not always been able to see so clearly before. It made learning visible in real time. We could see comments and where learners interacted. We could see where learners were coming from and the scale and diversity of participation. Overall we had nearly a million learners enrolled in MOOC’s from over 190 countries, which gave us not just data, but stories.
What MOOCs taught us about learners
Some of the MOOCs gave us a powerful glimpse of what happens when good learning reaches people in very different contexts.
I remember a course related to humanitarian work and disaster response that attracted learners from around the world. Suddenly you had people in conflict zones, people in wealthier countries, practitioners, curious learners and people with lived experience all learning alongside each other.
In another course on breastfeeding, we had learners from one of the poorest African countries engaging with knowledge they simply did not have easy access to any other way.
In a diabetes course, we saw healthcare professionals learning alongside carers, parents and partners supporting someone with diabetes in daily life.
That was the thing that really inspire me, when good quality education reaches people, it can change lives.
Openness also bought tension
Some learners embraced the diversity of perspectives. Others struggled with it. In some postgraduate spaces, there were questions from learners who were paying significant fees and wondering why they were learning alongside people who had not entered through the same formal route (with the same academic or professional background).
Those tensions were real, and they raised questions that are still relevant now.
Who is higher education for?
What should remain bounded by formal structures?
What can be opened?
How do we widen access without losing sight of standards?
We did not always have neat answers, but the questions were important and even more so the pause to consider those questions genuinely.
Social learning was not a side feature
One of the reasons Deakin chose FutureLearn was because it was a social learning platform. That was not a minor detail. It was fundamental.
It challenged the old idea of the expert at the front of the room imparting knowledge to passive learners. Instead, learners brought their own experience, perspectives and questions into the learning process.
Some academics embraced this immediately. Others found it far more confronting. But what it showed us was that learning is not just about content delivery. It is also about conversation, reflection and the value learners bring to each other.
It is striking to me that ten years later, we are still having versions of this same conversation. Online peer learning still feels revolutionary in some parts of the sector.
The problem was not quality. It was packaging
One of the things that really shaped my interest in smaller forms of learning came from my corporate background.
In corporate education, organisations often want learning that is targeted, timely and focused on a particular need. Universities, on the other hand, are used to offering large, long-form learning experiences designed to build deep knowledge and mastery.
The mismatch was obvious. Universities offered strong subject matter expertise, thoughtful learning design and depth that many corporate offerings simply did not have. The challenge was the packaging.
How do you take the richness of university learning and make it available in ways that better suit professionals, employers and lifelong learners? That was one of the questions we kept chasing across the work.
Industry made the learning stronger
One of the areas that worked particularly well was industry engagement. We worked with industry in co-design, co-development, co-delivery and eventually co-promotion. We brought industry experts into design conversations. We worked backwards from what learners needed to be able to do in practice. We used industry case studies, videos and real-world examples. We involved practitioners in delivery and feedback.
That made the learning stronger and more relevant. Learners told us they appreciated hearing from people actively working in the field. Industry involvement helped connect academic learning to real-world application, and in many cases made the learning feel more immediate and more authentic.
We also learned that industry partnerships need to be genuine. When they are done well, they are not an add-on. They shape the design itself.
Innovation is always human
Looking back, one of the strongest memories is just how many people were involved. There were academics, learning designers, multimedia designers, project teams, marketers, leaders, administrators and industry experts. At one point, the stakeholder map was enormous.
And that was both the challenge and the gift. When people did not understand each other’s roles, things could become difficult. But when people trusted one another and saw the value each perspective brought, the work became much stronger.
After being part of a multidisciplinary design process, I remember one academic saying to me, “I have never been so scrutinised.” I thought, oh no, here we go, then she said, “But it’s really good.”
I remember that moment because it wasn’t about tearing expertise down, but bringing different forms of expertise together to create something better.
Diverse perspectives
Hannah and I were also laughing this week about a team profiling exercise we once did. Most of the team were creative, ideas-driven, people-oriented thinkers. A few, including Hannah, were on the business and detail-objectives side of the house. It explained quite a lot.
Innovation needs dreamers, organisers, translators, challengers and people who can actually get things done.
Ten years later
Sitting at EduTech now, ten years on, I am struck by how much of that early work still sits underneath the conversations we are having today.
The language has changed. We now talk about skills, AI, lifelong learning, learner engagement, recognition and microcredentials in more mature ways. But the deeper questions are still familiar.
How do we make learning more accessible?
How do we connect learning to people’s real lives and work?
How do we build models that are flexible, meaningful and human?
And how do we recognise learning in ways that make it visible and valuable?
Looking back, I feel proud of what we did. Not because it was perfect. It wasn’t, and lots of ides we tried didn’t work. But because we were trying to solve real problems, and because we believed education could be made more open, more useful and more responsive to the lives people actually lead.
That still motivates us today
Next week, I want to pick up the thread from EduTech and reflect on the lessons that still feel unfinished, including why learners rarely follow the pathways we design for them, why flexibility still needs structure, and why learning, assessment and recognition may need to be pulled apart before we can put them back together in more useful ways.
Upcoming events
Over the coming months, I am looking forward to continuing these conversations through both the International Day of Recognition and ePIC APAC: Unlocking Human Potential
The International Day of Recognition creates space to explore how learning is recognised across education, work and community life. Join the free webinar on June 9. International Day of Recognition: Stories of Learning, Recognition and Possibility. Register here.
Or share your story here, SkillsIQ is inviting people to share a short story about how recognition of their skills, knowledge, or experience has made a difference in their life.
ePIC APAC: Unlocking Human Potential is a 1.5-day event in Melbourne in August bringing together people from across the credentialing ecosystem who are actively shaping these conversations in practice. I’m thrilled to see leaders like Bill Shorten, Claire Field and Jan Owen headlining the event as registration officially opens. Register here.
At the same time, my new FutureLearn course Lifelong Learning: Recognise and Articulate School Skills has just commenced, exploring how we help learners recognise and articulate their skills more effectively. In many ways, it sits at the heart of this same conversation. If you are involved in high school education, I encourage you to join me in this online course. Course for Higher Education coming soon.
Learning has never been separate from life, but as we move further into a digital age and a skills-based economy, we need to become better at recognising the threads that connect our experiences, capabilities and growth across the whole of life.