Start Up Loans is committed to helping UK business owners realise their business dreams. Whether that’s making a business idea a reality, or helping new businesses to grow, through funding, mentoring and support, we’re here to help UK businesses get off the ground.
With the experts at The Open University, we’ve identified a range of free, useful courses – covering a whole host of business essentials – to do the same. The courses provide a rich source of vital information for anyone that’s new to being their own boss, as well as would-be business owners who are considering taking the plunge. Covering digital skills to bookkeeping and accounting, they’re designed to help business owners understand more about the key aspects of running a business – from the day-to-day to growing your venture.
Who are we?
Start Up Loans provides government-backed loans and support for UK businesses that struggle to access finance. We’ve helped almost 75,000 businesses from all across the UK, start up and grow with loans of between £500 and £25,000, as well as mentoring and support. Because of that, we’re familiar with the challenges businesses can face. The free courses we’ve selected with The Open University have been chosen with those exact challenges in mind.
Entrepreneurship
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Entrepreneurship – from ideas to reality
This free course, Entrepreneurship: from ideas to reality, is about starting and running your own business. Using case studies it will take you through the decisions from generating initial ideas through to deciding what you will do and how to establish your business and grow it. It will guide you through business models, funding options, business types and the influence of location and importantly assessment of your own skills, values and attitudes to risk. It is focused on practical advice from real entrepreneurs, and will signpost learners to where they can find additional support and how they can further develop their own capabilities.
Learn moreEntrepreneurship – from ideas to realityLevel: 2 Intermediate
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First steps in innovation and entrepreneurship
This free course provides you with a short introduction to innovation and entrepreneurship, clarifying some key themes and terminology and helping you to examine your own views about these important subjects.
Learn moreFirst steps in innovation and entrepreneurshipLevel: 2 Intermediate
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Entrepreneurial behaviour
Have you ever wanted to start your own business? This free course, Entrepreneurial behaviour, will give you the opportunity to consider and reflect on the personal aspects involved in transforming an innovative idea into an entrepreneurial product. You will also learn how to identify the requirements for building an appropriate entrepreneurial team.
Learn moreEntrepreneurial behaviourLevel: 3 Advanced
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Entrepreneurial impressions – reflection
In this free course, Entrepreneurial impressions - reflection, you will be encouraged to unpack your own experiences of, and perceptions about, entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship. You will also take a look at the relevant research evidence on entrepreneurial personality and on the role of informal ties with family and friends. There are still many unresolved questions about the nature of entrepreneurship, and as a consequence you can find people with radically different experiences and opinions.
Learn moreEntrepreneurial impressions – reflectionLevel: 3 Advanced
Career and leadership
Collective leadership
This free course, Collective leadership, will give you an insight into the importance of how to be a more effective leader, and how to better engage and work with ‘followers’ in an organisational setting. It considers the ‘heroic’ leader of the past and how leadership studies historically focused on the individual. It then builds on what is meant by Collective Leadership, using real-life case studies as examples.
Learn more ❯Collective leadership
Making decisions
Do you hate making decisions? Does the ability of others to make snap decisions really frustrate you? This free course will help you understand some of the processes involved in decision making. Attention to the psychology of decision making and the social context in which decisions are made can improve your understanding of others and yourself.
Learn more ❯Making decisions
Management: perspective and practice
What does it mean to be a manager? Being a manager is a complex and challenging activity. This free course, Management: perspective and practice, introduces you to the role of the manager. In this OpenLearn course you’ll look at an array of activities including leadership, human resources, finance, project management, change management, operations management and stakeholder management.
Learn more ❯Management: perspective and practice
Developing career resilience
This free course, Developing career resilience, will help you to understand the factors that influence career resilience and offer examples and tactics for you to develop your own resilience further.
Learn more ❯Developing career resilience
Understanding your sector
This free course, Understanding your sector, will help you to understand the difference between sectors, industries and professions. It will also help you to gain the inside knowledge to impress in applications and at interviews and to put together an action plan that is tailored to you.
Learn more ❯Understanding your sector
Exploring career mentoring and coaching
This free course, Exploring career mentoring and coaching, will explain what mentors and career coaches do and how a colleague or expert who can ask the right questions, challenge assumptions, and help an individual to find the best solutions for themselves, can make a significant difference in a wide range of situations and contexts.
Learn more ❯Exploring career mentoring and coaching
Finance and accounting
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MSE’s Academy of Money
The Open University has joined forces with MoneySavingExpert (MSE) to produce this new free course to give you the skills and knowledge to master your finances. Packed with videos, audios, quizzes and activities the course covers all the key aspects of personal finance in six sessions of study that each take around two hours to complete.
