Advancing digital for your career

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) systems now dominate our everyday lives. This free course, Introducing ICT systems, will explain what constitutes such a system and how ICT systems work. You will also look at how ICT systems convey, store and manipulate data, and how they process data. Finally you will learn how these systems are used.

This free course, Technological innovation: a resource-based view, aims to provide you with an overview and introduction to a range of related concepts, ideas and debates which enable you to develop a critical understanding of capabilities in relation to technological innovation. It will enable you to develop a critical understanding of the development, management and application of some of the most important capabilities for technological innovation.

This free course, An introduction to interaction design, explores this topic. You will learn: what interaction design is; the importance of user-centred design - with its goals and principles; how interaction design focuses on the characteristics of the user, their activities and environment; and the core activities and methods of the interaction design process.

The goal of this course is to introduce you to fundamental concepts and technologies that enable the IoE and help you understand its benefits as well as potential risks. The course presents introductory material and is intended to be easily completed by anyone with a basic appreciation of computer technologies. By completing this course, you will not become an IoE expert, but you will become an informed individual. As part of this course, and to check your understanding of the concepts explained, there is a brief quiz at the end of each session. There is also an end-of-course assessment quiz. By enrolling you can track your progress and gain a free statement of participation for completing the whole course.

Whether you're a professional musician, play music with your friends on the weekends or just like to listen to CDs, music technology affects your life. In this free course, Sound for music technology: An introduction, you will learn some of the basics of music technology, starting with what sound is, how it is created and how it travels.

Encryption of files and firewalls are just some of the security measures that can be used in security. This free course, Network security, which assumes you have a substantial knowledge of computing, helps to explain the intricacies of the continually changing area of network security by studying the main issues involved in achieving a reasonable degree of resilience against attacks.

This free course examines the formulation and solution of small linear programming problems. Section 1 deals with the formulation of linear programming models, describing how mathematical models of suitable real-world problems can be constructed. Section 2 looks at graphical representations of two-dimensional models, considers some theoretical implications and examines the graphical solution of such models. Section 3 introduces the simplex method for solving linear programming models and Section 4 uses matrix notation to formalize the simplex method.

This free course, An introduction to design engineering, looks at the way in which engineers use ideas and approaches from the discipline of design thinking to inform their work. The complexity that people bring to design problems is introduced, along with some basic methods of dealing with such complexity.

This free introductory course, An introduction to software development, discusses the engineering nature of software development, its challenges and some fundamental practices which have developed to meet them. Software development is a fast-moving discipline and as a software development professional you must be able to track its leading edge. The course also teaches you some fundamental skills to help you interact with the growing published academic and professional literature on the subject.

This free course, An introduction to web applications architecture, provides an overview of the design and implementation of computer software that runs on web servers, instead of those running solely on desktop computers, laptops or mobile devices.

This free course, Approaches to software development, presents an engineering approach to the development of software systems – a software engineering approach. The course pays particular attention to issues of software quality, in terms of both product (what is built) and process (how we build it).

In this free course, Software and the law, you'll look at the laws relevant to software and its use, taking a global perspective. A major part of this course is devoted to intellectual-property law, the issue of who owns software and digital content and how that ownership can be protected using instruments like copyright and patents. We also cover how contracts are used to formalise the relationship between purchasers and suppliers of software. Finally, we look at some of the laws that apply to information technology and software to ensure that organisations meet their responsibility of care towards employees, customers, and the general public.

Maps and plans, architects and engineers, drawings, graphs and tables: all are models we use in everyday life. This free course, Systems modelling, will introduce you to the modelling process, enabling you to recognise that systems models may be used in different ways as part of a process for: improving understanding of a situation; identifying problems or formulating opportunities and supporting decision making

Why is the way something looks important? Text, colour, images, moving images and sound all interact to produce a user-friendly environment within a user interface. This free course, Designing the user interface, will help you understand the effect each software component has on the user and explain how a consistent and thoughtful application of these components can have a significant impact on the look of the final product.