Online courses directory (801)

Modern Project Management – Managing Quality Control, Risk, Procurement and Project Closeout is the last in a series of free online courses designed for anyone who wants to learn about contemporary project management. This course is broken down into four key areas: how to implement the appropriate quality control procedures throughout the project life-cycle, how to assess risks to the project, how to set up and run an efficient and effective project procurement system, and finally how to close out the project successfully. The course shows learners why rigourous implementation of quality control is a very important aspect of project management. Both the project manager and the project team must implement a quality control system that inspects all outputs from the project processes and procedures, and ensure that they are aligned with the project scope. The quality control system must also ensure that the project management system itself is performed to a high standard and is audited and adjusted as required. The course also describes why the project manager and the project team must be risk aware - They must be capable of identifying and quantifying the known risks, and then deciding what mitigating strategy to use for each. As project phases are completed new risks will emerge and the project team must ensure that the risk plan and contingency funding are kept up to date. The course explains how the project manager also has to oversee the procurement process where goods and services are sourced from third parties. The project manager must ensure that the relevant contracts with suppliers are in place and that each supplier meets all the necessary requirements. The final part of the course explains how a project manager oversees the successful closure of a project, from gathering all the key statistics and summarising them, to closing out the supplier contracts, and archiving all the key documents. Possibly the most important part of project closure is the post-project review where the lessons learned are identified for the future. This is usually followed by the end of project celebration where the effort of the project team is acknowledged and rewarded. This course will be of great interest to project management professionals who would like to learn more about managing quality control, risk, procurement and project closeout. It will also be of interest to learners who would like a career in project management or learners who just want to be able to manage personal projects more effectively.<br />

This course is for students interested in studying the Project Maths Higher Level Course in its entirety. This free online course provides students with videos on all the Higher Level topics in one location listed by module and topic. In addition, a comprehensive assessment is provided which tests learners on the entire content of the Project Maths Higher Level Syllabus. These topics include Probability and Statistics, Geometry and Trigonometry, Numbers and Shapes, Algebra, Functions and Calculus.<br />

This course is for students interested in studying the Project Maths Ordinary Level Course in its entirety. This free online course provides students with videos on all the Ordinary Level topics in one location listed by module and topic. In addition, a comprehensive assessment is provided which tests learners on the entire content of the Project Maths Ordinary Level Syllabus. These topics include Probability and Statistics, Geometry and Trigonometry, Numbers and Shapes, Algebra, Functions and Calculus.<br />

Identity theft is an increasingly common crime. The term 'identity theft' refers to criminals obtaining information about you or your customers that can then be used to make purchases or enter into contracts in your name or in your customers' names. Identity theft can result in direct financial loss, damage to credit ratings, difficulty getting loans and credit cards, and months of reorganising financial accounts. Identity theft isn't only carried out through computers and the Internet, other methods include retrieving unshredded documents from rubbish bins or bags and criminals contacting you directly and pretending to be from a legitimate organisation in order to obtain personal data. Fortunately there are many preventative measures you can take to substantially reduce the chance of your identity being stolen. This course will show you the steps you can take to minimize damage if you become a victim of this crime. This course will give you the tools to protect yourself and your staff by highlighting the issues around identity theft. This free course will be of great interest to all learners who would like to protect both themselves and their businesses from the damaging effects of identity theft.<br /><br />

This free online course Psychology - Development of Its Major Areas, Methods and Schools of Thought will give you an overview of psychology and its history, showing many reasons why someone may choose to study psychology in greater detail. <br /><br />The course begins by discussing why people may choose to study psychology as a subject. You will learn how studying psychology can benefit you in many different areas. You will then be introduced to the divisions of the American Psychological Association and what areas related to psychology that they focus on. You will also learn about different fields of psychology including emerging fields that are becoming more prevalent. You will learn about the major milestones that have been made in psychology, going from hundreds of years ago, until the modern day. <br /><br />Next, you will be introduced to different methods and tools that can be used in psychology research. You will learn about a range of different schools of thought in psychology that have been popular in the past and the different people that popularized them. These include experimental psychology, structuralism, functionalism and behaviorism among others.<br /><br />This free course will be of great interest to those who are interested in studying psychology and would like an overview of psychology and its history.

