Our Lynda.com moved to the new LinkedIn Learning platform on 21 February.  If you have a Lynda.com account you can activate your account on LinkedIn Learning at any time.  New users can also register at any time.

LinkedIn Learning offers a new interface and a range of new features while still providing the same Lynda.com content.  If you currently have an account on Lynda.com, your viewing history, course completions, playlists and other data will all be migrated to the new platform.

What changes will I see?

• Your ‘Playlists’ will now become ‘Collections’
  See What do I need to do? below for details of how shared links to your playlists are affected
• You will be able to take your learning history with you to other organisations that have LinkedIn Learning
• You can connect your UCL LinkedIn Learning account to your personal LinkedIn profile if you have one

What happens if I connect to my LinkedIn profile?

You will get:

• more prompts to engage in learning, with LinkedIn Learning recommendations appearing within your LinkedIn profile
• more personalised content recommendations based on what your contacts and people with similar interests and roles are watching
• more insights into learning trends, what LinkedIn influencers and thought leaders are recommending etc.

UCL will only see your LinkedIn profile photo.   We won’t have access to any other information from your LinkedIn profile. For more details please Privacy Information for LinkedIn Learning Learners.

What do I need to do?

You need to use a different link to get to LinkedIn Learning but you will still use your UCL credentials to log in and all your data has been migrated automatically to the new platform.

If you have shared links to any courses these will be redirected to a course in LinkedIn Learning for one year.  You will need to provide a direct link to replace this after that time.

If you have shared links to playlists then these links will no longer work.  Please contact us so that we help you to resolve this issue. Note that playlists assigned by Group Administrators are not affected.

You will need to download the LinkedIn Learning app to replace the Lynda.com app if you currently use Lynda content on your mobile or tablet.

How do I use LinkedIn Learning?

To find out more about LinkedIn Learning and the new features available, watch How to use LinkedIn Learning

You might also find Gaining skills with LinkedIn Learning of interest

Both of these courses are on LinkedIn Learning so they will give you a taste of what’s in store on the new platform!

Finally, I’ve included a list below of all the non-technical courses in the top 500 to give you a flavour of the kind of things people are looking at.  I think it reflects the wide diversity of interests at UCL and also the amazing range of non-technical courses on offer at Lynda.com.  Why not dip in and try some of them out for yourself?  Just visit our lynda.com page to log in using your UCL credentials and then type the course name below into the search box:

Non-technical courses in the top 500

Lynda.com has nearly 7,000 courses, but what are UCL staff and students actually watching?  I took a look at the usage figures over the last 12 months to try and answer this question.

• over 4, 000 course completions*
• over 25, 000 hours viewed
• over 5, 000 distinct courses accessed

*This is where a user has watched every single video in a course.  A certificate can be generated which can be attached to your profile in LinkedIn.

Course popularity by category

Lynda.com courses are in three broad areas – Business, Technical and Creative – but these break down further into about twelve different categories.  Looking at all users, the most popular category by total hours viewed was Developer with nearly 30% of courses in this area.  The Developer category includes courses on programming or coding, app and game development and other similar courses.  The next biggest category was Business which includes courses for personal development but also courses in desktop applications used predominantly in an office environment, such as Microsoft Office.  Business courses accounted for about 20% of viewing.  The next two most substantial categories were IT and Web with 12% and 10% respectively.

If you look at staff and students separately the picture is a little different, with courses in the Business category featuring higher in the staff results at 30%, whereas for students the Business area only accounted for 15%.  UCL students are clearly more interested in technical courses than staff with Developer courses making up 33% of hours viewed by students, compared to just 21% of staff viewing.  Looking at Developer, IT and Web together, these accounted for well over half of all courses viewed by students.

Looking at the more ‘creative’ side, CAD (Computer Aided Design) featured much more strongly in the student results – 9% of viewing amongst students was in this area compared to only around 1% of staff figures.  3D and Animation showed a similar trend.  This reflects a strong interest in this area in some key departments, notably Computer Science, Bartlett, CASA, CEGE and the Slade although there was also some usage outside of these areas.

The remaining categories were generally less popular with both staff and students and these were Design, Photography, Video, Education and Elearning, Marketing, and Audio and Music which in total accounted for only about 17% of viewing.  Design courses were mostly popular with the the Department of Information Studies.  Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Education and Elearning courses were most popular in IOE.  The Bartlett and the Anthropology department were most interested in Photography and Video.

In my next blog post I’ll look in more detail at which specific courses are most popular with UCL people.  Some of the results might surprise you….

All new UCL staff are required to do an online Diversity course and there are also a variety of other courses provided via the Equality, Diversity & Inclusion site including an online course for students.  This topic has also recently been brought to the forefront by a project looking at attainment of BME students and there is a new  checklist to enable staff to assess the inclusivity of their programmes.  If you are interested in exploring further there are a number of tutorials available on Lynda.com that might be of interest.  One of the courses looks at diversity in teams while another introduces the concept of ‘belonging’ alongside diversity and inclusion.  There is a course looking specifically at unconscious bias and some courses which look at working across different cultures.  We’ve put these together into a Diversity and Inclusion playlist for you to browse.  This content is made in the USA so any statements about legislation will not necessarily be true for the UK but there is nonetheless some interesting food for thought here to deepen your understanding in this area.

Did you know that this week is Mental Health Awareness week?  This year the focus is on stress, something we are all too familiar with, especially at exam time.

Personal development and well-being is not an area that most people immediately associate with Lynda.com but there are actually a number of courses that directly focus on topics like well-being, happiness, resilience, work-life balance and positivity.

Arianna Huffington has created a range of courses for Lynda.com which look at all aspects of well-being including meditation, sleep, unplugging from tech, letting go and gratitude.   If you are interested in meditation, there is also one specifically on mindfulness. There are also two courses on building resilience, one general one and one looking at more specifically at resilience in the face of setbacks.  There is also a stress management course and one on balancing work and life.

We’ve put together all these courses and more into a playlist to make it easier for you to access them.  Don’t feel you have to watch them all, dip in and out and see what resonates with you.  Don’t forget that you can use the Lynda.com app on your phone or tablet to download videos to watch (or just listen to) offline as well.

UPDATE: these sessions have now run but the recordings are available from the links below.

Sara Ramodoro from LinkedIn Learning will be hosting two webinars for UCL over the summer.  These sessions are aimed at UCL staff who are involved in promoting Lynda.com to others and who want to gain a better understanding of the key features.  Sara will also be sharing some tips on how to engage learners and maintain their interest.

The content is the same for both sessions:

15th August 12 p.m. – 1 p.m.

13th September 11 a.m. – 12 p.m.

Slide deck (PDF format)

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