All our free courses
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Money & Business
Challenges in advanced management accounting
This free course, Challenges in advanced management accounting, focuses on strategic management accounting and selected concepts and techniques. It will help you to successfully navigate mid- to long-term challenges to creating sustainable organisations. This OpenLearn course requires a prior understanding of basic management accounting approaches.
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Languages
Beginners’ Spanish: Getting around
Do you want to improve your language skills and communicate more easily and effectively in Spanish? This free course, Beginners’ Spanish: Getting around, concentrates on Spanish as a tool for communication, but it also provides some insights into Hispanic societies and cultures through authentic printed and audio materials. This OpenLearn course...
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Languages
Beginners’ German: Places and people
Do you want to learn the basics of the German language? This free course, Beginners’ German: Places and people, will take you on a journey through German-speaking countries. You will read and hear about a range of places and people. This OpenLearn course will give you the opportunity to develop language skills which will help you to cope in a ...
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Languages
Beginners’ Spanish: food and drink
Do you want to improve your language skills and communicate more easily and effectively in Spanish? This free course, Beginners’ Spanish: food and drink, focuses on buying and ordering food and drink at a restaurant or bar. You will be able to use some basic vocabulary relating to food, drinks, meals, quantities and measures. In this OpenLearn ...
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Science, Maths & Technology
Basic science: understanding numbers
This free course, Basic science: understanding numbers, explains how you can use numbers to describe the natural world and make sense of everything from atoms to oceans.
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Education & Development
Continuity and learning
This free course, Continuity and learning, has a practical and professional development focus. You will explore interactive dimensions of workplace learning: how people and workplace cultures create formal, informal, planned and unplanned opportunities to learn. You will read about 'biographical learning' research, where adults develop ...
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Nature & Environment
Climate change
Climate change is a key issue on today's social and political agenda. This free course explores the basic science that underpins climate change and global warming.
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Languages
Intermediate Spanish: Understanding spoken Spanish
This course is aimed at intermediate learners of Spanish with an interest in language and culture. The six-hour course is designed to develop your understanding of spoken Spanish through six video portraits of people living in Spain. It introduces you to naturally spoken language, and gives clear advice on how to use authentic video resources as...
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Languages
Intermediate French: Holiday plans
This course is taken from Ouverture, a language course that concentrates on French as a tool for communication, but it also provides some insights into French society and culture through authentic printed, audio and video materials. The course will be of interest to all those who want to improve their language skills in order to communicate more...
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Money & Business
Building relationships with donors
Legacy fundraising and big-gift seeking are part of the professional fundraiser's role. This free course, Building relationships with donors, will help you to gain the skills necessary to persuade individuals to become donors. How do you change people's ideas about methods of giving, moving them from casual street donations to regular direct ...
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History & The Arts
Brighton Pavilion
In this free course, Brighton Pavilion, you will examine the Royal Pavilion at Brighton, and its relationship to nineteenth-century Romanticism and exoticism. You'll begin with a biographical discussion of the Prince of Wales, afterwards Prince Regent and eventually King George IV, to whose specifications the Pavilion was built. With the help of...
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Science, Maths & Technology
Bayesian statistics
This free course is an introduction to Bayesian statistics. Section 1 discusses several ways of estimating probabilities. Section 2 reviews ideas of conditional probabilities and introduces Bayes’ theorem and its use in updating beliefs about a proposition, when data are observed, or information becomes available. Section 3 introduces the main ...
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History & The Arts
Wilberforce
William Wilberforce, the politician and religious writer, was instrumental in the abolition of slavery in Britain. This free course explores Wilberforce's career and writings and assesses their historical significance. In particular, it examines the contribution that Evangelicalism, the religious tradition to which Wilberforce belonged, made in ...
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Languages
Advanced Spanish: Protest song
This course will develop your knowledge and understanding of the societies and cultures of Spain and Latin America and extend the practical skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing. The course focuses on protest song, a musical genre that has played an important role in Hispanic society.
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Science, Maths & Technology
Assessing risk in engineering, work and life
Risk is something that must be taken into account at all times when practising as an engineer. We accept risk as part of everyday life so there is a need to balance the risks of an activity against the benefits that it brings. This free course, Assessing risk in engineering, work and life, investigates how we can manage risks at work, in the ...
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History & The Arts
Approaching poetry
Do you want to get more out of your reading of poetry? This free course, Approaching poetry, is designed to develop the analytical skills you need for a more in-depth study of literary texts. You will learn about rhythm, alliteration, rhyme, poetic inversion, voice and line lengths and endings. You will examine poems that do not rhyme and learn ...
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Science, Maths & Technology
Babylonian mathematics
This free course looks at Babylonian mathematics. You will learn how a series of discoveries has enabled historians to decipher stone tablets and study the various techniques the Babylonians used for problem-solving and teaching. The Babylonian problem-solving skills have been described as remarkable and scribes of the time received a training ...
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Languages
Advanced Spanish: Arts and crafts
This course is designed to develop your knowledge and understanding of Spanish-speaking societies and cultures and extend the practical skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing. You will examine the world of Spanish and Latin-American art and explore the difference between art and craft.