FutureLearn Data Downloader

The FutureLearn Data Downloader is a utility for accessing data about FutureLearn courses.

The API and download utility will download data for all runs of multiple courses, combining them together into a single dataset.

It is useful for doing data analysis either in Python using pandas or with csv files.

The full documentation describes how to install, its API and the download utility.

What you need?

To use the dataset downloader utility you will need:

• Access to the internet
• Python 3 installed on your computer (be sure to click Add Python to the PATH when installing on Windows)
• a FutureLearn account which can access your courses dataset files

Install

Open a command prompt or terminal and enter this command:

pip3 install fl-data-downloader

To upgrade to the latest version use:

pip3 install fl-data-downloader --upgrade

If you are installing on macOS or linux you may need to use sudo when running pip3 in order to install the utility:

sudo pip3 install fl-data-downloader

If you are using Windows and you receive a pip3 is not recognised error, have a look at this guide to Using pip on Windows.

API

The fl_data_downloader API can be used to gain and manipulate data using Python.

Data is returned as pandas.DataFrame objects. See the pandas Getting started for more information.

To use the API create a FutureLearnData object passing the organisation and call a get_ method e.g.:

from fl_data_downloader import FutureLearnData

fl = FutureLearnData("raspberry-pi")

enrolments_df = fl.get_dataset_for_course(course="programming-101", dataset="enrolments")

print(enrolments_df)

There are code examples of how to use all the API calls in the github repository.

For more information see the API documentation.

CSV download tool

The fl-data-dl command line tool can be used to download data for FutureLearn courses and datasets.

Each dataset is downloaded to a separate file with the name [yyyy-mm-dd-hh-mm-ss]-[dataset].csv

Using the -h option will display the fl-data-dl command usage instructions:

fl-data-dl -h

usage: fl-data-dl [-h] [-d DATASET [DATASET ...]] [-o OUTPUT] [-l] [-v] organisation course [course ...]

FutureLearn Data Downloader

positional arguments:
organisation          The organisation you want to download data for.
course                The course(s) you want to download data for.

optional arguments:
-h, --help            show this help message and exit
-d DATASET [DATASET ...], --dataset DATASET [DATASET ...]
                        The dataset(s) you wish to download data for: archetype_survey_responses, campaigns, comments, enrolments,
                        leaving_survey_responses, peer_review_assignments, peer_review_reviews, post_course_survey_data,
                        post_course_survey_free_text, question_response, step_activity, team_members, video_stats,
                        weekly_sentiment_survey_responses
-o OUTPUT, --output OUTPUT
                        The output directory where the data files should be written, defaults to the current directory.
-l, --login           Login and store FutureLearn credentials.
-V, --version         Display the version number
--no-cache            Disable the cache.

e.g. to download all the datasets for all the runs of the programming-101 course from the raspberry-pi organisation:

fl-data-dl raspberry-pi programming-101

When the downloader is run, you will be asked to enter your FutureLearn username and password.

See the CSV downloader documentation for more examples.