Monash Uni offers online courses

Monash University is going social with its first international online course offerings.

The university is the first Australian partner of FutureLearn, a new platform for massive open online courses (MOOCs).

It will offer two courses, creative coding and the science of medicine, from Tuesday and both are expected to be in demand.

FutureLearn approached Monash to be one of its 26 partners.

"It's certainly one of the most forward-thinking and innovative of the universities we've got in the partnerships," chief executive Simon Nelson told AAP.

His MOOC platform is designed to create a social learning environment, with students encouraged to comment, ask questions, set up profiles and share content.

"Using a large number of users to collaborate together and learn together is going to be a really exciting way of using this new medium," Mr Nelson said.

The two Monash courses were partly chosen because they would work well for this kind of set up.

FutureLearn is wholly owned by the British Open University and offered its first courses in September 2013.