UNISON members in Further and Higher Education: welcome to your training overview. Here you’ll find a summary of online courses and training.
Training and development is a great way to keep your brain active and your spirits up. The CPD focus will stand you in good stead when it comes time to develop in your current role/job or look for new challenges and roles. Added to this, most of these options are free so won’t hurt your bank and the others are discounted for you as UNISON members.
This list of courses is not exhaustive and many more interesting learning opportunities can be found with each of these providers on their individual platforms. However, these courses will give you a good starting point.
Training for FE and HE workers (Word document download)
Online courses for UNISON members in FE and HE
Or read on for more details:
Skills Academy
Apply for a free Skills Academy account for UNISON to cover the cost of these CPD accredited courses. The courses are self-directed learning you can tackle on your own pace. The weblinks below are purely for description of the course content.
Apply for a Skills Academy account
Workplace
- Counselling – 0.75 hours
- Dealing with difficult people and situations – 7 hours
- Disability awareness – 3 hours
- Drug and alcohol addiction awareness – 15 hours
- Equality, diversity & discrimination awareness – 2 hours
- LGBTQ awareness – 2.5 hours
- Managing emotions at work – 0.75 hours
- Preventing workplace discrimination – 3 hours
- Promoting positive behaviour – 2.5 hours
- Self-harm awareness – 0.75 hours
- Sexual harassment awareness – 3 hours
- Tackling sensitive workplace conversations – 0.75 hours
- Working in teams – 8 hours
Digital Skills
- Excel macros – 2.5 hours
- Microsoft Excel Level 1 – 15 hours
- Microsoft Excel Level 2 – 10 hours
- Microsoft Excel Level 3 – 10 hours
- Microsoft Outlook Level 3 – 15 hours
- Microsoft Word Level 3 – 20 hours
- PowerPoint Diploma – 15 hours
- WordPress – 10 hours
- Zoom – 4 hours
Mental Health and Stress
- How to improve your physical health – 0.75 hours
- Mental health first aid – 2.5 hours
- Mental wellbeing in children and young people – 2.5 hours
- Reducing stress (techniques to relax) – 3 hours
- Reducing stress with meditation and visualisation – 2.5 hours
- Stress management (employees) – 2 hours
- Suicide prevention – 3 hours
- The power of the mind – 0.75 hours
- Self-care – 4 hours
Personal
- Assertiveness skills – 5 hrs
- Building your confidence and self-esteem – 0.75 hrs
- British sign language – 2 hrs
- Decoding direct/indirect messages – 0.75 hrs
- Handling conflict in high-value relationships – 2.5 hrs
- How to build resilience – 0.75 hrs
- How to improve your sleep – 0.75 hrs
- Identifying causes of conflict – 2.5 hrs
- Improve your assertiveness – 0.75 hrs
- Mindful listening – 0.75 hrs
- Unconscious bias – 2.5 hrs
- Personal safety – 2.5 hrs
- The art of persuasion – 0.75 hrs
Reading and writing
- English grammar – Improve your English – 1.25 hrs
- Proofreading basics – 0.75 hrs
- Punctuation mastery – 0.75 hrs
FutureLearn, OpenLearn and The Open University
FutureLearn and OpenLearn courses are free to take part in and OpenLearn courses come with a certificate of participation. With FutureLearn paying a fee provides a Certificate of Achievement or Statement of Participation and wider access to courses while free courses can have start-time limitations.
Find out more about UNISON and the Open University
FutureLearn
Workplace CPD
Mental health and stress
* Higher Education providers – some courses have a timed start
OpenLearn
Workplace CPD
- Attention – 10 hrs – advanced
- Introduction to cyber security: stay safe online – 24 hrs – introductory
- Leadership and followership – 24 hrs – introductory
- Step up to leadership – 4 hrs – introductory
- Understanding autism – 24 hrs – introductory
- Working in diverse teams – 24 hrs – introductory
- Working in groups and teams – 8 hrs – advanced
- Workplace learning with coaching and mentoring – 9 hrs – advanced
Mental health and stress
- Challenging ideas in mental health – 7 hrs – intermediate
- Exercise and mental health – 2 hrs – intermediate
- Making sense of mental health problems – 10 hrs – intermediate
- Understanding depression and anxiety – 8 hrs – intermediate
- Work and mental health – 5 hrs – intermediate
Personal
- Making decisions – 4 hrs – advanced
- Retirement planning made easy – 4 hrs – introductory
- Understanding the environment: learning and communication – 12 hours – intermediate
English and maths
- English: skills for learning – 24 hrs – introductory
- Numbers, units and arithmetic – 5 hrs – introductory
- Succeed with maths – Part 1 – 24 hrs – introductory
- Succeed with maths – Part 2 – 24 hrs – introductory