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Become an OU student

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Being an OU student
Being an OU student

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.

4 OpenLearn

The course you’re doing right now is on OpenLearn. OpenLearn is where the OU offers short courses, articles and other content for free to anyone who wants to use them.

Although your time may be largely taken up with your formal studies, you can still take advantage of the free materials on OpenLearn. Like the course you are doing now, there are lots of resources that can support you in enhancing your skills and knowledge.

Recent research has shown that students who use OpenLearn, in addition to their formal modular study, are more likely to successfully pass their module and progress towards achieving their chosen qualification.

Some of the courses on OpenLearn involve 24 hours of study and on successful completion you receive a badge. Many of the badges provide evidence for skills that employers look out for, including digital skills, so they’re a really good way to show what you’re capable of, alongside your achievements in formal OU study.

There are also much shorter courses available as well as useful articles and videos.

There are lots of courses on OpenLearn around digital skills, so if the previous pages have made you think this is an area you would like to develop further, you might want to have a look at these.

You don’t have to complete them now – you can click to enrol on them and then they’ll be saved in your OpenLearn profile for you to come back to later on. Here are some possible suggestions:

You might also find the Skills for study and Skills for work pages useful.

If you’re studying, or considering studying, more than one subject, you should also try the free OpenLearn course, Multidisciplinary study: the value and benefits.

You’ve almost completed the course but before you move to the quiz we’ve got some final words from other students.