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 how ready you are to study and how to develop your study skills in six steps to become a successful distance learner.

Diagrams allow us to think in new ways and approach problems differently. Learn five invaluable diagramming techniques with this video series and quiz

Making decisions about the world based on data requires a process that bridges the gap between unstructured data and the decision. Statistical hypothesis testing helps decision-making by formulating beliefs about the world, including people, organisations or other objects, and formally testing these beliefs.

In this free course, you will study the principles of hypothesis testing, including the specification of significance levels, as well as one-sided and two-sided tests. Finally, you will learn how to perform a hypothesis test of the mean of a variable, as well as the proportion of individuals in a dataset with a certain characteristic.

You will use spreadsheets throughout the course as the central tool used by professionals for simple data management and analysis.

Evidence comes in the form of qualitative or quantitative data about the world around you. It is not always obvious, however, how to structure, aggregate, analyse or interpret the data to help you make decisions. In this free course, you will look at how to use data to make decisions in a systematic way using Microsoft Excel.

Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet software that you will most likely encounter numerous times either in a professional context or outside the workplace. In this course you will explore its functions, which will enable you to analyse data and explore relationships between variables. You will learn to summarise, describe and visualise both univariate and bivariate data in tabular and graphical form.

Develop science-based skills through simple and exciting physics, chemistry and biology experiments.

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 expressions, identifying terms in an expression and collecting like terms. Section 3 looks at how to simplify terms and introduces index notation and multiplying powers. Section 4 looks at the use of brackets in algebra and section 5 covers solving, checking and using simple linear equations.

Maths is intimately entwined with science and technology, whether it is used to analyse data collected on plants in the Amazon rainforest, to calculate the trajectory of a comet or design a bridge to connect two countries. This means that science and technology go hand-in-hand with maths, and that a firm grasp of maths is crucial for studying any science and technology discipline.
This free course, Maths for science and technology, will help you build a stronger grip with the maths helping hand. You’ll learn about how the power of algebra, the sense of scientific notation, the beauty of basic trigonometry and why 70 db (decibels) is 10 times more powerful than 60 db. As well as this you will delve into scientific measurement, including the importance of units and the flexibility and practically of the SI – the internationally recognised system of units based on multiples of ten.

This free course, Succeed with maths: part 2, is a sequel to Part 1, in which you will continue to develop your mathematical knowledge and skills using everyday examples. The course takes a look at measurement of length, mass and volume, negative numbers and how to use these, scientific notation (based upon powers of 10), shapes and how to calculate their properties before finally turning to how to construct and read from tables, charts and graphs. It provides a solid foundation for you to continue with studies in any subject which requires some degree of mathematical knowledge.

Tony Hirst and Hans Rosling introduce us to visualising development data and explore bar charts, line charts and scatter graphs.