LinkedIn Learning, formerly known as Lynda.com, is an online learning platform that offers a wide variety of video courses taught by industry experts. With over 16,000 courses covering business, creative, and technology topics, LinkedIn Learning aims to help professionals gain new skills and advance their careers.
While videos make up the core of LinkedIn Learning’s course content, the platform offers additional features beyond just watching videos. In this article, we’ll take a closer look at what LinkedIn Learning provides to help you decide if it’s the right online learning solution for your needs.
Course Videos
The main component of LinkedIn Learning courses is expert-led instructional videos. These videos walk you step-by-step through skills, tools, and processes with the instructor narrating and demonstrating on-screen.
Video lengths vary from 2-20 minutes generally, allowing you to learn in bite-sized pieces. Short videos make it easy to fit learning around your schedule. The tight focus and condensed format also aid retention compared to lengthy lectures.
LinkedIn Learning videos aim to engage learners visually by incorporating relevant on-screen demos, graphics, code snippets, and slides. Videos are filmed in studios to minimize distracting background noise.
Most courses include anywhere from 10 to over 100 videos to comprehensively teach a topic. Videos are arranged into logical sections and sequences for structured learning.
While videos form the core of LinkedIn Learning, the platform supplements courses with additional learning resources.
Course Downloads
Many LinkedIn Learning courses provide supplementary downloads to enhance the learning experience. These may include:
- Cheat sheets – Quick reference guides to refresh key points from the course.
- Exercise files – Sample files to follow along with demos and practices.
- Transcripts – Text versions of the video narration.
- Slides – Image slides from video presentations.
Downloads allow you to study course materials offline and highlight main takeaways for retention. They provide useful reference tools to apply skills learned in the videos.
Quizzes
Some LinkedIn Learning courses incorporate quizzes to test your knowledge. These quizzes pose multiple choice or true/false questions based on concepts covered in the videos.
Quizzes provide an opportunity to check your understanding and get feedback on areas for review. They gamify the learning process, providing motivation milestones.
However, quizzes are not featured in all courses. They are more commonly included in technical skills training versus creative or business soft skills courses.
Coding Challenges
Coding courses may supplement video training with interactive coding challenges. These challenges present real-world projects for you to complete by applying coding skills learned in the videos.
Coding challenges offer hands-on practice to reinforce coding techniques and concepts. You receive feedback on your work and can compare it with sample solutions.
Certificates of Completion
You can earn certificates by completing LinkedIn Learning courses. These certificates verify your successful course completion to recognize your new skills.
Certificates can help build credentials and serve as proof of training for employers or clients. You can showcase certificates on your LinkedIn profile.
Some courses offer practice tests you must pass before earning the certificate to validate your proficiency.
Discussion Forums
The LinkedIn Learning platform incorporates social discussion forums where students can interact. You can post questions, feedback, insights, and resources related to course topics.
Connecting with fellow learners creates an interactive learning community. Discussions allow you to gain new perspectives beyond the instructor’s viewpoint.
However, forums are not very active on all courses. Participation levels vary based on the course subject and number of enrolled students.
Supplementary Reading
Some LinkedIn Learning courses provide lists of recommended books, articles, and resources for additional reading. These materials allow you to dive deeper into course topics.
Supplementary reading is more commonly suggested for business soft skills training versus technical tutorials. Recommendations give you a pathway to build on course foundations.
Mobile App Access
In addition to web access, you can view LinkedIn Learning courses via iOS and Android mobile apps. Mobile access enables learning on-the-go from your smartphone or tablet.
The LinkedIn Learning mobile apps allow you to download videos for offline viewing. You can watch course videos seamlessly even without an internet connection.
Mobile optimization makes LinkedIn Learning extremely flexible to fit learning around real-world schedules and activities.
Instructor Support
LinkedIn Learning instructors don’t provide direct coaching or support to individual students beyond the course materials. However, you can connect with instructors through LinkedIn to ask follow-up questions.
Some instructors manage active LinkedIn groups or social accounts related to their course topics. These provide channels for extra interaction in some cases.
There are also discussion forums on some courses where instructors may respond to common questions from students.
Overall, support levels vary widely depending on the individual instructor’s engagement. But most assistance is self-service via provided course materials.
Course Assignments
LinkedIn Learning courses themselves do not have graded assignments, projects, or tests. The video courses focus on training skills through instruction and demonstration.
However, some learners choose to supplement courses with personalized assignments to apply concepts. For example, a graphic design student could recreate templates from a course. Self-created assignments can enrich learning.
You can also leverage downloadable exercise files, coding challenges, and quizzes for assignment-like training. But formal assignments are not built into courses.
Conclusion
In summary, LinkedIn Learning provides much more than just videos. While expert-led videos make up the core content, courses integrate quizzes, downloads, coding exercises, certificates, discussions, and more for a comprehensive learning experience.
The platform also allows accessing courses via desktop and mobile apps for flexible on-the-go learning. However, instructors provide limited direct support beyond course materials.
Overall, the combination of videos, supplemental materials, and mobile access makes LinkedIn Learning an engaging way to build skills for career or personal goals. The wide range of courses and bite-sized video format allow you to learn effectively around your schedule.
If you’re looking for structured, self-paced online training with interactive elements, LinkedIn Learning is more than just passive video content. The platform provides robust tools and resources to actively build skills at your own pace.
Pros | Cons |
---|---|
16,000+ courses in business, creative, and tech topics | No instructors for 1-on-1 support |
Bite-sized expert-led video lessons | Limited interactivity in some courses |
Downloadable materials like exercise files | Participation varies in discussion forums |
Coding challenges and quizzes | No assignments or graded projects |
Certificates of completion | |
Accessible via desktop and mobile apps |
Hope this overview helps explain all that LinkedIn Learning offers beyond video content. Let me know if you have any other questions!
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