Why using LinkedIn Learning is easier than you think

LinkedIn Learning is part of the benefit package we offer our Alumni. We want to help you keep your general workplace skills up to date so you can thrive with one of our clients.

In this blog, David Hunnicutt, Instructor at John Wiley & Sons Global Academy explains why using LinkedIn Learning is easier than you think.

Over the years I have heard many quotes from books or colleagues that have served me well. One of which is “do something while you are doing nothing." The quote refers to our free time and what we do with that time.

To make the best use of that free time you can do something productive with it, such as, create a presentation, learn a language, or learn guitar. These projects require large blocks of time to accomplish. You may not have those large blocks of time available; maybe you only have minutes at a time. LinkedIn Learning provides a pathway to learning topics with your lifestyle in mind.

LinkedIn Learning is a subsidiary of LinkedIn that started in 1995. The courses are built with your busy schedule in mind and consist of short videos teaching a specific topic and lasting about 2 to 10 minutes.

You can view one short topic, or an entire course comprised of several, specific topics creating a learning path of multiple hours. The courses provided by LinkedIn use experienced instructors who have many years of working knowledge in their specific fields.

Whether you are relearning past abilities, looking for something that interests you, or seriously want to develop more professional skills LinkedIn Learning is a place to start.

LinkedIn Learning offers courses through a categorized search system. By clicking on the Browse icon, you will see the learning library grouped by category: Business, Creative, and Technology. Within the main categories are subcategories that can help narrow down your search for a specific topic. More than 5,000 courses exist in LinkedIn Learning that you can take for personal or professional development.

If you are looking for business courses pertaining to leadership or management, LinkedIn Learning has courses from “Learn the Process of Effective Leadership”, “Become a manager” and “Leadership in Tech” to “Negotiation Skills”, “Critical Thinking” and “Enhancing Team Innovation”.  These types of courses will help move your career forward into the management levels.

The Technology category has a multitude of courses on various programming languages such as, JavaScript, Python, C#, C++, Java, and others.  The language courses support learning front-end web development, back-end business logic, or database structure engaging you in the entire full-stack development process. The courses show how-to demos and include exercises to help solidify what you learned.

The creative category focuses on the more interactive visual aspects of business and design. These courses help to develop your imaginative and innovative skills. The courses concentrate on web design, animation, and modeling. This section also provides basic courses on learning how to play the piano and guitar.  

The world of technology is constantly changing so as members of this industry we are constantly learning and re-learning technology subjects. LinkedIn Learning is a free learning library offered to all associates and is the perfect tool to give yourself an edge by learning what others might not know.

So, to make use of the time intervals you have between projects, classes, or daily life events you can take advantage of those "doing nothing” moments and discover something you did not know.