Online courses directory (801)

This Physical Education course continues our free online Phys Ed training. The course outlines the various coaching styles and techniques, influences on fitness, motivational factors, injuries, sports psychology and the role of the coach. The free online course will be of interest to physical education teachers, students studying for a qualification in health or fitness, trainers or managers in fitness, health or sports related activities, and any sports man or woman interested in coaching styles and techniques. <br />

This Physical Education (PE or Phys Ed) course offers a comprehensive introduction to the topic and investigates the basics: from muscle response to the physiology, biology, and the science of sports. It covers the scientific basis of fitness and concludes with training principals and methods. It is an ideal course for those studying for a qualification in health or fitness or for sports enthusiasts. It is also an excellent resource for trainers or managers in fitness, health or sports related activities. <br />

The free online course Physical Fitness - Fitness Tips and Workout Routines has been designed to teach you how to improve your physical health and well-being. The course will introduce you to the theoretical apsects of physical fitness and provide you with practical workouts that can help you develop and maintain it. Obesity is becoming a global epidemic in developed countries across the world and is associated with many chronic diseases such as diabetes, heart disease and some forms of cancer. Research has consistently proven that maintaining a high level of physical activity and fitness can have significant benefits on many aspects of your life including your physical health and mental health. The course begins by introducing you to the basics of exercise physiology – the branch of science which studies how the body responds and adapts to physical exercise. Firstly, you will be introduced to definitions and terminology that are central to exercise physiology. This will help you obtain a strong grounding in the subject and benefit your learning throughout the course. You will then study the cardiovascular system and the skeletal muscular system. You will learn how the cardiovascular system functions and how the heart supplies oxygen-rich blood to the active skeletal muscles during exercise. Finally, you will examine various activities and workouts that have been shown to increase cardiovascular fitness. This course will be of great interest to professionals who work in the health and fitness industry and to anyone who wants to learn more about improving their physical fitness. <br />

The free online course Physical Fitness - How to Avoid Injuries and Train Safely is designed to show you how to train safely in challenging environments, how to prevent and treat a range of injuries and what effects performance enhancing substances can have on your health. The course begins by focusing on three specific environments in which it is difficult to safely train: extreme heat, extreme cold and high altitude. You will learn the necessary precautions that must be taken in order to ensure that you stay safe in each environment. First you will learn how the body adapts to protect itself in each environment, next you will study the external factors that can make it difficult for your body to adapt to each environment and to conclude you will study a range of conditions that can be acquired from failing to take the necessary precautions to remain safe in each environment. The course then continues to examine something which individuals who regularly engage in physical training will experience, namely, injuries. You will learn how to identify common indicators of injury such as swelling, inflammation and reduced range of motion. Next, you will study the most common injuries that are experienced by those who engage in regular physical activity. Finally, you will learn how to prevent and treat a range of injuries including fractures, sprains and shin splints. The course concludes by examining the effects performance enhancing substances such as anabolic steroids can have on your body. You will study both the positive and negative effects of anabolic steroids and examine the legal implications of taking them. You will also examine a range of other performance enhancing substances including human growth hormone, erythropoietin and ephedrine. You will learn about the effects that they can have on your overall performance and long-term health. This course will be of great interest to anyone who wishes to gain a greater insight into the necessary steps that must be taken to remain safe while training. The course will also be of interest to professionals who work in the health and fitness industry or individuals who may be interested in pursuing a career in the health and fitness.<br />

Using vectors to study motion is a fundamental skill to have when studying physics. Vector quantities used to describe the physical world include displacement, velocity, acceleration, and force. In this free online physics course the standard way to represent vectors and their axes as well as unit vector notation are explained in a clear and step-by-step manner. Examples show how to work out the angle or distance necessary to get the desired displacement. Using two known variables you will learn how to work through the process of calculating the remaining value, such as time in air or horizontal displacement using a variety of techniques. This free online physics course will be of great interest to students who are studying physics, chemistry, engineering, mathematics, and to students who wish to pursue a career in any of the sciences or engineering fields, and even the sportsperson who wants to plan for a specific outcome when hitting a golf ball or batting a ball.<br />

Gravity is the force that keeps us on the ground and understanding how gravity works is very important as it has a great influence on the upward and downward movement of objects. This free online course about gravity will explain Newton’s Second Law of Motion, the universal constant, which is used to work out the force of gravity throughout the universe. You will also learn what the effect of the earth's force of gravity, or little g as it is known, has on an object and why mass is not the same as weight. To fully understand gravity this course will take you step-by-step through the relevant formulas, showing you how to calculate velocity or distance based on time and then plot these changes so you will have a visual concept of what is happening. This course will be of great interest to students who are studying physics, chemistry, engineering, mathematics, and to students who wish to pursue a career in any of the sciences or engineering fields.<br />

