Online courses directory (801)

Tom Kelley is the highly respected general manager of IDEO, a firm that helps its clients create innovative products, services and environments. He is also the author of best-selling books on creativity. <br /><br />In ALISON's free online course about achieving personal success, Kelley starts by explaining how achieving personal success depends on implementing good, healthy mental habits. The course explains how you should treat life as an experiment, how you should be willing to fail and learn from your mistakes. Kelley advises that you should have confidence in what you know well, but realize that you have a lot more to learn and that you must keep yourself learning at all times. You will also learn about using your whole brain and how you should make the most of opportunities to use the right side of the brain. <br /><br />This course will appeal to all working professionals in businesses and organizations, and students who want to gain greater knowledge and understanding about achieving personal success.<br />

This free online learning course introduces the learner to the basic principles of Psychology from both a behavioural and biological perspective. The topics include classical and operant conditioning, the brain and the nervous system, stress and states of consciousness. All ALISON graduates are entitled to certification. This free Psychology course is an excellent complement to face-to-face classes and as a study guide or for those who would like to familiarise themselves with the fundamentals of Psychology.<br />

The Diploma in English Language and Literature gives you the opportunity to gain comprehensive knowledge and understanding of important aspects of English language and literature. It is ideal for people who have always wanted to study English language and literature in greater detail, as well as learners who are studying English as a second language.<br /><br />The English language modules cover the fundamentals of grammar, effective speaking, and writing skills.<br /><br />The English literature modules analyze literature with an emphasis on renowned authors and poets, such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Arthur Miller and William Shakespeare.<br /><br />A qualification in this free online diploma course is the ideal way of demonstrating your proficiency in the English language.<br />

ALISON ABC IT is a free online self-certifiable information technology (IT) course which comprehensively introduces you to IT literacy. ABC IT covers the basic concepts of computing and teaches how computing can be an everyday feature of life and work. It covers basic Microsoft Office computer applications and touch typing training.<br />

This free online course shows you how to use the online mind mapping tool bubbl.us. A mind map is a diagram used to represent words, ideas, tasks, or other items linked to and arranged around a central key word or idea. Mind maps are used to generate, visualize, structure, and classify ideas, and as an aid to studying and organizing information, solving problems, making decisions, and writing. This course is ideal for learners who want to use a mind mapping tool such as bubbl.us but lack the skills or knowledge to do so.<br />

Financial funds are a very important topic to understand in the area of financial economics. The terms hedge funds, open ended funds and mutual funds are often mentioned in the business and financial media and during interviews with traders, investors and fund managers. But what are hedge funds, open ended funds and mutual funds all about? This free online financial funds course will explain in clear and precise terms what is involved in the main financial funds. You will learn that hedge funds are typically open ended funds invested in a diverse range of assets. Open and close ended funds are straight forward in that one is open to shareholders buying and selling their shares whereas the other is closed and once you buy in you cannot leave unless you personally trade your share. Hedge funds are more dynamic in nature, but are not sold to the public. Since the introduction of new legislation in the US in 2008 due to the credit crisis you will learn why the US government will now play a more active role in how hedge funds are managed and regulated. This free online financial funds course will be of interest to professionals in business and finance, and to financial, business and economic students who want a clearer understanding of the role of funds in financial economics.<br />

If you have studied the Introduction to Programming in C course available on ALISON it is now time to further enhance your C programming skills by studying numbers, variables and arrays and the functionality they have in computer programming. In this free online C programming course you will gain a much greater knowledge and understanding of numbers, variables and arrays. You will learn more about the basics of numeric overflow and how numbers are encoded as characters in ASCII. You will learn more about variables and the connection between function return values and variables. You will also review the use of arrays and pointers, how to create a pointer in C, and assign a value to a pointer. This free online C programming course will be of great interest to IT professionals who want to enhance their knowledge and understanding of the C programming language and its functionality, and to those learners who want to follow on from the Introduction to Programming in C course.<br />

Touch typing is a skill that will serve you for a lifetime. Develop your keyboard skills and save yourself hours with this free online course from ALISON, which will improve your typing speed and accuracy.<br /><br />ALISON's Touch Typing Training includes typing tests, which will help you to work effectively and efficiently, increasing your productivity at work and home.<br />