Learn moreMSE’s Academy of MoneyLevel: 1 Introductory
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Introduction to bookkeeping and accounting
Learn about the essential numerical skills required for accounting and bookkeeping. This free course, Introduction to bookkeeping and accounting, explains the fundamental rules of double-entry bookkeeping and how they are used to produce the balance sheet and the profit and loss account.
Learn moreIntroduction to bookkeeping and accountingLevel: 1 Introductory
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Introduction to the context of accounting
Revenue, profit and loss, balance sheets are these accounting terms that intimidate you? This free course, Introduction to the context of accounting, will help you to understand the very basics of accounting, from its historical beginnings to the objectives of modern day accountants. You will learn how an accountant in business balances conflicting demands to maximise market share and profit.
Learn moreIntroduction to the context of accountingLevel: 3 Advanced
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Financial accounting and reporting
This free course, Financial accounting and reporting, discusses how accountants act as processors and purveyors of information for decision making and the needs of those who use accounting information. It also looks at the role performed by accountants and notes the need to be aware of relevant regulatory and conceptual frameworks.
Learn moreFinancial accounting and reportingLevel: 2 Intermediate
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Investment risk
Risk, in a financial context, is a synonym for uncertainty. This free course will allow those with some background knowledge of the area to explore investment risk. You will examine how and why investors are risk-averse and look at the risk factors involved in making a decision to invest.
Learn moreInvestment riskLevel: 3 Advanced
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The financial markets context
How do financial markets match providers with users, and how efficiently does the market determine prices? Can investors rely on notoriously volatile stock markets to function efficiently? It can be difficult to determine whether successful investments are a matter of skill or luck. In this free course, The financial markets context, you will interrogate whether markets can function efficiently, and what factors might militate against this. You will also learn the importance of the Efficient Markets Hypothesis.
Learn moreThe financial markets contextLevel: 3 Advanced
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Quantitative and qualitative research in finance
What are the key features of qualitative and quantitative research in finance? What do they involve in practical terms, and what they can produce? This free course, Quantitative and qualitative research in finance, explores the underpinning methodologies, then looks at how research data are produced and how they are analysed. The course also includes case study interviews with active researchers and activities to help you understand data sources and sampling.
Learn moreQuantitative and qualitative research in financeLevel: 3 Advanced
Marketing and commercial awareness
Commercial awareness
This short course encourages you to look across your organisation, at your place within it and the value you create. It considers how getting different perspectives and widening existing ones within your organisation can enhance commercial awareness.
Learn more ❯Commercial awareness
Introduction to operations management
This free course, Introduction to operations management, will introduce you to the role of operations management in organisations, and gives you the opportunity to understand what an operations manager does. It looks at how the role might influence the short- and long-term success of the organisation. It is important to develop a clear understanding of the impact of good and bad operations management practice on the performance of an organisation as a whole.
Learn more ❯Introduction to operations management
Marketing communications as a strategic function
Marketing communications help to define an organisation's relationship with its customers. This free course, Marketing communications as a strategic function, emphasises the strategic importance of such communication and its long-term effect on consumers. Communication models can act as a predictive guide, but in the end it is important to recognise the autonomy and unpredictability of consumers.
Learn more ❯Marketing communications as a strategic function
Marketing in the 21st Century
This free course, Marketing in the 21st century, offers a managerial perspective on how to deliver more effective marketing in an organisation, regardless of whether it is based in the private, public or non-profit sector. This is achieved through a variety of learning techniques, including case studies, videos, activities and group discussions. Supporting this learning, students are encouraged to become critical thinkers about both how they undertake their own decisions, as well as how marketing influences our society.
Learn more ❯Marketing in the 21st Century
Supply chain sustainability
To survive in today’s competitive environment, organisations need not only have an efficient and effective supply chain for the context in which they operate, they also have to consider issues of sustainability in their supply chain strategies. These issues are a consideration beyond those of environmental sustainability and also encompass social sustainability (ethics and wellbeing), financial sustainability, and network sustainability. This free course, Supply chain sustainability, introduces four sustainability perspectives and discusses how these perspectives can assess the sustainability of any supply chain.
Learn more ❯Supply chain sustainability
What is strategy?
Thinking about strategy generates many controversial questions. This free course, What is strategy?, focuses on practitioner views of strategy. You will learn about application of its major theoretical advances in professional life. The course provides definitions of the concept of strategy and strategy-related vocabulary and examines Mintzberg's five Ps framework.
