Introduction and guidance

Welcome to this free badged course, Advancing Black leadership.

The course lasts eight weeks, with approximately three hours of study per week. You can work through the course at your own pace, so if you have more time one week there is no problem with pushing on to complete another week’s study. You can also take as long as you want to complete it.

There are lots of opportunities to check your learning, including short quizzes at the end of each week. The quizzes at the end of Week 4 and Week 8 are a bit longer and will contribute towards earning a digital badge to recognise your achievement.

Badges are not accredited by The Open University but they’re a great way to demonstrate your interest in the subject and commitment to your employer/potential employer, and to provide evidence of continuing professional development. You can find out more about the badges in the next section.

Learning outcomes

After studying this course, you should be able to:

• understand the meaning of power and how it is exercised to maintain racial inequality
• identify and engage with various forms of power that can be exercised through Black leadership to enact radical and systemic change
• identify key issues in organisations and society that can be worked upon through powerful Black leadership
• use organising tools and techniques to maximise the power exerted through Black leadership.

Moving around the course

In the ‘Summary’ at the end of each week, you can find a link to the next week. If at any time you want to return to the start of the course, click on ‘Full course description’. From here you can navigate to any part of the course. Alternatively, use the week links at the top of every page of the course.

The Open University would really appreciate a few minutes of your time to tell us about yourself and your expectations for the course before you begin, in our optional start-of-course survey [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] . Once you complete the course we would also value your feedback and suggestions for future improvement, in our optional end-of-course survey. Participation will be completely confidential and we will not pass on your details to others.