In the free online course Psychology – Perceiving the World Around You learn about the psychology of perception which is the process of recognizing and interpreting sensory stimuli. The course begins by introducing you to the process of sensation that leads to perception. You will learn about various sensory mechanisms such as visual, auditory, olfactory etc. You will learn about external factors and psychophysical concepts that play a role in perceptual processes. You will also learn about the figure ground relationship and the theory of signal detection and its application in everyday life. <br /><br />Next, you will be introduced to the Gestalt Principles and learn about how their aid in the perceptual process. You will learn about form perception which includes monocular and binocular cues. You will also learn about how culture can influence our perception and distortions in perception. <br /><br />This free course will be of great interest to those who are interested in learning about how people perceive the world. <br />

This second free course continues the introduction to Psychology. This free learning course approaches the topic from a ‘cognitive’ angle. This perspective likens the mind to an information-processing computer and uses the computer metaphor to examine complex human functions such as visual perception and memory. This online course is suitable for revising, exam preparation, and for those who often wondered how humans engage in complex mental functions!<br />

This third and final Psychology course examines experimentation and report writing in a Psychology context. This free learning course outlines protocols for experimentation in Psychology including how to structure and conduct experiments, how to interpret results and how to report findings. This course is ideal for students looking to enhance their knowledge of research methods or those who would like to acquaint themselves with psychological experimentation.<br />

The free online course Public Relations: Best Practices and Ethics guides you in a step-by-step manner through the best practices and ethics necessary for excellence in public relations.<br /><br />The course begins by walking you through the RACE process in public relations. In particular you will learn about conducting Research, strategic Action planning, Communication implementation, and Evaluating your results. These are all steps which will help you to implement the RACE system in your everyday working practices.<br /><br />You will then be introduced to the best practices in public relations which will help you to identify the different areas included in the field, as well as helping you understand the functions of each. To help you see how these best practices can be applied in the real world you will review case studies of the practices in action.<br /><br />Next, you will learn about the importance of ethics, moral analysis, and leadership in public relations, and their potential impact on your PR strategy. To do so you will explore the theory behind each area, and further examine the real life impacts which a good implementation of these practices can have on your company. Finally, you will look at the best practices of public relations. These best practices are vital to developing and maintaining excellent public relations within any organization. <br /><br />This free online course will be of great interest to learners who work in the area of PR and communications, and would like to learn more about excellence in PR. It is also be of interest to learners who would like to learn more about the best practices and ethics that drive PR, while also looking at examples of excellent PR in action. <br />

The free online course Public Relations: Optimize Systems Theory and Stakeholder Management Practices guides you in a step-by-step manner through the organizational principles, stakeholder prioritization, and research practices of modern public relations. <br /><br />This course begins by walking you through the organizational theory surrounding public relations. In particular this free course will look at organizational factors and structures, two areas vital in helping you to achieve excellent PR. The course also helps you to explore two of the main approaches used in PR today; the Systems Theory Approach, and the Stakeholder Management Approach.<br /><br />You will be introduced to methods that will help you to identify and prioritize stakeholders and publics, as well as helping you learn how to manage different stakeholders. To help you understand more about stakeholders and publics the Situational Theory of Publics, and the Contingency Approach to PR Strategy will also be discussed in detail. Finally, you will be walked through a case study that is aimed at helping you understand the real life applications and benefits of effective stakeholder management. <br /><br />You will learn about the importance of research in public relations, and its impact on your PR strategy. To do so you will explore the importance, purpose and forms of research. You will then build on this knowledge by learning about the different types of research.<br /><br />This free online course will be of great interest to you if you work in the area of PR and communications, and would like to learn more about effective PR. It will also be of interest to learners who would like to learn more about the organizational and research theory that drives PR, while simultaneously learning how to manage the stakeholders in your organization. <br /><br />This free Public Relations course will also be of interest to you if you would like to learn more about the optimization of PR within the modern business environment.

In this free online course Python Programming - Working with Complex Decisions and Events you will learn about creating and using if statements, and checking multiple conditions using elif statements. You will also learn about creating and using for loops and while loops, and the mistakes that can happen when creating and using loops.<br /><br />The course begins by introducing you to if statements which are used to check conditions and make decisions with your code. You will learn about the constraints when checking your if statements, different ways to write an if statement and using the else statement for when the if statement in not true. You will learn about adding an if statement to check multiple conditions with the elif statement. You will also learn how to order elif and if statements for your code to work correctly, and how to combine conditions with the logic operators and &amp; or.<br /><br />Next, you will learn about loops and how to create a for loop. You will learn about nesting loops in loops and using a variable as the condition in the loop. You will learn about accessing the loop values and manually assigning values for each step in the loop. <br /><br />Finally, you will learn about creating and constructing while loops. You will learn about how a while loop functions. You will learn the difference between using a for and while loop as well as mistakes that can happen when you use loops in your code.<br /><br />This free Alison course will be of great interest to those learners who wish to get started in programming and improve their ability to write programs using the Python programming language.<br /><br />Prerequisites: You should have completed the previous two courses on programming with Python: 'Programming Concepts with Python' and 'Python Programming - Working with Numbers, Dates and Time'.<br />

