NIHR MOOCs

Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs, are free, easily accessible courses run completely online and are usually open to anyone to complete worldwide. They provide a rich learning environment to enable a learner to independently progress content through self-study.

The National Institute for Health Research Clinical Research Network Coordinating Centre runs two MOOCs on Futurelearn.

The first course is ‘What is health research?’. It is a basic introduction to what health research is and covers different topics that anyone new to research may find interesting and informative. It was created in conjunction with Health Research Champions and features patients and the public who have been involved in research, telling their stories. This course runs for three weeks.

The second course is ‘Improving Healthcare Through Clinical Research’. This course goes into more detail about Clinical Research and the process of discovery. This course features a number of healthcare professionals talking about different aspects of clinical research and runs for four weeks.

Each course has a Lead Educator and the Lead Educator is supported by a number of different Mentors.

The courses run for a certain number of weeks, which is when the Lead Educator and Mentors are actively involved in discussions with the learners. At the end of those weeks, the courses will continue to run with little to no involvement from the Lead Educators and Mentors. The course will continue to be open for learners to sign up to and take part in until the start of the next run of the course, when the Lead Educator and Mentors will again actively take part in discussions.

Futurelearn is a digital education platform which hosts a wide variety of massive open online courses.

Futurelearn operate a 'freemium' model which means that courses are free to join and complete. If you want to, you can purchase an upgrade for each course, which means that you will get continued access the course and a certificate of achievement upon completion of the course.