Short courses

The Open University offers a range of unaccredited short courses that are ideal for enhancing your knowledge on a particular subject and for continuing professional development.

Ranging from just £150 to £495, these short courses are perfect if you want to:

• learn informally about a subject for personal interest or professional development
• study with flexible start and completion dates
• learn entirely online and in your own time, at your own pace, but with the support of an expert learning adviser to answer your questions.

Our short courses are non-accredited which means that they do not carry academic credit and cannot therefore be counted towards a qualification.

What can I study?

We offer a wide range of short courses on subjects ranging from health and social care to education, science and business and management. You can find a full A-Z list of our short courses on the Study at the OU website.

Health and social care

We currently offer three short courses in health and social care, all of which focus on improving patient care and practice, addressing culture change and improving your confidence and ability. The courses are:

• Personalisation in health and social care
• Improving end of life care
• Improving dementia care.

OU/UNISON short course initiatives

Anyone can study the OU’s short courses individually, in their own time and at their own pace. However, we are also testing these materials with coordinated UNISON groups, using the best features of our established workplace group models. We will be updating this website with the results of this pilot project in due course, so please check back for progress.