In this free online course Python Programming - Working with Functions and Handling Errors you will learn about functions, how to create your own functions and how to use them. You will also learn about errors that can occur in your code. You will learn about using the try/ except statement to handle potential errors.<br /><br />The course begins by introducing you to functions and you will learn how to create your own functions and how to pass parameters into your functions.<br /><br />Next, you will learn about what type of errors you can get and about different methods for handling errors. You will learn about using the try/except statement to test pieces of code that may cause an error.<br /><br />This free Alison course will be of great interest to those learners who wish to get started in programming and improve their ability to write programs using the Python programming language.<br /><br />Prerequisites: You will need to have completed the previous courses on programming with Python: 'Programming Concepts with Python', 'Python Programming - Working with Numbers, Dates and Time', 'Python Programming - Working with Complex Decisions and Events' and 'Python Programming - Working with Lists and Files'.<br />

In this free online course Python Programming - Working with Lists and Files you will learn about creating and modifying lists, creating files and saving data to those files. You will also learn about reading data form files along with what csv files are and getting data from them.<br /><br />The course begins by introducing you to lists. You will learn about creating lists, both empty lists and lists with values in them. You will learn about how to add data to your lists, updating and deleting items on your list, and searching through your lists.<br /><br />Next, you will learn how to create a file with your code, and how to write data to your file. You will learn how to close the file after your code is finished using it. You will also learn what csv files are, and the process of opening and reading data from files. You will learn about importing the csv library to help with reading data from csv files, and about taking the data from your csv file and putting it in a list.<br /><br />This free Alison course will be of great interest to those learners who wish to get started in programming and improve their ability to write programs using the Python programming language.<br /><br />Perquisites: Your will need to have completed the previous courses on programming with Python: 'Programming Concepts with Python', 'Python Programming - Working with Numbers, Dates and Time' and 'Python Programming Working with Complex Decisions and Events'.

In this free online course Python Programming - Working with Numbers, Dates and Time you will introduced to mathematical operations, converting variable types and using dates in and time in your code.<br /><br />The course begins by introducing you to storing numeric variables in your code. You learn about the difference between creating a numeric variable compared to creating a string. You will learn about preforming mathematical operations in your code, and formatting your numbers and printing them on screen. You will also learn about getting the user to input numbers and converting that input to work with your numeric variables and mathematical operations. <br /><br />Next, you will learn about working with dates and time. You will learn about importing libraries into your project so you can use their functions and methods. You will learn about obtaining and displaying today's date. You will learn how to format your dates and the different date formats to display the dates. You will learn about the functions which are included in the Datetime library and converting user input to a date format. You will learn about working with time and how it uses many of the same functions dates would but with specific parameters for time.<br /><br />This free Alison course will be of great interest to those learners who wish to get started in programming and improve their ability to write programs using the Python programming language.<br /><br />Prerequisites: You should have completed previous course in this series: Introduction to Programming with Python.

The free online course R for Data Analysis will introduce you to data manipulation in R programming. You will learn about manipulating data and grouping it to prepare the data. You will also learn how to take data you prepared and present it on visualizations.<br /><br />The course begins by introducing you to data manipulation. You will learn what data manipulation is and about packages or library you need to add to your program for data manipulation. You will be introduced to the difference between feature and observation manipulation. You will learn about grouping and how that can organize your data output. <br /><br />Next, you will be introduced to the two different types data visualization. You will learn about the grammar of graphics, about different graphing techniques and charting libraries you will need for visualizations. The course also teaches about setting the colours and organizing your data in the visualizations.<br /><br />This free Alison course will be of great interest to professionals working in the areas of data science and data analysis and who want to learn more about using R for statistical computing.<br /><br />Prerequisites: The learner will need the have completed the previous course in Introduction to R for Data Science. The learner will need some knowledge of programming languages.

