• Whether as a pupil, teacher, or parent, why not visit our Schools hub to start studying with OpenLearn?

Anyone can study an OpenLearn course, read an article or watch a video without creating an account. However, to have your learning recognised (so that you earn a certificate or a digital badge on an OpenLearn course) you must create an account. Creating an account will also provide any learner with an OpenLearn profile. This profile can be made public or private, and records learning progress and achievements.

All learners must be aged 13 or over in order to create an account with The Open University. There are no forums on OpenLearn courses but all learners with an account can do the following:

• leave a review for a course or comment on an article
• edit their OpenLearn profile.

As a teacher, you can use our OpenLearn content in several ways:

• to assist your pupils in topic mastery. OpenLearn provides learning in a variety of formats: articles, courses, educational interactives, videos and ebooks
• to help students with university decision making, by giving them a taste of a particular subject
• to help teachers and teaching assistants upskill for the classroom or in online learning
• explore our Extended Project Qualification (EPQ) resources.

If you are a teacher and you wish to enrol students who are younger than 13 on one of our courses, please email openlearn@open.ac.uk and we will deal with your enquiry separately. We are currently working on lowering our age of consent to 11 years old to enable OpenLearn resources to be used by all children at secondary school who wish to earn certificates and digital badges.