Compliance training for PGRs

The Open University requires all staff and directly registered (i.e. those not at an Affiliated Research Centre) postgraduate research students (PGRs) to complete certain compliance training courses when they join the University and update them every one or two years (you will receive an email reminder). In most cases, these compliance courses are mandatory because they are required by the regulatory and statutory bodies that oversee and licence the University. Students based at an Affiliated Research Centre do not need to complete compliance training but will be asked to sign a disclaimer statement that will be sent to them.

Most courses are relatively quick to complete, and you can save your progress as you go along. Because these are courses that everyone in the University is required to complete, they are hosted on our staff learning platform My Learning Centre (MLC) rather than on the GSN. You will notice that they are written to be accessible to a very broad staff audience, and are not specifically aimed at PGRs - indeed they may not mention PGRs at all. We recognise that this can be confusing, but please bear with us - we aren’t currently able to revise the rubric of the courses themselves, but we do need to ask you to complete them so that we can provide compliance reports to the relevant bodies in a timely manner. Once you have completed the training you can upload a PDF of your certificate to your Training Log on PGR Manager. Guidance on how to do this is available in 'PGR Manager: Planning and booking your training' on Forms and Guidance.

The five courses PGRs need to complete are listed below. If you have more than role at the OU, e.g. you are an Associate Lecturer (AL) as well as a PGR, you need only complete training for one of your roles. 

All directly-registered PGRs are required to complete the following training courses via the Compliance Training Dashboard:

• Data Protection and Information Security Awareness: New starters are required to complete the 'core' module and, for recertification, a shorter refresher module will be completed annually. 
• Equality Essentials: To be completed every two years.
• Health and Safety: To be completed annually.
• Safeguarding: To be completed every two years.
• Prevent (UK Government Counter Terrorism): To be completed every two years.

If you have any difficulties accessing the training courses please contact MyLearningCentre@open.ac.uk. Please contact graduate-school@open.ac.uk with any questions related to compliance training.