The ability to accurately record business transactions is of vital importance for accounting professionals in any business or organisation. In this free online accounting course you will be introduced to ledger accounts and journals and the rules for recording your transactions in them. You will learn about permanent and real accounts in the Ledgers, what the journal is used for and how the posting to each are referenced. The accounting cycle is explored along with the eight steps that form the basis for recording business transactions. This course also introduces the six rules of debit and credit along with explanations and examples of each rule. The course then links all these concepts together by demonstrating a series of transaction postings starting with the journals and ending with a trial balance and looking at possible sources of errors in a trial balance. Students then see how this information is used through vertical and horizontal analysis to assist in making business decisions. This free online accounting course will be of great interest to entrepreneurs and business professionals who would like to get a thorough introduction to accounting principles, and to any learner who is interested in accounting as a future career.<br /><br />

This free online course is intended to introduce students to the whole area of energy sustainability, climate change and renewable energy technologies. Many greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, and methane, occur naturally. However, during the past two centuries, human activities have also added significantly to the level of these naturally occurring gases. In particular, large amounts of carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, and methane are produced by the use of non-renewable energy sources such as oil, natural gas and coal. For a sustainable future these fossil fuels will have to be replaced by renewable energy sources such as wind and solar energy, and biomass fuels. In this online course students will learn the connection between energy use and sustainability, how current energy use is contributing to global climate change, the difference between renewable and non-renewable energy sources, how to identify and distinguish between different forms of renewable energy, and understand the advantages and disadvantages of different renewable energy sources. The course will be of great interest to teachers and students who want to learn more about energy use and how renewable sources of energy will be of vital importance for a sustainable future.

This free online course features Steve Blank who is a serial entrepreneur with over 30 years of experience in high technology companies and management. He is also a Consulting Professor at Stanford in the Graduate School of Engineering. In this course he discusses rethinking the product development model so that early stage companies can reduce their overall exposure to risk. You will learn that most start-ups fail because they don’t target the right market or the right customer. Steve Blank explains the customer development process and how successful businesses seek out real customers, ask for their feedback and analyse and fix any problems these customers encounter. He gives advice about not seeking media coverage too soon and also why company founders have been thrown out of their own companies. This course shows why customer feedback must not be outsourced and why it is important that company founders speak directly to their customers. You will also learn why there shouldn’t be vice presidents in a start-up and what a customer development team is for. This course will be of great interest to business professionals and entrepreneurs who want to gain greater knowledge and understanding about rethinking the product development model in business start-ups.<br />

The free online course Risk Management - Insuring against Risk explains why businesses take out insurance to mitigate the risks they face through their business operations and activities. The course begins by providing an introduction to the insurance industry. You will be introduced to the most common phrases and terms used in the insurance industry, and you will learn about the processes that insurers go through when deciding whether or not to insure an exposure. You will also learn about the various types of insurances and insurers that exist and how they differ from each other. The course then explains about the internal operations of insurance companies. You will see how an insurance company is two businesses within one, accepting the risks faced by their customers and investing the premiums which they receive. By reviewing how both sides of an insurance business operates you will learn how insurance companies invest the premiums from their customers in order to offer them coverage should they ever need it. The course also presents a variety of case studies based on real life events that show how insurance companies operate, helping you to equate the theory of risk management with real life scenarios. The course concludes by examining the basic requirements and characteristics of insurance contracts. This free course will be of great interest to professionals working in the area of risk management who would like to gain a better understanding of how to insure against risk. The course will also be of interest to learners who have ever purchased insurance and would like to learn more about how their premiums are calculated. <br />

The free online course Risk Management - Managing Life Cycle Risks examines the risks that individuals face as they progress through their lives and the best ways that risk professionals recommend mitigating such risks. When one thinks of the field of risk management, risk exposures such as property, automobiles and business premises come to mind. People often forget the one risk that everyone faces: our own mortality. This course begins by presenting the risks that all individuals face throughout the life cycle, including mortality, longevity and ill-health and disability. You will learn about each of these risks in detail and examine the ways that these risks can be mitigated. You will then examine the current trends across the globe and how they are influencing the life cycle risks that we all face. The course then examines the most common coverage for life cycle risks in developed countries: Social Security. By using the American Social Security system as an example, you will learn how many countries across the world have systems in place to protect their citizens against life cycle risks. You will study aspects of the American system, such as eligibility, types of benefits and where the finance comes from. You will then examine the issues and global trends in Social Security. The course concludes by examining life insurance. You will learn how life insurance works and the different types of life insurance that can be taken out to mitigate different life cycle risks. This free course will be of great interest to professionals working in the area of risk management who would like to gain an in depth understanding of life cycle risks and the best ways to protect their customers against them. The course will also be of interest to anyone who wishes to learn about the best ways to protect themselves against life cycle risk. <br />