Work skills
Enhance your work skills without committing to full-time study.
Money & Business
Retail marketing
This free course, Retail marketing, explores how retailers use marketing to communicate with their customers, considering definitions of retailing and consumers, the basics of communications, before moving on to look at different forms of marketing communications and advertising used by retailers.
Digital & Computing
Presenting information
Tables and charts are a great way to present numerical information in a clear and concise form. This free course, Presenting information, explains how to use the Windows calculator to carry out basic operations and calculate percentages. You will then learn how to use charts and tables to represent and interpret information.
Money & Business
How teams work
This free course, How teams work, provides an introduction to working in virtual project teams by explaining terms and concepts related to teams and to projects. The complexity of the interaction of people and technology is highlighted.
Money & Business
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.
Health, Sports & Psychology
So, you want to be a nurse? A brief introduction to nursing
This free course, So you want to be a nurse? A brief introduction to nursing, provides an overview of what nursing entails. Focusing on nursing in the UK specifically, but also looking at its place globally, you will learn about the four fields of nursing in the UK, what nurse training involves, as well as what makes a great nurse. This ...
Society, Politics & Law
Applying your community engagement skills
This free course is the final instalment of a set of 10 courses with the common theme of community engagement and leadership. In the previous 9 courses there has been the opportunity to build a wide range of skills in leadership, communication, working with others and decision-making, in the context of policing within a community. We advise ...
Education & Development
Exploring educational leadership
This free course, Exploring educational leadership, provides an overview of the field of educational leadership and management. You will explore: the relationships between management and leadership; the scope of the field; different world views that underpin educational leadership research and practice; and some key concepts such as agency, ...
Digital & Computing
Hybrid working: skills for digital transformation
The future of the workplace is continuing to evolve, and digital transformation is accelerating, requiring new digital capabilities, behaviours and understanding. There has been a widening of the digital divide and data shows that in the UK the skills gap is growing with a shortage of people with digital skills. Nearly all jobs have some ...
Languages
Translation as a career
During the course you will meet professional translators discussing their work and reflect on what they say. You will assess your own language level and find out how translators maintain their language skills. You will also engage in a short translation activity.
Money & Business
Developing your skills as an HR professional
This free course, Developing your skills as an HR professional, will help you to develop some of the skills you will need to be effective as an HR professional. You will practise learning reflectively and you will also develop the skills of organising yourself, managing time and stress, and working in teams or groups.
Money & Business
The importance of interpersonal skills
To succeed in management you need good interpersonal skills, you need to understand how to deal with other people. This free course, The importance of interpersonal skills, will help you gain an awareness of your own skills and understand that an awareness of the interpersonal skills of others can help us enormously in dealing with the work ...
Money & Business
Hybrid working: planning for the future
In 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic organisations had to plan and adapt within a week to move almost their entire workforce to remote working, and those who had to remain in ‘onsite’ environments had to quickly implement safety measures. This was an unprecedented global response that many organisations would not have foreseen and had to adjust ...
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