Calculating change in motion is a very important concept to master in physics. When change happens in one dimension it is relatively easy to calculate the variable. However, change rarely happens in just one direction so you need to learn how to manage more than one variable. This free online physics course explains how to visually represent each change in a dimension as a vector so that it can be easily understood. You will learn how to add two vectors together and calculate all the relevant information for the resulting third vector. Working through various examples, including different elevations and inclines, you will learn how to solve for any variable through the use of the right-angled triangle and then use trigonometry and quadratic equations to calculate the relevant variables. This free online physics course will be of great interest to students who are studying physics, chemistry, engineering and mathematics and to any individual who wants to learn more about the movement of objects in two dimensions.<br />

In physics the study of movement and the motion of objects is called kinematics and is a branch of mechanics. The study of the motion of objects focuses on topics such as acceleration, position and velocity. In this free online course you will investigate the movement of objects by looking at the real-world application of kinematics. You will see how to answer interesting questions such as what distance does the Airbus A380 need for take-off, how long it takes for an FA-18 Hornet to take off from an aircraft carrier, and do race cars accelerate when cornering even if travelling at a constant speed. The course will walk you through a number of formulae, demystifying them by explaining and rearranging them in a clear and easy to understand way. This course will be of great interest to students who are studying physics, chemistry, engineering and mathematics, to students who wish to pursue a career in any of the sciences or engineering fields, and to the learner who wants to see how science can answer real-world questions.<br />

Motion, speed and time are three fundamental concepts in basic physics and they are important building blocks for understanding more advanced topics. This free online course introduces you to how distance, speed, time and mass are combined to give displacement, velocity, force and acceleration. Newton’s 3 Laws of Motion, which are the bedrock of much of our understanding of physics today, are also introduced and explained in a clear and concise manner. Along with explanations of the formulae used, a number of examples are worked through, giving a full understanding of the subject. References are also made as to how these formulae are used in real-world situations. By studying this course you will gain a clearer knowledge and understanding of important topics in basic physics. This course will be of great interest to students who are studying physics, chemistry, engineering, mathematics and some medical sciences, and to students who wish to pursue a career in any of the sciences or engineering fields, and to the individual who wants to understand how the world around us works.<br />

Understanding the concept of force and the effects various forces have on objects are very important topics in physics. For example, when you try to move a heavy object it takes more effort to get it moving than to keep it moving because of gravity and the different types of friction involved. In this free online physics course you will learn more about the force of gravity and its counterpart the normal force, and why some objects do not move even when they are on a slope. The force of friction is also discussed, including static and kinetic types, and as friction is dependent on types of the materials involved the course also looks at the coefficient of static friction relative to kinetic friction. Examples of each type of force are worked through giving the learner a clear insight into how forces work together and how to calculate their respective values. This free online physics course will be of great interest to students who are studying physics, chemistry, engineering and mathematics, to students who wish to pursue a career in any of the sciences or engineering fields, and to anybody wanting to understand the dynamics of moving objects on specific surfaces.<br />

This free online course is an introduction to the skills and techniques needed to record and publish podcasts to the Web. This course covers using Audacity to record and edit podcasts, and how to create an online account with Podomatic to publish podcasts to the Web. Russell Stannard, an award-winning lecturer from the University of Warick, describes the use of these podcasting tools in a non-technical and step-by-step manner. The course is ideal for those who've always wanted to record and publish podcasts to the Web but lack the skills or knowledge to do it.<br />

When learning a new language an important first step is to learn the rules of grammar that allow people express what they want to say and understand what others are saying in a coherent manner. An equally important second step is to practise using the rules of grammar to become proficient in communicating in the language. In this free online English language course you will get to practise using important rules of grammar that will greatly improve your ability to communicate in both spoken and written English. You will practise the use of tenses such as the present continuous, past perfect, past simple, present perfect continuous and past perfect continuous to improve your ability to communicate. You will also practise and learn how to use superlatives and comparatives, and practise using reported speech. This free online English language course will be of great interest to all learners who have studied previous English language courses on ALISON such as 'Fundamentals of English Grammar' and 'Introduction to Conversational English', and who now want to further practise and improve their ability to communicate confidently in English.<br />

Sustainable development is defined by the United Nations as ‘development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’. Sustainable development is the concern for both the present and the future inhabitants of the planet as a whole. This course will explain what sustainable development is and how the ecological, economic and social aspects of sustainable development overlap. The course also explains how systems practise can help manage complexity in the area of sustainable development and you will examine case studies which look at aspects of sustainable development in China and Scotland. This course will be of great interest to professionals who work in the areas of international development, sustainability or environmental science, to students who are pursuing a career in the areas of international development and sustainability, and to anyone with an interest in the ecological, economic and social aspects of sustainable development.<br />

This free online course in Pre-Algebra mathematics for high school students will guide you through several different areas of mathematics such as integers, one-step equations, inequalities and equations, graphs and functions, percent, probabilities. There is also an introduction into geometry and right triangles. The course is divided into twelve modules and each module is divided into several lessons. Under each lesson you will find theory, examples and video lessons. This course is ideal for learners who want to gain a comprehensive knowledge and understanding of topics in pre-algebra which they can build on in later courses.

