OPEN UNIVERSITY COURSES

OPEN UNIVERSITY COURSES (Largest UK University but can register from US) free- over 600 courses (1 hour to 50 hours) http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/

Courses in:

Arts and Humanities
Business and Management
Childhood and Youth
Computing and ICT
Education
Engineering and Technology
Environment, Development and International Studies
Health and Social Care
Law
Languages
Mathematics and Statistics
Psychology
Science
Skills
Social Science

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Getting Started
In the LearningSpace you can try any of our OpenLearn Study Units which are free courses from the Open University. Units are available from introductory to postgraduate level and can be studied anytime, at your own pace.

While there is no tutor, each has clear learning outcomes, and many have activities and sample answers to help you assess your progress.

You can not get any accreditation for studying them, but once you register and enrol on an OpenLearn Study Unit you can access your activity record which will provide proof of completing a unit.

Where do I start?

Join the community

Enhance your learning

Develop you learning

FAQ’s

Where do I start?

You can start by searching or browsing the content for subjects that interest you.

While you can browse all our courses without registering just by going to the topic area and choosing a course to view. By registering you will be able to track your progress, use a range of learning tools and become part of the OpenLearn community.

Registering is free and easy, just click on Sign Up in the top right handside and follow the instructions. Then once you have your username and password just remember to sign in.

Once you have registered in addition to trying the free courses

You might like to join the community by:

Creating a profile to tell the LearningSpace community about you and help you find people with shared interests.
Personalise your homepage to organize your learning, view the study units you've joined and keep up to date with other learners.
Access the discussion areas to see what the community is talking about and add your view
Or
Access the unit forums to see who else is studying and share your thoughts about the course
Quickstart Guide: Forums
Or
Create your own Learning Club to bring like minded members of the OpenLearn community together
Quickstart Guide: Learning Clubs
Rate and review study units, have your say and provide us with feedback
Enhance your learning by:

Using your Learning Journal to keep notes and reflect on your learning. You can choose to keep these private or to share your experiences with the community.
Quickstart Guide: Learning Journals
Tagging or labeling content to make it easier to find later and use the tag cloud to find popular subjects.
Have the learning materials delivered to your desktop by subscribing to our RSS feeds.
Quickstart Guide: RSS
Print out learning materials and download in various formats for use offline
Develop your Learning by accessing are cutting-edge learning tools:

Create a FlashVlog video blog/diary to document your thinking or to share your thoughts with others.
Quickstart Guide: FlashVlog
Hold video meetings using Flash Meeting. Open your meeting to anyone or make it invitation only. You can replay the meeting anytime.
Quickstart Guide: Flash Meeting
Brainstorm and make connections between resources and ideas using Compendium knowledge maps.
Quickstart Guide: Compendium
Use Cohere to discover new ideas and people as you make meaningful connections between your ideas and the world's.
Quickstart Guide: Cohere
If you are interested in reusing our free courses you can do this in our LabSpace.
Quickstart Guide: Re-using, Remixing and Creating Content


Frequently Asked Questions for getting started:

What does level mean?
How long does each LearningSpace unit take to complete?
Can I speak to a tutor?
Can I join an online discussion group?
Why should I register?
What is my OpenLearn LearningSpace profile and how can I amend it?
What are forum posts?
What is a learning journal?
What are ‘tags’?

What does level mean?
Much of the content on the OpenLearn website will be accessible to anyone with a general interest in a subject. Each LearningSpace study unit is set at a particular level to indicate the amount of previous educational experience expected for you to be able to study the unit without too much difficulty and within the stated hours of study. There are four levels - introductory, intermediate, advanced and masters - indicated in the summary description of each unit. Find unit descriptions in the topic areas linked to from the LearningSpace homepage. If you are new to higher education we recommend that you start with units at introductory level.

The levels are based on the assumption that you have an interest in the subject of the unit, but not that you have any prior subject knowledge. Another benchmark we used to assign level was reading/study abilities, which we have broadly equated to your previous educational qualifications. You will find below a guide to how these compare, and you may find this helpful when selecting the right level for you to study. To take a full part in the suggested activities and exercises and devote enough time to think through what the unit is about, the previous educational qualifications normally expected for each unit would broadly be as follows:

for introductory level units, previous educational qualifications would not guarantee higher education entry
for intermediate level units, previous educational qualifications would guarantee entry to higher education
for advanced level units, previous educational experience would include study at higher education level.
for masters level units, previous educational experience would include study at higher education level.
If you come from outside the UK it may be that your reading/study abilities and the type of qualifications you have are not easily assessed along the above lines. If so, our advice to you is to try a lower level unit first, see how that fits with your expectations and confidence to work at that level, and then select any further units accordingly.

