Learn with Start Up Loans

Turn your business ideas into reality with this free course on entrepreneurship. Explore practical steps for starting and growing a business, from developing ideas and choosing a business model to funding, location, and assessing your own skills and risk approach — all illustrated with real-life case studies.

What are the important issues to consider when starting up or running a small business in a rural environment? This free course, Rural entrepreneurship in Wales, will introduce you to some concepts and models that will help you work out what you want to do with your business idea and to consider the impact of living in a rural location.

Stand out for the right reasons with this free course on personal branding. Learn how to identify your strengths, showcase your skills authentically, and use the right tools to build a professional image that attracts opportunities - whether you’re advancing in your current role or seeking something new.

The Open University has joined forces with MoneySavingExpert (MSE) to give you the skills and knowledge to master your finances. Packed with videos, audios, quizzes and activities the course covers all the key aspects of personal finance in six sessions of study that each take around two hours to complete.

Learn about the essential numerical skills required for accounting and bookkeeping. This free course, Introduction to bookkeeping and accounting, explains the fundamental rules of double-entry bookkeeping and how they are used to produce the balance sheet and the profit and loss account.

Do you hate making decisions? Does the ability of others to make snap decisions really frustrate you? This free course will help you understand some of the processes involved in decision making. Attention to the psychology of decision making and the social context in which decisions are made can improve your understanding of others and yourself.

Planning a better future is an introductory course for anyone considering changing jobs, wondering how to move up the ladder or return to work after a break, and those who might be looking to aspire to better things.

This free course, Marketing in the 21st century, offers a managerial perspective on how to deliver more effective marketing in an organisation, regardless of whether it is based in the private, public or non-profit sector. This is achieved through a variety of learning techniques, including case studies, videos, activities and group discussions....

Boost your commercial awareness with this free short course. Explore your organisation’s purpose, understand your role within it, and learn how different perspectives can enhance the value you create.

Marketing communications help to define an organisation's relationship with its customers. This free course, Marketing communications as a strategic function, emphasises the strategic importance of such communication and its long-term effect on consumers. Communication models can act as a predictive guide, but in the end it is important to ...

Themes covered in this free course, Energy in buildings, include reducing heating demand in buildings, heating systems and fuel emissions, and reducing electricity use by appliances. The course looks at the importance of energy in buildings in the UK, investigate heat loss and how to prevent it, ways of increasing building efficiency, ...

This free course, Financial methods in environmental decisions, begins by introducing some of the tools that can be used to assess the benefits of investment decisions, including ways of assessing the ‘external costs’ – the wider costs and benefits to society as a whole – of environmental decisions.

Do you want to discover more about how organisations innovate for environmental management? This free course, Organisations, environmental management and innovation, focuses on the innovations organisations are developing or using to manage contemporary environmental issues. It also covers how organisations are innovating thinking about ...

Many of the decisions we make have implications for our environment, particularly those concerning natural resources and waste. Taking account of environmental factors in decision making can be both complex and challenging. This free course, Introducing environmental decision making, considers decisions in their broader contexts and advocates a ...

Climate crisis is one of the grand challenges we face as a society, but it can be hard to approach as a subject. Not only can the science at times seem dauntingly complex, but the solutions are also far from clear. This leaves many people feeling confused, guilty, anxious, angry, or else completely switched off from the subject. This course ...

Human societies have to take urgent action to end their dependences on fossil fuels. We have to alter the whole path of our development and decision making in order to make our societies both environmentally adaptable and sustainable. This free course, Climate change, takes on the task of trying to chart some of the ways in which it might be ...

Effects of pollutants on the aquatic environment is a free course. It begins with an introduction to water and goes on to briefly outline the major sources of water pollution (these being sewage works, manufacturing and industrial plants, the farming and animal husbandry sectors, landfill sites and urban surface water run-off). It considers ...

Global warming: are we responsible? Is our environmental impact damaging the planet? This free course, Working with our environment: an introduction, examines the use of ozone-depleting technology, the impact of fossil fuel use and explores how the development of technology can influence the direction of a society. From the Industrial Revolution...

Improve your workplace relationships and boost your professional impact with this free course on effective communication. Discover how to express yourself clearly, understand others better, and adapt your communication skills for a range of situations, from everyday conversations to the digital workplaces of the future.

This free course, Managing and managing people, will introduce you to the world of management. We will be looking at a range of topics, including what managers do, what skills they require, and how you can develop as a manager.

This free course, Collective leadership, will give you an insight into the importance of how to be a more effective leader, and how to better engage and work with ‘followers’ in an organisational setting.

Do you want to change jobs, are you just starting in the job market or may be returning after a break? If so, then this free course, Succeed in the workplace, is for you. It will help you explore career opportunities. You will also gain the skills to write strong CVs and application forms, and to handle different types of interviews. By the end ...

Over the past century there has been a radical shift in responses to people who experience mental health problems. In this free course, Making sense of mental health problems, you will learn about how key perspectives in the field have made sense of mental health problems. By directly relating key perspectives to a case study, you will reflect ...

This free course, Understanding mental capacity, covers the principles and criteria underpinning the assessment of mental capacity and decision making in the UK.

This free course explores the term 'motivation' and factors affecting motivation. This includes looking at the most influential theories of motivation that contribute to understanding the causes of motivation. The motivation of sports people and people working in sport and fitness environments are used to help understand the theories presented.

Although being at work during periods of mental illness can be difficult for those with mental health problems, most people with these difficulties could take paid employment if it were not for numerous barriers in the workplace and the wider community (Centre for Mental Health, 2013). In this free course, Work and mental health, you will look ...

Each year thousands of pounds are spent on medications to treat conditions such as anxiety and depression. These medications often have negative side effects. Exercise is an alternative treatment that is low cost and has few side effects. In this free course, Exercise and mental health, we will look at the links between exercise and improved ...

Panic attacks: what they are and what to do about them is a free course that should be helpful to anyone who experiences panic or panic attacks, for their family and friends, and anyone more generally interested in mental health and mental health treatment. The course starts by exploring formal definitions of panic and panic attack. These ...

This free course, Making sense of ourselves, introduces you to well-known psychological topics by asking and answering everyday questions, such as Why don’t we like one another? Why would I hang around with you? Do you see what I see? What’s the point of childhood? You’ll learn how psychologists can go about addressing these questions using ...

Explore interesting and challenging ideas around death, dying and grief. This free course, An introduction to death, dying and grief, invites you to think more deeply about death and dying and encourages you to think about it in different ways. This course will introduce you to different perspectives on death; ethical issues related to dying and...

In this free course, Emotions and emotional disorders, you will learn about some of the disorders related to the feelings of stress, sadness and anxiety including how these disorders are diagnosed, their biological correlates, and evidence of their possible causes.