LinkedIn Learning Debuts Over 9,000 Online Courses

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Popular career-focused social media site LinkedIn has released LinkedIn Learning, an online learning website devoted to teaching people new career skills and helping businesses train their employees.

LinkedIn Learning, which launched on September 23, has more than 9,000 courses in subjects like programming skills, writing, and accounting. An average of 25 courses are expected to be released each week.

In April of 2015, LinkedIn bought popular video-based education company Lynda.com for $1.5 billion. According to the company’s CEO Jeff Weiner, LinkedIn’s goal for the acquisition was to bring job seekers closer to their career goals, reports Anthony Spadafora of IT Pro Portal.

LinkedIn Learning is built on three core pillars: world-class content, data-driven personalization, and anytime anywhere convenience. Topics are divided into the categories of Business, Creative, and Technology.

Users can select courses themselves based on LinkedIn’s recommendations (which analyzes your job and listed skills to suggest courses you may want to take), or employers can assign courses to their workers and use LinkedIn’s analytics to monitor progress.

The pilot process for LinkedIn Learning included companies like Bertelsmann, Box, Ellie Mae, NBCUniversal, and Viacom, along with thousands of individual learners.

Kelsie Freed, who works in NBCUniversal media operations, said:

“Out of all the online learning tools I have used, LinkedIn Learning offers the most personal experience. The courses model skills and expertise that I identified as important to my development.”

According to the Hustle, LinkedIn Learning is free for LinkedIn Premium subscribers, or $29.99 per month. The first month is also free.

Ryan Rolonsky, LinkedIn’s vice president of product, wrote in a blog post:

“Now, you and your organization can identify which skills are key for achieving career and business goals, and learn those skills in a personalized, efficient, and measurable way.”

Andrew Dalton of Engadget reports that soon there will also be an enterprise tier that will allow larger corporations to recommend courses for the entire workforce.

LinkedIn will also be delivering new improvements. It is expanding its news feed and will send users breaking news alerts, as well as passing along analytical pieces from top site influencers and related posts from users. Both editors and algorithms will curate the content of users’ feeds, based on profession, industry, company, and region. This is the largest redesign since the inception of LinkedIn.

There will also be improvements to the messaging system, including chat bots, reports Rowena Lindsay of the Christian Science Monitor. Chat bots will help users schedule meetings and do other tasks.

In August, LinkedIn improved its publishing system by modernizing its interface, improving multimedia uploading, and making the reading experience easier on the eyes.

Microsoft purchased LinkedIn in June. Jeff Weiner said of the acquisition:

“The LinkedIn you know and value is only getting better. LinkedIn will retain its distinct brand, culture, and independence.”