How long does each LearningSpace unit take to complete?
Units vary in length between 1 and 50 hours – the equivalent of an evening’s through to a week’s work. The unit description gives the amount of time that we estimate that you should spend as a minimum to read the unit, take a full part in the suggested activities and exercises, and devote enough time to think through what it has to say. Find unit descriptions in the topic areas linked to from the LearningSpace homepage. Depending on your circumstances and level of prior study experience and knowledge, you could take longer than the stated time.

Can I speak to a tutor?
OpenLearn does not provide you with a tutor. Instead you can connect with other learners. Every study unit in the LearningSpace has a discussion forum. Once logged in, you can use these forums to share your ideas, views and questions with others. There is also a Help and support forum which is the place to post queries and answers if you want help using the LearningSpace or LabSpace.


Can I join an online discussion group?
Yes. By registering with OpenLearn, you can participate in a range of forums in our LearningSpace, each having an online message board where you can post messages for others to read and respond to. You can also set up a learning club and use free online video conferencing to set-up meetings with other learners.

Why should I register?
You will get the most from the website if you register (registration is free). Registering will give you full access to a range of features that are not available to guests, such as commenting on articles.

Once you have registered you can join any of the study units in the LearningSpace. If you join a study unit you will be able to participate in the activities associated with the unit and receive updates from the associated unit forum. You can easily unenrol from these activities at any time. You do not need to register if you just want to read content without participating in activities and receiving updates.

What is my OpenLearn LearningSpace profile and how can I amend it?
Your OpenLearn LearningSpace profile contains the information about yourself you have provided on OpenLearn, which you can share with other registered users. Your profile also contains your personal settings for some aspects of your use of the site e.g. subscribing to forums and the newsletter. To amend your profile, click on your name, which is displayed near the top of each page in the LearningSpace. This will take you to your profile which you can then edit by clicking on the Edit profile tab.

What are forum posts?
If you want to contribute to a LearningSpace forum you will need to complete your message and send it (post it) to the particular forum. A post is a message sent in to a forum, and it can be changed by the writer within a period of thirty minutes of first writing it. If you are registered you will receive email copies of posts written by others. To write and receive posts for any forum you need to be subscribed to the forum. You can say that you don’t want to be emailed copies of posts.

What is a learning journal?
A Learning Journal allows you, as a registered user of OpenLearn, to keep your own personal notes and reflections on the material you’re studying or on your general study experiences. You can choose to keep the notes to yourself, or to share your entries with other people. All your notes will be stored on the OpenLearn site and are always available for you to review, edit or delete. You can find your learning journal in the LearningSpace.

What are ‘tags’?
Tags are words or terms that we have assigned to articles or that other users have assigned to study units in the LearningSpace. You will see them on articles pages, the first page of any LearningSpace study unit and on your learning journal pages. On the LearningSpace, any registered user can add a tag using keywords to describe the content of a study unit or their learning journal entry. The tag will act as a hyperlink enabling users to classify and find content based on keywords that are meaningful to them.

Personal tags from all users are combined in to a community tag cloud, allowing you to see the most popular keywords associated with units. Tags are made public so everyone can view them. You will be able to find all OpenLearn resources tagged with a particular keyword such as “graphs” by clicking on that keyword in the tag cloud.

You may add as many tags as you like to units. Each tag must be one word without spaces. If you want to use several words, replace the spaces with underscores. Each tag word may be up to 20 characters long, and all punctuation other than underscores will be stripped. There are many ways to use tags. Here are some examples:

Find other units with similar tags: Are you a poetry enthusiast? Find a poetry unit that you’ve studied and tag it with the category "poetry." Click on the "poetry" tag you created and see other units that were tagged similarly. Because people's tags are visible to others, you can navigate among units through other people's tags. Add a tag and check out what other items people have tagged as "sociology" or "French" or "computers." Also, you can assign as many tags as you wish to each unit, so tag away!
Organize your learning: Tag units you've studied in the past to organize your learning in any way you wish. Don't like the way OpenLearn has organized its Science and Nature units? Tag the units you care about with the categories that matter to you.
Search tags: You can search for units with a given tag from the home page tag cloud.