Google Analytics is a free software application available from Google that helps run websites more effectively and efficiently. It shows how visitors find and use websites so that informed website design and content decisions can be made. It can improve website performance to convert more site visitors into customers, track the performance of keywords, banner ads and other marketing campaigns, and track metrics such as revenue, average order value and e-commerce conversion rates. This free online course will help with training for the Google Analytics Individual Qualification test. The course covers topics such as installing the Google Analytics tracking code, analysing traffic sources, implementing campaign tracking and AdWords integration, e-commerce tracking, internal site searching and other topics. This course will be of great interest to learners who are preparing for the Google Analytics Individual Qualification test, and to IT professionals and business professionals who are interested in using the power of Google Analytics to greatly improve the efficiency and effectiveness of websites.<br />

Successful business management practices implemented by skilled and knowledgeable managers are vital for the continued success and growth of any business. This free online course introduces you to essential business management skills and practices. The course starts by asking what management is, and reviews managerial characteristics and skills. The course covers topics such as managing external relationships such as with customers and suppliers. It introduces management accounting practices and procedures, best practices for managing and using information systems, how to manage information about business competitors, and best practices for human resources management in terms of selecting, training and appraising employees. This course is ideal for business professionals who are working in established companies and who want to prove a basic competency and knowledge of business management matters, and also to learn more about successful business management skills and practices.<br />

This free online course introduces you to the mathematics of probability, chance and the analysis of data. The course begins by introducing data collection and analysis, graphs and frequency distribution. The course examines chance in the context of gambling, odds and probability. The course is of interest to anybody who needs to analyse mathematical data and is particularly valuable to students studying for exams.

Product design is the process whereby product designers conceptualize and evaluate ideas before turning them into products ready to be sold by a business to its customers. This free online course introduces the principles and concepts of product design. You will learn about heuristic problem-solving, the usefulness of design models, taking the design from concept to prototype, and understanding the product design specification. The free course also looks at case studies in design and innovation. It will be of great interest to design and business professionals who would like to learn more about product design and its role in business development, and to learners who are interested in how products are designed. As new technologies emerge that give more and more people access to capability within the area of product design, understanding the basic theory of product design might be a great first step to an interesting new career!<br />

In the free online course Programming Concepts with Python you will learn about programming concepts using the Python programming language. You will learn how to display text on screen and about reading user input into your program. You will also learn about creating variables and manipulating them using functions. You will learn that everyone makes mistakes when programming and you are shown solutions to help you find and fix those mistakes.<br /><br />The course begins by introducing you to what programming is and the possibilities of what you can create with programming. You will learn about the advantages of using Python to start learning how to program and you will be introduced to creating a Python project in Visual Studio. <br /><br />Next, the course teaches you about displaying text on screen using the print function. You will learn about the different variation of quotes that Python uses to contain your text, and how to get the user to input data. The course then introduces you to variables, what they are and how to create them. You will learn about manipulating variables using built-in functions. Finally, you will learn about Visual Studio's built-in feature called IntelliSense and its features and functions that will help you with your programming.<br /><br />This free Alison course will be of great interest to all learners who would like to learn about programming concepts and how to write their own programs using the Python programming language.<br />

The free online course Project Management - Project Feasibility and Life Cycle explains what a project is and how the roles and phases within a project are broken down. It also describes the process of evaluating projects in the early stages and the decision making processes used to determine whether or not a project should proceed. The course begins by introducing to you how a project comes into being, starting with an explanation of what a project is and how it results from ideas, responses to problems and planning. It also looks at the role and influence of the key players that will be involved in the project. The course then looks at how feasibility studies are carried out, and in particular reviews how technical, social, political, environmental and financial feasibility studies are explored and assessed. You will also learn about decision making tools covering the financial returns and risks associated with the project which allow management accept or reject a project. You will be shown the various ways of organising the life cycles of projects and what the project manager's job consists of. The final section of the course looks at the issues and challenges specific to software development projects, how these differ from other types of projects and the evolving methods being used in this sector. This free course will be of great interest to professionals working in the area of project management who would like to learn more about project feasibility and project life cycles. The course will also be of interest to learners who may be involved in getting a project approved or who are working on any stage of the project life cycle.<br />