Training and development is a great way to keep your brain active and your spirits up and the courses we have compiled for you will stand you in good stead when it comes to your personal life as well as work, or if you are looking for a new job. Below, you’ll find a compilation of some of the online and distance training available to enable you to continue to develop in terms of your work and your personal skills. This list of courses is not exhaustive and many more interesting learning opportunities can be found with each of these providers on each of these platforms, but these courses will give you a good starting point.
If you’re interested in improving the everyday skills that help you in your work life and your personal life, like English, maths, or IT, here’s a selection of resources to help you do that from home or in your workplace.
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Checking your skills
If you want to find out your current level before you get started, Unionlearn’s Skillcheck has quick assessment modules in English, maths and ICT. When you’ve finished, it will recommend next steps.
Quick tips
Our You Can Work It Out guide gives you hints and tips for dealing with English and maths issues you might come across at work – including things like writing reports and working out medication.
English
Sharpen up your spelling or get more confident reading with UNISON’s Skillsbuilder:
Or, if you’re looking for a one-off activity, you can have a go at the TUC Education eNotes – Write Now! will help you improve your writing skills and aims to help you tackle everyday writing tasks, while Read Now! introduces some speed reading techniques while also helping you identify facts, opinions, and bias in written text.
You’ll need to create an account on the TUC Education site to use these.
If English isn’t your first language, you can find English courses for speakers of other languages (ESOL) with the WEA.
The Open University’s OpenLearn site has a whole host of free online learning resources. Here are some to help you with your English:
There are plenty of informal ways to improve your English, too. You might like to take some time out to read for fun, or even join a reading group. Contact your local library, UNISON learning rep, or regional education team, to find out if anything’s been organised near you.
Borrow ebooks using Libby or Overdrive
Download public domain ebooks from Project Gutenberg
Contact your regional education team
Maths
If you want to improve your maths skills but aren’t sure how, you might want to start with the Numeracy Challenge. The Challenge has been updated – it now only takes ten minutes to help you get an idea of where you are with your maths skills and suggest where you might go next. And you’ll find friendly faces to show you’re not alone.
And a great way to get to grips with concepts including measures, fractions, and percentages – all vital in your job setting – is through UNISON’s Skillsbuilder.
One of the most obvious ways in which we use maths in our everyday lives is when we’re dealing with money. Unionlearn have a quick e-learning module that’s an Introduction to Personal Finances
Unionlearn’s e-learning modules
You can also explore some budgeting and finance skills with our Making Every Penny Count activities, which you’ll find on our e-learning site. You can choose just one or two of them, or work your way through the whole lot! Log in with your My.UNISON account.
If you’d like to go a bit deeper, the Open University has a number of online courses on their Openlearn site. Here are a few:
Starting with maths: patterns and formulas
ICT and digital skills
If you want to start with the very basics of ICT, Learn My Way has beginner’s guides for all sorts of digital skills, starting with how to turn your computer on. You can use the activities there just by clicking on the ones that look interesting, but, if you want to keep a record of your learning, you can also make yourself an account, entering code 8000647 in the box that says ‘Centre’.
And Digital Unite also has some really useful technology guides.
The WEA has online courses including Essential Digital Skills and Creating Budgets in Excel.
And, if you’re ready to go a bit further, why not take the Open University’s course and learn about Succeeding in a Digital World?