About this course
Being an OU student is a free course which is around 12 hours long. It is made up of 6 bitesize sessions which typically take around 1.5–2 hours to complete. You can complete it in stages at a pace to suit you. If you enrol on the course, your progress will be saved so you can come back and pick up where you left off.
Moving around the course
In the ‘Summary’ at the end of each session, 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 session links at the top of every page of the course.
Using links in the course
Throughout this course you’ll be linked out to different places across the OU’s websites and the wider internet. To ensure you don’t lose your place in this course you should open these in a new browser window or tab. To do this on a computer hold the Ctrl key (or Cmd on a Mac) when you click a link and select to open it in a new window or tab. You should also open quizzes in a new browser or window.
Gaining a digital badge
In completing this course you have the option of gaining a digital badge to recognise your achievement. A digital badge is a way of demonstrating online that you have gained a skill, it will display on your OpenLearn profile and you’ll also be able to share with others via social media.
To gain the badge you will need to:
- read each page of the course
- score 50% or more in the end-of-course quiz.
Some of the activities in this course require you to have access to the website for your first module(s). This will usually become available about three weeks before your module(s) starts. You can work through the course earlier than this, but to complete the quiz and gain the badge you’ll need to come back once your module website(s) is open. This will also be a helpful refresher of what you’ve learned just before you start studying.
If you need more guidance on getting a badge and what you can do with it, take a look at the OpenLearn FAQs [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] . When you gain your badge you will receive an email to notify you and you will be able to view and manage all your badges in My OpenLearn within 24 hours of completing the criteria to gain a badge.
A note on alternative formats
This course is available in a number of alternative formats (Word, PDF, mobi and epub file). Please note that if you need to complete the course offline using one of these formats you will need to contact us using this form to claim your badge – it will not be issued automatically.