The Stories of Change interviews, recorded by the BBC’s Environment Analyst Roger Harrabin, capture the thinking of leading players in climate change and energy debates at a critical moment in the global conversation. 

Why does the Earth’s atmosphere make it the perfect home for life? Professor Stephen Lewis explores...

Microbes often get a bad name. Whilst some of them do cause disease, others play vital roles in recycling nutrients in the soil to enable plants to grow, and in breaking down human waste. Without microbes, we would have no beer, no yoghurt, no coffee. That's quite impressive for something too small to see. This free course, Microbes friend or ...

Distance learning can open up opportunities for study. You might have not studied for a while, you might be returning to education, or you might not have had the chance to study at a higher level before. This free course, Am I ready to be a distance learner?, will help to boost your confidence. You'll explore useful skills so you can discover ...

This free course, An introduction to floodplain meadows, explores how these traditional landscapes can deliver a range of nature-based solutions that will improve our environment. The course will help you to learn about this unique environment, increasing your ecological knowledge, developing your skills in critical reasoning, and offering you ...

This free course, What is a metal? explores the main characteristic properties of metals and their varied use in our everyday lives. Each metal has its own personal signature and you will undertake an online experiment to identify individual metals.

This course explores the role of fire as a natural disturbance in ecosystems. It introduces the concept of a fire regime and its influence on the type and distribution of organisms that occur in fire prone ecosystems. It also looks at some of the adaptations of plants that have evolved in these ecosystems and how animals either avoid or exploit ...

Mammals come in a bewildering variety of shapes and sizes and yet all of the 4700 or so species have some characteristics in common, which justifies the inclusion of diverse types within a single group. Although mammals evolved on land, a number of species have become adapted to spending part or all of their lives in water and it is these ...

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 ...

Diagrams, charts and graphs are used by all sorts of people to express information in a visual way, whether it's in a report by a colleague or a plan from your interior designer. This free course will teach you how to interpret these tools and how to use them yourself to convey information more effectively.