Today the Prime Minister announced a major package of post-18 education and training measures designed to boost national productivity and prepare workers for the post-Covid economy – including the opportunity to train in the practical essentials of creative computing through the expansion of the Government’s online learning platform, The Skills Toolkit.
The Skills Toolkit encourages learners to sign up in order to build up their skills, progress in work and boost their job prospects for free. It is open to everyone, with flexible course formats to suit all learners.
Launched in April by The Department for Education, the platform has been expanded to offer over 70 high quality free courses in digital, numeracy and employability or work-readiness: including all 4 of the 2-week introductory courses from the programme 'A Practical Guide to Essential Creative Technologies' from UAL Creative Computing Institute in partnership with the Institute of Coding (IoC) and FutureLearn.
Led by Professor Mick Grierson, Research Leader, UAL Creative Computing Institute, the courses introduce a range of concepts and practical exploration of accessible design, gaming, artificial intelligence and household chat devices.
- Introduction to Creative AI
- Introduction to UX and Accessible Design
- Introduction to Conversational Interfaces
- Introduction to Indie Games
Ben Stopher, Dean of UAL Creative Computing Institute:
We welcome the inclusion of creative technology education in this national initiative to boost skills and learning. As we prepare our future workforce, creative skillsets in design and technology will be crucial in building our post-Covid world, sought after by employers in our world-class creative industries and beyond.
Rachid Hourizi, Director of the Institute of Coding:
We are delighted to have a wide variety of IoC-supported digital skills courses added to The Skills Toolkit. Our short online courses are proving highly popular with a large, diverse group of learners. Developed with input from industry, the Institute of Coding courses in The Skills Toolkit enable people at all ages and stages of employment to access flexible learning, gain the skills employers are looking for, and learn useful information during this challenging period.
Among the other measures announced today by the Prime Minister are a Lifetime Skills Guarantee, to give adults the chance to take free college courses valued by employers; and access to flexible loans to enable courses to be taken in segments, supporting opportunities to retrain and enhance people's technical skills.
Explore the courses
The first free, practical short courses from UAL Creative Computing Institute and IoC launched in April 2020 on the FutureLearn platform. We now offer 8 free short courses on FutureLearn, with over 43k learners enrolled to date.
Find the available courses via The Skills Toolkit (Computer Science category) or visit FutureLearn to see all of the UAL CCI short online courses available to book.
Main image: Anna Tsuda in the studio, MSc Creative Computing, UAL Creative Computing Institute © Alys Tomlinson
