Skip to content
Skip to main content

About this free course

Download this course

Share this free course

Taking your first steps into higher education
Taking your first steps into higher education

Start this free course now. Just create an account and sign in. Enrol and complete the course for a free statement of participation or digital badge if available.

1 Some assumptions

Sign with the words 'Warning assumptions ahead'.
Figure 1 Assumptions often act as starting points

This course makes a number of important assumptions about the people who will be studying it:

First assumption

You are already thinking about higher, or university level, education. This seems a reasonable assumption – why else would you be looking at this course?

Second assumption

You may be open minded (to put it positively) or undecided about what sort of subject you think would suit you best or that you would most enjoy.

Third assumption

You are hoping to have a better career if you hold a degree qualification. It is a widely shared assumption and may be why you are thinking about higher education (HE). It is a perfectly respectable reason for thinking about studying a degree course. Universities have always had a link with employment since the Middle Ages when they were set up to train priests.

Figure 2 Universities have always prepared students for work

Fourth assumption

You have not thought about university until now for a particular reason. You might have been thinking that somehow university was ‘not for the likes of me’. Perhaps you had the idea that you were ‘not up to HE’ because you missed out when you were at school or perhaps other aspects of life have got in the way.

Two further assumptions played a part in how the course was designed:

  • Informed choice plays a big part in determining success, not least success in higher education.

    This course aims to make your choices well informed by giving you a taste of what university study in the twenty-first century is like. You may not have been in education for a while – in which case it is important to be aware of some of the key changes that have been taking place. Perhaps you remember your school days very well and how you were taught then. It is important to appreciate that today there is now a strong emphasis on developing study skills to help you understand the world rather than on just filling you up with knowledge.

  • Learning needs to be active – so there are lots of activities in this course.

I’m going to stop making assumptions about you and share a couple about the course:

An assumption about this course

Our main assumption is that informed choice plays a big part in determining success, not least success in higher education.

The course aims to make your choices more informed by giving you a taste of what university study in the twenty-first century is like. You may not have been in education for a while – in which case it’s important to be aware of some of the key changes that have been going on.

Perhaps you may remember your school days very well. In which case, it’s important to appreciate that there is now a strong emphasis on developing study skills that help you understand the world rather than just being filled up with knowledge.

Another assumption about the course

The final assumption is that learning needs to be active – so there are lots of activities in this course.