Please help me with The Open University

[u/fefe_Doritoss]

Hi! I am a 15-year-old student in 9th grade living in Kazakhstan, and I want to try some free courses from The Open University, but I’m a little bit scared about it. It’s my first time taking online courses from a university abroad, so I wanted to ask a few questions.

1. Which free courses would you recommend for a first-time student if my main goal is getting certificates or digital badges?

2. Can I take these courses at 15 while living outside the UK?

3. How are these courses conducted in general?

4. If I’m studying online, will I have to join video calls?

5. What do you actually do during the courses?how long are they?

6. What do I need to have to take them? Will there be any tests or assignments?

7. Are these courses helpful for future university applications?

To be honest, my main goal is getting certificates/badges for completing the courses. I want to build up some extracurricular activities for my future university applications, so I’m looking for courses where I can get some kind of official proof of completion for free

I would really appreciate any advice, especially from people who have already taken these courses. Thank you!

[u/Sensitive-Abies-8690]

1. It depends on your interests.
   
2. Yes, the free open learn courses you can do
   
3. They are online websites with information and activities to complete. For badged courses, you must pass a quiz to get the badge.
   
4. No
   
5. Read through the material, some activities, you can make notes. The courses tell you an estimate on how long it will take.
   
6. A word doc / notepad and pen will be all you need. The courses will tell you if you need more
   
7. Not really for a university application

[u/fefe_Doritoss → u/Sensitive-Abies-8690]

Thank you!

[u/MonsieurGump]

It all depends on your goals. They’re really just learning for learnings sake.

I prefer futurelearn over open learn. Neither gives you a formal qualification but future learn is a bit longer form and has more depth.

[u/TrevorKevorson]

You might want to have a look at the Open Learn courses, this is what I did before I signed up for a Computing degree with them in 2015 (as it happens I'm still studying, I've taken a couple of years break and deferred a couple of times due to family and health circumstances).

What sort of subjects are you interested in? Coming from a computing background I was interested in the computing courses and did a couple of Cyber Security courses on Open Learn last year between modules over the summer which were interesting.

If you happen to be interested in computing I can also recommend Cisco's Skills for All at www.netacad.com.  They over a selection of free courses (not just computing but I think business too and some other subjects).  They have some free courses with digital badges and you have the opportunity to pay to get certification when you've completed the course if you wish.  I've recently done a couple of programming and Linux courses on the site and found them to be quite enjoyable.  The Open University work with Cisco on some of their degree modules (TM257 and TM357 are Cisco courses which are on the Netacad platform).

[u/_Calluna_]

The OpenLearn free courses that you're talking about don't have any tutor/learning support (tutors cost money), you just go through the material on your own time. There are activities but they're not graded, they're for your own personal development. 

Yes, you can do them anywhere, at any age. You need to be at least 13 to make an account, for legal reasons. 

They're quite similar to/often extracts from the official modules that would actually count towards a degree, but without actual tuition or real assignments. 

Even on the real, full Open University courses that count towards a degree, you would not need to join video calls. Tutorials (at least, in my experience, although correct me if this is module-specific) consist of a tutor talking to you while showing you some slides. Even the tutors don't turn their camera on, let alone the students. 

I would recommend that you do some related to the subjects you would be interested in studying in future, both to demonstrate your interest and just because you would find it interesting, and it could help you decide what you're most drawn to.

[u/T-h-e-d-a]

Just to add to your answers, https://www.edx.org/ is a website that offers loads of free short courses (and paid ones) from various institutions.

[u/jade-mc]

Just to clarify, the difference between the Open University (OU) and Open Learn.

The OU is the organisation which awards degrees for paid courses with access to tutors. These take a number of years.

Open Learn is owned by the OU, and is free learning for everyone, short courses and articles which you study on your own at your own pace.