Free short-term courses
The Department for the Economy, is supporting up to 2,000 free places on a range of fully-accredited courses, to help you retrain and improve your skills. Find out more at:
The courses will be delivered by local universities and Further Education colleges.
Find out what other online courses they also have available by visiting their websites.
Open University courses
The Department for the Economy has partnered with the Open University to offer a range of free training to help you improve your skills and wellbeing.
The Open University offers a wide range of online courses. View The Open University full catalogue for ideas.
The following key areas of learning are particularly relevant and widely applicable at this time.
Digital skills
- digital literacy
- introduction to cybersecurity
- digital thinking tools
- preparing for your digital life
- virtual project teams
- assistive technologies and online learning
Employability
- effective communication
- succeed in the workplace
- personal branding for career success
- entrepreneurship
- working in diverse teams
- exploring career mentoring and coaching
- understanding your sector
- leadership and followership
- integrated safety, health and environmental management
- leadership challenges in turbulent times
- creativity and innovation
- how to frame a business case
Essential skills (English and maths)
- get started with online learning
- everyday maths 1
- everyday maths 2
- everyday English 1
- everyday English 2
Careers online support
A range of interactive tools are available to help you find out more about your career options, based on your skills, interests and values.
The career matching tools give you suggestions based on what you like and/ or what you’re good at.
The Career A to Z tool has lots of information about employment, education and training options, to help you learn more about careers you're interested in.
Other online courses
AbilityNet helps people of any age and with any disability to use technology to achieve their goals at home, at work and in education.
Alison is a free learning platform for education and skills training. It is a not-for-profit social enterprise dedicated to making it possible for anyone, to study anything, anywhere, at any time, for free online, at any subject level.
AWS Training & Certification is free to register and offers over 500 free courses to build AWS Cloud Skills.
BBC Skillswise offers a collection of free videos and downloadable worksheets to help adult learners improve their reading, writing and numeracy skills.
BT Skills for Tomorrow offers a wide range of free resources anyone can use to help them stay safe, connected an informed online.
Business Model Canvas helps you develop business direction, appraisals and create new value propositions and business direction.
Carnegie Trust in partnership with CILIP Library association offer online development materials on leadership and innovation, including on transformation, creativity and innovation, influencing skills and power.
Class of 2020 offers learning and development materials on upskilling programmes for graduates, including short courses,live webinars, business challenges and questions and answers.
Google Digital Garage offers over 40 hours’ worth of training to get the digital skills you need to start your career or grow your business.
Invest NI offers a wide range of tools and business tutorials to support improvements in business processes and growth.
Khan Academy offers practice exercises, instructional videos, and a personalized learning dashboard that let learners to study at their own pace in and outside of the classroom, offering mathematics, science, computer programming, history, art history, economics, and more.
Learn My Way is a website of free online courses, built by Good Things Foundation to help people develop their digital skills.
Training Matchmaker offers a range of free short courses, based online or across Northern Ireland, in a wide range of technical and vocational areas.
Class Central offers several thousand free online courses that have been developed by a number of top universities from across the globe, including in ICT and business.
Coursera brings together courses and certificates provided online for free by a variety of universities and companies. The main focus is on science, technology, engineering and mathematics, with additional material in other areas also available.
Oxford Home Study College offers a range of fully certified provision including cyber security, digital marketing, life-coaching and planning.
UK Learns is a new online learning platform, offering a wide range of largely free, certified courses, which have been identified with employers as relevant for future employment.
Help and advice
If you need any help deciding on which course is right for you, contact a careers adviser who can discuss your specific needs and circumstances, offering one to one advice and guidance.
If you live in England, Scotland or Wales
This advice and guidance is for people living in Northern Ireland. If you live in other parts of the UK, visit:
More useful links
Disclaimer: This page provides links to other websites which are not under the control of nidirect. The nature, content and availability of the courses or content available on these sites may vary, and the inclusion of any links does not necessarily imply a recommendation or endorse the content or views expressed within them.