PHP is a widely used programming language which works on the principal of server side scripting to produce dynamic Web pages. It can be easily integrated with HTML and SQL to produce these dynamic web pages, and is often used to process the contents of a Web page form as it is more secure and reliable than JavaScript. This free online PHP programming course gives an overview of how PHP programming works in the Web environment and you will learn what certain commands and lines of code infer within a .php file and review the resultant effect on client side machines. MySQL is an open-source relational database management system which uses structured query language requests for working with data. You will learn how PHP can be combined with MySQL to create a very powerful online database engine. This free online PHP programming course will be of great interest to IT and Web development professionals who would like to learn more about using PHP and MySQL to integrate database functions into Websites, and to learners who would like to learn more about the functionality of PHP and MySQL.<br />

This free online training explores complex numbers and equations, polynomial equations, conics, advanced trigonometry, differentiation, antiderivatives, and vectors in 2- and 3-space. This course is both an ideal study-aid for students to improve their skills in their spare time or for anyone interested in exploring the world of mathematics.

<p>This free online course offers a comprehensive review of English grammar and is ideal for those already fluent in English who want to improve their writing skills, as well as their spoken English. </p> <p>It examines spelling, grammar and punctuation including commas, colons, adverbs and prepositions, meaning you will be able to write English more confidently – enhancing both your personal and professional skills. </p>

Yahoo is a very popular Web site but, with strong competition for products and services coming from others like Google and Facebook, Yahoo as an organisation faces severe challenges in being more competitive in the advertising market. In this free online course Sue Decker, the CEO of Yahoo from 2008 to 2009, discusses how the founders of Yahoo focused on the needs of its customers by developing a hierarchal database structure for faster and more efficient searches making life easier for the customer. The course also looks at how internal structuring of the sales force was implemented to improve customer service, where the gap in monetising search queries between it and Google occurred, and recent acquisition proposals. This course will be of interest to advertising, business, marketing professionals and entrepreneurs who have an interest in how an online Web company uses its customer base as a business model.<br />

Over 600 million people have used Google Earth to explore the world around them. You can view the highest mountains, the depths of the ocean, the tallest buildings and the busiest cities. You can zoom in and out of this stunning imagery, tilt your view and share these views with your friends. In this course you will learn exactly how to use Google Earth and experience its stunning 3D imagery and terrain. You will explore the global seafloor and view cities in 3D. This course explains how you can easily build 3D models yourself of the places that are important to you. You will see how Google Earth has been used to improve life for slum dwellers in India. You will examine how Google Earth is helping the US forest service to save lives, property and resources. You will also watch an example of a flight path using the track feature in Google Earth. This course will be of interest to learners who would like to learn more about Google Earth and its features in more detail. More than anything, this course is simply a lot of fun - for just yourself or your family!<br />

Silicon Valley is an area located near San Francisco in California that is the headquarters for many world leading high-tech companies such as Apple, Google, Adobe Systems, eBay and Cisco to name just a few. Why has Silicon Valley this concentration of world-class companies? In this free online course John Roos of Wilson and Sonsini discusses what Silicon Valley stands for and why today it attracts so many leading entrepreneurs in technology, life sciences and high-potential start-up companies. The course reviews the core values upon which the success of Silicon Valley is based and which companies located there still value so highly today. John Roos talks about the key skills in finance, business, IT and law found in Silicon Valley that can turn a company from a start-up into a billion dollar company within a matter of years. He talks about the importance of taking a risk in business, and why not being willing to do so is a failure to begin with. This course will be of interest to all entrepreneurs and professionals in business, finance and IT who would like to know what factors are found in Silicon Valley that allow it produce so many world-class companies and perhaps how similar successful locations can be established elsewhere.<br />

