Study skills
Studying can be daunting. These free courses will refresh your study skills and prepare you for success.
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Science, Maths & Technology
Basic science: understanding numbers
This free course, Basic science: understanding numbers, explains how you can use numbers to describe the natural world and make sense of everything from atoms to oceans.
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Education & Development
Succeed with learning
This course is for people who want to feel more confident about their learning skills. Informal in approach, the course builds on each person's own qualities, knowledge and skills to develop a deeper understanding of the nature of learning and of their own potential. It introduces some core ideas about learning and academic study, and some ...
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Languages
Describing language
This course introduces you to the basics of describing language. Using examples from English, you’ll learn how words are built, how they fit together to make sentences, and what labels like noun, verb and adjective mean. You’ll see how language patterns in regular ways and how the meaning of a sentence is more than the sum of its parts. This ...
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Education & Development
Multidisciplinary study: the value and benefits
This free course, Multidisciplinary study: the values and benefits, explores the advantages of studying more than one subject and will help you to decide if multidisciplinary study is for you. Featuring videos with students on the Open University’s ‘Open’ qualifications, you will learn about the unique skills you can gain from studying a ...
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Education & Development
Building confidence in using online forums
Learn about the benefits of online learning forums, with strategies for participating more fully.
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Science, Maths & Technology
Basic science: understanding experiments
This free course, Basic science: understanding experiments, introduces you to science-based skills through simple and exciting physics, chemistry and biology experiments.
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Education & Development
Taking your first steps into higher education
What is university study like? Is it for me? If you are asking yourself these questions, this free course is for you. Taking your first steps into higher education provides insights into how subjects are studied at university. This introduction to carefully selected materials helps you decide what you might want to study. You will be ...
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Education & Development
Learning how to learn
Learning how to learn: a process we all engage in throughout our lives, but no single method of learning guarantees success. This free course, Learning how to learn, aims to make the process of learning much more explicit by inviting you to apply various ideas and activities to your own study as a way of increasing your awareness of your own ...
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Society, Politics & Law
Getting started with SPSS
Handling statistical data is an essential part of psychological research. However, many people find the idea of using statistics, and especially statistical software packages, extremely daunting. This free course, Getting started with SPSS, takes a step-by-step approach to statistics software through seven interactive activities. No statistics ...
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Science, Maths & Technology
Introduction to algebra
This free course is an introduction to algebra which builds on the idea of using letters to represent numbers. Section 1 looks at finding, simplifying and using formulas and includes useful tips on learning algebra. Section 2 introduces some of the terminology used in algebra and techniques such as evaluating and checking equivalence of ...
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Money & Business
Understanding different research perspectives
This free course, Understanding different research perspectives, explores the development of the research process looking at the different perspectives from which an issue or phenomenon can be investigated; and highlights the main methodologies that can be used to investigate a business issue. By looking at different perspectives/approaches to ...
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Education & Development
Talk the talk
This free course introduces the mechanics of effective, persuasive oral presentations, by giving you the opportunity to analyse examples and then create your own. Using resources such as TED Talk videos, you will see how experts deliver professional talks and famous speeches, observe what works, and identify how language connects ideas and keeps...
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At The Open University, we're pioneers of flexible learning that's respected by employers and affordable for you. That's why more than 170,000 students are studying with us right now.
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