Hi Dee, it is possible to change most courses, but you need to speak to Student Recruitment and Support to do it - you can phone them on 0300 303 5303, or email general-enquiries@open.ac.uk . To advise precisely we'd need to know the courses you want to change from and to - for example, not all of our courses are open entry,  some of them have work based learning requirements, and students need employer backing to study them.

As far as timescales go, generally speaking you can get a course changed within 5 working days of speaking to us, but the issue would be how much you would owe in fees for the course you start studying first - that will depend on the specific course you are studying, and also on where you are resident. So, in short, we'd need to have a look at your record and talk through your options, I'd suggest the best way to do that would be a phone call on the number above.

If you're not sure what course you want to do, we'd advise it's better to do more research into the subjects, whilst it's free, rather than start paying for a course and change it part of the way through. 

If you go to Open Learn, you can find hundreds short courses taken from our undergraduate degrees - they run from 5-20 hours, and you can study them for free: it's the best way of seeing how you get on with a subject, and also for preparing to study. You can find the full list of Open Learn courses here:

Open Learning - OpenLearn - Open University

The other thing we'd recommend , if you are wanting to study towards a career change, is getting some careers advice before you start a course. 

If you are in the UK, you will be able to access a free career service, and you can link to all of them from our careers website:

Jobs and careers sources of information | Help Centre | The Open University

I hope that helps get you started. If you're starting out, I'd recommend phoning to register on 0300 303 5303, we're open from 8am-17pm Monday-Friday. 

All the best 

Jim