Vast quantities of data and information appear on the web every year. This data takes on a wide variety of forms such as text, images, video, code and statistics to name just a few. Data and information can also be multi-lingual and dynamic in that, for example, blogs and wikis are being constantly updated and modified. Companies like Google spend millions of dollars trying to continuously improve human-computer information retrieval methods so that the information obtained from a search is relevant. This is now considered to be one of the most important areas in web development. This free online human-computer information retrieval course shows how modern search techniques integrate information retrieval methods with human-computer interaction studies so that data and information are represented in such a way that leads the user quickly and efficiently to relevant results. In this course you will learn about techniques associated with human-computer information retrieval such as spelling suggestions and automatic query reformulation which puts control of selection and interpretation in the user’s hands. Faceted search enables users to navigate information hierarchically, going from a category to its sub-categories, while ‘lookahead’ provides a general approach to exploration. For example, various web applications employ AJAX to automatically complete query terms and suggest popular searches. This free online human-computer information retrieval course will be of great interest to all IT professionals who would like a greater knowledge and understanding of human-computer information retrieval methods, and to all learners who would like to learn more about how data and information are accessed by search engines.<br />

This free interactive online business course covers entrepreneurship. Taking as its inspiration the book: &quot;Stone Soup - The Secret Recipe for Making Something from Nothing&quot;, this course takes you through the 26 ingredients needed. This course not only brings you a flavour of the book, it also provides a profile of the successful entrepreneur/venture founder. <br />

Statistics and statistical methods play a major role in the work environment in areas such as business, science, finance, economics, engineering to mention just a few. It is very important that people are comfortable with reading statistics and using statistical methods. This free online Diploma in Statistics will give you the knowledge and understanding of basic statistical methods such as sampling and collecting data, probability, distributions, regression analysis. By completing this course you will gain the knowledge and understanding to confidently read statistics and apply statistical methods within your daily working environment.

Instructional Systems Design is the process of designing and developing instructional courses or materials that bring greater efficiency and effectiveness to acquiring knowledge or skills for learners. This free online course in Instructional Systems Design reviews important aspects such as learning theories and learning objectives and how they influence the design process. It also reviews the role of memory, needs analysis, and design models such as ADDIE (Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation). Robert Gagne's Nine Events of Instruction are also discussed with examples of their application and use. Finally, learning technologies and how they are used to deliver training are reviewed, as well as techniques for measuring and evaluating the effectiveness of the instructional materials. This course will be of great interest to all human resources, teaching and training professionals who are involved in training, instructional design and e-learning, and who would like to learn more about important aspects of instructional systems design and their use and application in designing and developing highly effective instructional materials or courses.<br />

The recent financial credit crisis in America has profoundly affected not just the American economy but the global economy as a whole. The American economy is showing some signs of recovery recently but the standard of living for many Americans has decreased and will take several years to recover. This free online course reviews how the credit crisis started in America. The course will discuss how credit loans in America became easier to obtain, and how many people funded their lifestyle changes through these cheap credit loans. This in turn led to a housing bubble and when this housing bubble burst it adversely affected the wealth of many American citizens. The free course also reviews how the American government responded to the credit crisis by examining the bailout schemes for the American banking system implemented first by Hank Paulson and later by Timothy Geithner. This course will be of interest to all professionals in the housing, banking, finance and political sectors who would like to learn more about how the American financial credit crisis started and what its repercussions are, and to all learners who would like to understand the key factors which brought about the credit crisis and why it has adversely affected so many lives.<br />

In the current difficult economic times businesses need to take advantage of every opportunity to maximise their marketing presence to as many potential customers as is possible. The most efficient way of doing this is to implement a highly effective online marketing strategy. However, many businesses, especially small businesses, struggle to implement any kind of online marketing as they do not have the expertise. This free online course will help all business owners increase their knowledge and understanding of what online marketing involves and how to go about implementing a successful online marketing strategy. The course will show you how to build an online marketing plan, promote your business online, and improve your Website landing page for greater customer conversion rates. The course then shows you in detail how to use Google marketing tools such as Google Analytics and Google AdWords to implement your online marketing strategy. You will learn how to set up a Google AdWords account, how to write ads that attract customers, how to choose the right keywords, and budget for your online advertising. This course will be of great interest to all business owners who lack the knowledge and expertise to implement an online marketing strategy but who recognise the importance of having an effective online marketing plan for the continued success of their business. <br />