I know I’m not the only one who is trying to work out the role of AI in one’s life. I am regularly writing about it professionally but also thinking about it personally. Should I diversify my skills? Would it be beneficial to get ahead of the curve? Am I going to be an old fuddy duddy who has completely missed the boat?
It was with these questions and in pursuit of answers that I turned to the LinkedIn Learning app. There are a number of other eLearning platforms that I could have tried, including Coursera and Udemy, but LinkedIn Learning seems to be making more of a splash at the moment so I thought I’d give it a go.
The app itself was launched on September 22, 2016 after acquiring the online learning platform Lynda.com in 2015. This provided LinkedIn with a huge amount of top-level seed content that has helped the app quickly jump up to providing over 21,000 expert-led courses. Topics include business, technology, and creative with some courses even offering professional certificates.
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This is part of a regular series of articles exploring the apps that we couldn’t live without. Read them all here.
With AI ringing in my head, I dove straight into the ‘Microsoft Copilot: The Art of Prompt Writing’ course (LinkedIn is owned by Microsoft). After saving it into my library, the app immediately began playing the first video of the series. This was, and usually is, a preview of the course. It immediately drew me in and left me excited for the rest of the course.
After finishing the preview video, I jumped onto the contents page and began playing the next video. Before long I was straight into learning about how to write better prompts for Teams, Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. The benefit of unlimited access was that I could replay videos as much as I wanted and consume the content at my own pace.
Each video would have been enhanced by a written transcript so that I wasn’t dependent only on one medium for learning. With AI tools nowadays, that sort of feature wouldn’t be too difficult to implement. It would also seriously help with learning when in environments where watching a video is simply not possible.
Having worked through every video in the course, I felt much better equipped to understand what Copilot is capable of and it motivated me to browse ‘Similar content’ to broaden my understanding of other AI subjects.
Every course is backed up by a range of information that helps you decide whether it’s right for you. The first of these, right underneath the course heading, is the ratings section. My AI course had a 4.7/5 rating from 122 people which seemed pretty good.
Unfortunately, there is no way for these people to leave comments about the course like someone would after buying a product from Amazon. This functionality would have greatly helped me determine the usefulness of the course. The only saving grace is the ability to jump into the Q&A section and ask other learners about their experiences. This is all well and good but I would much prefer to read a set of reviews that have been willingly offered.
Other information to help you learn more about the course includes a brief text overview and a contents page. The latter is also helpful for jumping around to different parts of the content as well as downloading specific videos for offline viewing. Finally, towards the bottom, there’s a link to the LinkedIn profile of the course instructor. This lets you check the credentials of the person before embarking on a course and potentially finding out that they’re not quite the expert they claimed to be.
The LinkedIn Learning app is free to download, but if you want to conduct any meaningful level of training, then you’ll need a subscription. LinkedIn Premium opens up access to the full library of training material as well as to all their premium networking tools. Most people will need the individual plan, but it isn’t cheap, costing $39.99 / £39.99 per month.
Only you can decide whether the subscription is worth the money. I’ve personally found it incredibly helpful for growing my understanding of subjects I’m interested in. I would question its current validity with regards to formal qualifications and certificates, but in time employers may come to value it more.
If you’re still on the fence, you can take advantage of the free month’s trial and see whether it enhances your life or not.
You can download the LinkedIn Learning app on iOS or Android.
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paulo.n.hatton@gmail.com (Paul Hatton)
