Addressing global food security is one of the greatest challenges facing humankind, but finding ways to discuss this complex topic can be difficult. Solutions to this challenge will require interaction between a range of actors, including academics from varying disciplines, policy makers, NGOs, industry, farmers, and members of society. To help address the need for increased societal understanding of food security, we organized an 8‐week massive open online course (MOOC) on the e‐learning platform FutureLearn. We show that online courses have the potential to broaden and facilitate conversations to help develop new forms of understanding of food security.