The Open University offers 1000 free online courses via their OpenLearn platform. And these include free certificates of completion, and sometimes, badges.

Having completed a bachelor’s degree with the Open University, I (Manoel) can attest to the quality of their courses, which cover a wide variety of subjects, ranging from arts and language to science and technology.

In this Class Central article, we discuss OpenLearn, their free online course offerings, and how you can earn free certificates and badges.

• Platform
• Courses
• Free Certificates: How to Earn One
• More Free Certificates

Platform

Launched in 2006, OpenLearn is the OpenCourseWare (OCW) platform of the Open University, the world’s first distance-learning university and one of Europe’s largest academic institutions, founded in 1969 following a push by the UK government to make higher education more accessible.

OpenLearn takes the form of a catalog of open educational resources (OER), including articles, podcasts, videos — and 1000 free online courses.

Since the platform focuses on openness, you don’t actually need to create an account to access the learning materials. That said, if you do create an account, you’ll be able to save your progress, and upon finishing a course, you’ll unlock a free certificate of completion.

Courses

OpenLearn offers a wide variety of courses, as you can see above.

All the courses are on-demand, meaning they don’t have specific start and end dates. And they’re released under the Creative Commons license, meaning you can freely use the course materials in non-commercial contexts.

These can be broken down into three levels (introductory, intermediate, and advanced) and nine categories:

• Money & Business
• Education & Development
• Health, Sports & Psychology
• History & The Arts
• Languages
• Nature & Environment
• Science, Maths & Technology
• Society, Politics & Law
• Digital and Computing.

Courses interleave readings, video, and audio materials, and they supplement them with auto-graded assignments, such as quizzes comprising multiple choice questions, as you can see above.

Here are some of the courses you can take on OpenLearn:

• Everyday English 1
• Information security
• The business of football
• Microbes – friend or foe?
• A brief introduction to nursing
• Getting started on classical Latin
• Intercultural competence in the workplace
• Psychological research, obedience and ethics.

Recently added courses include:

• Introducing social care and social work
• Bun-chùrsa mu bhith a’ dèanamh atharrachadh poilitigeach is sòisealta also available in English
• Evolutionary tree of mammals
• Herodotus and the invention of history
• International relations: exploring territorial divisions.

You can find the full list of free OpenLearn courses here. While most courses are in English, 40 courses are in Welsh and 4 in Ukranian.

Free Certificates: How to Earn One

The online courses offered on OpenLearn include a free certificate of completion like the one above. And some courses also include a free badge.

Here’s how to take a course on OpenLearn and earn free certificates and badges:

1. Create an OpenLearn account here
2. Find an an OpenLearn course here
3. Enroll and finish the course.

As you work your way through the course materials and assignments, you’ll tick items off your course to-do list, and upon reaching 100% completion, you’ll unlock your free certificate.

More Free Certificates

If you don’t find what you need in the course lists above, browse Class Central’s catalog of over 200K courses or visit our thematic collections:

• Massive List of Thousands of Free Certificates & Badges
• Medical Education Platforms with 1000+ Free Certificates & CME Credit
• 1000+ Free Developer and IT Certifications
• 1000 Hours of Free LinkedIn Learning Courses with Free Certification
• 600 Free Google Certifications
• Harvard Computer Science Courses with Free Certificate.

You can find all the Class Central free certificate articles here.