Learn more ❯What is strategy?
Project management
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Preparing a project
Managing projects is something most managers will find themselves doing at some point in their career. This free course, Preparing a project, aims to provide an overview of the features of a project and the issues that arise in managing a project.
Learn morePreparing a projectLevel: 3 Advanced
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Planning a project
Gantt charts, critical path analysis, SMART objectives and estimation skills are just some of the topics covered in this free course, Planning a project, to help you understand how to plan for a project. You will gain an appreciation of the range of planning techniques available and the situations in which it is appropriate to use them.
Learn morePlanning a projectLevel: 3 Advanced
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Implementing the project
Day-to-day monitoring of a project is essential to ensure that work is progressing according to the plan, and it will often be necessary to review and revise the plan as circumstances change. This free course, Implementing the project, will introduce some of the key techniques that help managers to monitor and control projects, and consider what approaches work best in particular circumstances.
Learn moreImplementing the projectLevel: 3 Advanced
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Completing the project
This free course, Completing the project, will examine the particular issues that arise in bringing a project to a close, and ways of evaluating a project on its completion. The key components of project closure will be identified and discussed and their importance in ensuring that the aims and objectives of a project have been successfully attained will be explored. After studying this course, you will be able to plan an effective project closure.
Learn moreCompleting the projectLevel: 3 Advanced
Regional and specialised learning
Rural entrepreneurship in Wales
What are the important issues to consider when starting up or running a small business in a rural environment? This free course, Rural entrepreneurship in Wales, will introduce you to some concepts and models that will help you work out what you want to do with your business idea and to consider the impact of living in a rural location.
Learn more ❯Rural entrepreneurship in Wales
Challenges in advanced management accounting
This free course, Challenges in advanced management accounting, focuses on strategic management accounting and selected concepts and techniques. It will help you to successfully navigate mid- to long-term challenges to creating sustainable organisations. This OpenLearn course requires a prior understanding of basic management accounting approaches.
Learn more ❯Challenges in advanced management accounting
The concept of innovation
Just what is innovation? This free course examines the issues surrounding the concept of innovation. What is the difference between innovation and invention? How are organisations affected by innovation: are all of the outcomes positive? You will learn how to analyse this concept and its impact on resources, capabilities and competencies.
Learn more ❯The concept of innovation
Additional courses
Digital thinking tools for better decision making
Ever since the very beginning of humanity, tools have played a pivotal role in who we are and what we do. Tools for recording, processing and communicating information have a time-honoured history – from the clay tokens used in Mesopotamia to mechanical calculating machines. The invention of the digital computer has boosted the scale, speed and reach with which thinking tools extend our natural capabilities. This free course, Digital thinking tools for better decision making, starts by placing thinking tools in their historical context and concludes with an examination of their future. During the course, you’re introduced to a wide variety of digital thinking tools. You will apply these tools in many practical activities and case studies, solving problems that involve finding and evaluating information, performing calculations and drawing reasoned conclusions.
Learn more ❯Digital thinking tools for better decision making
Understanding and managing risk
This free course, Understanding and managing risk, provides an introduction to financial risk management. The processes of risk identification, risk measurement and risk management are explored. The course then goes on to examine reputational risk and operational risk. It concludes with an examination of the subject of behavioural finance and what this can contribute to our understanding of risk taking and risk management.
Learn more ❯Understanding and managing risk
Stakeholders in marketing and finance
This free course, Stakeholders in marketing and finance, comprises two sections introducing the idea of customers and stakeholders for financial information. It also contains two activities in which learners are asked to relate the ideas discussed to their own work practice.
Learn more ❯Stakeholders in marketing and finance
Equity finance
Private equity, venture capital, stock exchange listing: all are methods of raising equity finance. This free course looks at the processes used and the markets available across the world for raising such finance, as well as looking into the reasons why some companies choose cross-listing on stock exchanges.
Learn more ❯Equity finance
Discovering management
This free course, Discovering management, introduces you to the role of the manager. It covers management activities looking at leadership, human resources, finance, project management, change management, operations management and stakeholder management.
Learn more ❯Discovering management
Communication, management and your own context
In management the ability to communicate clearly and confidently is of key importance. This free course, Communication, management and your own context, looks at the role of language in management communication, and helps you identify areas of English language you may need to develop for work or when studying for a management qualification such as an MBA. It includes reading, writing, listening and speaking activities based on material related to the field of management, and encourages you to relate these to your own work context.
Learn more ❯Communication, management and your own context
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