Overview

On this four-week online course you'll learn how to change important behaviours in your personal or professional life. 

You'll be supported to think about problems in terms of behaviours and apply principles and practices that can enable change in individuals, and through them communities and organisations.

Who it’s for

This course is for practitioners, policy makers, planners, and anyone who wants to learn about the principles and practices of behavioural change. 

It's for people interested in some of the big challenges the world faces, such as sustainability, health and social justice.

Course content

Discover why behavioural science is important

You’ll learn a systematic method for developing interventions using frameworks based on behavioural science.

You’ll consider how to define a behaviour, and then see how to distinguish behaviours from what influences them and the outcomes they lead to.

Explore behaviour change tools

You’ll be introduced to three behavioural science tools, how they link together, and how they can be applied. You’ll also learn how to select key behaviours from a ‘system’ of behaviours.

This will be followed by conducting a ‘behavioural diagnosis’ to understand what influences behaviours, and develop appropriate intervention strategies.

The three tools you'll learn about are: 

• Capability Opportunity Motivation – Behaviour (COM-B) model
• Behaviour Change Wheel (BCW)
• Behaviour Change Techniques Taxonomy (BCTT).

From behavioural science interventions to policies

You’ll be guided through different types of behaviour change intervention and related behaviour change policy options.

Teaching and structure

You’ll learn at your own pace on this self-guided course on the FutureLearn Online Platform through a mix of: 

• bite-sized videos
• long and short-form articles
• audio 
• practical activities. 

Learning outcomes

At the end of the course you'll be able to: 

• identify potential targets for behaviour change
• describe a specific behavioural problem in terms of what needs to change: capability, opportunity and/or motivation and use the COM-B model to describe the influences on a target behaviour
• apply the Behaviour Change Wheel to develop strategies for behaviour change
• evaluate and select specific Behaviour Change Techniques within those strategies

Certificates

You'll be eligible to download a Certificate of Achievement on successful completion of the course. 

Course team

Dr Danielle D'Lima

Danielle is Senior Teaching Fellow at the Centre for Behaviour Change, UCL. Her background is in Health Psychology and Implementation Science.

Susan Michie

Susan is Professor of Health Psychology and Director of the Centre for Behaviour Change at UCL. She is co-director of UCL's MSc in Behaviour Change. 

Dr Paul Chadwick

Paul is an Associate Professor at the UCL Centre for Behaviour Change where he works on the development of interdisciplinary approaches to behaviour change.

Kristina Curtis

Kristina is a lecturer, researcher and consultant in behavioural sciences with a specialism in digital health interventions. 

Dr Lou Atkins

Lou leads the Centre for Behaviour Change Australasian Hub. Lou is a researcher, trainer and consultant in behaviour change intervention design and evaluation. 

Course information last modified: 11 Aug 2023, 15:59