Expand the mind this New Year with free learning from OpenLearn

Whatever the interest, OpenLearn is likely to have a short free course on the subject and they’re not all the traditional academic subjects one might expect.

Some of them aren’t courses at all but interesting topics that might take you less than 30 minutes to dip into, such as Do you have a photographic memory? or The Science of Fear.

But if you wanted to take your learning further check out the free courses that span from a few hours to 24. Just visit www.open.edu/openlearn

Gain a digital badge, as proof of learning

Some of the most popular longer length courses, where there is a test at the end to qualify for a Digital Badge, remain Understanding Autism, Understanding ADHD and Everyday English.

Digital badges are a great way to help learners decide if they want to enrol on a formal qualification, as well as just learning for fun. Between January and November in 2024, OpenLearn issued almost 50,000 digital badges of completion.

In the same period, there was a total of 1.08 million course enrolments and 3.7 million viewers of OpenLearn’s YouTube channel.

This year, the top most-viewed YouTube content was that of The Silver Bridge disaster – the bridge spanning the Ohio River in West Virginia that collapsed in 1967 – and the engineering explanations behind why it failed and crashed into the river within one minute causing the loss of 46 lives.

Check out OpenLearn’s educational hubs: Elective home education; Sport and fitness; Design; Religion, belief and worldviews; Crime Fiction Collection and Headstart classical studies.

For those who’ve polished off the leftover mince pies why not devour some free learning this New Year.