From pygmy shrews to armadillos, a wide range of mammals survive on a diet made up largely of insects. Many of these have fascinating adaptations suited to catching or rooting out their prey. In this unit you will learn about these adaptations, along with

Many mammals are food specialists, with complex adaptations that gear them toward a particular food source. So how do the omnivores survive and prosper without these fancy evolutionary features? This unit examines the physiology, diet and strategies of so

Monkeys have long fascinated us because of their similarities to the human race. In this unit you will find out about some of the characteristics that make them so like us: their physiology, complex social interactions, large brains and intelligence. This

This unit is an introduction to studying the arts and humanities. It takes you through a series of exercises designed to develop your approach to study and learning at a distance and improve your confidence as an independent learner.

In this unit, we study one aspect of the fluctuating nature of an organism's environment. We consider how organisms living in a temperate climate, such as that in Britain, are adapted to cope with winter. You will see that there is much diversity of adaptations among organisms, with different species coping with the demands of a fluctuating environment in quite different ways. As cyclic variations are a widespread feature of environments, the range of adaptations to them is an important source of biological diversity.

Using the virtual microscope, students will zoom, pan, and rotate specimens in variable light conditions, helping to develop their classification and identification skills without need for high cost microscopes and thin section preparation facilities. The virtual microscope may be used as a complete collection or reused and repurposed individually, since each specimen will have a unique URL. The intention is to engage and excite students in Earth science using rocks of the British Isles held in key collections, and aid teaching of mineral and rock identification skills in HE institutions and schools. We plan to explore continued expansion of the initial collection by offering a digitisation service to HE institutions and industry.

Water is a natural resource that is vital for human survival and health, although only a tiny fraction of the Earth's supply is available to humans and terrestrial animals. In this unit we look at threats, such as pollution, to water's capacity to support life around the world.

For writing center and writing program scholars, administrators, and practitioners hungry for changing how we labor and how we teach writing, this book details several interventions, pedagogies, and programmatic approaches that place wellness, vulnerability, and anti-racist community care at the forefront of our work. For practitioners outside of the United States, I hope that this book generates meaningful conversations about wellness challenges and care opportunities and leads to interventions that are culturally-specific and site-specific. Of course, as I have detailed in my other work on wellness and labor, the pandemic has given new urgency to these conversations and has upped their stakes. This book, then, is an artifact of a pre-pandemic world. While subsequent revisions have woven in pandemic-specific reflections and information, we are still sorting through the wreckage of a harrowing year. In years to come, I hope that we will look back on this period of uncertainty and fear, and process how the pandemic reshaped us: our work, our tutoring and teaching practices, our attitudes about our institutions, our profession, our programmatic goals. I also hope we examine what the pandemic failed to reshape and the many aspects of the academy that the pandemic adversely shaped.

Have you always wanted to try to write poetry but never quite managed to start? This unit is designed to illustrate the techniques behind both the traditional forms of poetry and free verse. You will learn how you can use your own experiences to develop ideas and how to harness your imagination.

An OpenLearn course exploring diversity within teams and team roles with a focus on the workplace and employer/employee dynamics. Includes a section on virtual teams.

Most of us have a very vague and narrow concept of what autism is, based mainly on such stereotypes as Dustin Hoffman's character in the film Rain Man. In this unit you will discover that there is a wide spectrum of disorders associated with autism, and an equally wide range of approaches to diagnosis and treatment.