Our informative LinkedIn Learning review will help you to decide whether you should choose LinkedIn as a learning resource for you.
Introduction to LinkedIn Learning
These days it has become really difficult to find a single course and course provider that suit all of your needs. This is the main reason, people mostly turn to online reviews to make a decision whether or not an online platform is suitable for them. Hence, the main purpose of this article is to analyze some reviews about LinkedIn Learning (and I’ll also tell my opinion about LinkedIn Learning).
But, before moving on to the discussion, I want to make few things clear:
- I am not being paid by LinkedIn for this review. In fact, I am registered with LinkedIn Learning affiliate program, that’s why I know how it goes. So, there’s that.
- I understand that everyone has a different opinion. And this review is solely my opinion I developed from my individual experience. Therefore, if you don’t agree, please share your opinion!
- In fact, I am writing this review because I am already registered at LinkedIn Premium and I have spent several months watching their LinkedIn Learning videos.
| Pros: • Low monthly price, • A wide range of courses, • Unlimited accessibility to each course, • User-friendly interface, • Customized recommendations, • Q&A feature in each course, • 30-day free trial, • LinkedIn Certification at completion of each course. |
| Cons: • No accreditation, • Cost slightly more than other similar services, • Some courses are outdated and some lack in quality. |
Background
In simple words, LinkedIn Learning offers MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses). So, this aspect makes LinkedIn Learning quite similar to other platforms like Coursera and edX, and many other online course providers. The website (LinkedIn Learning) is supplementary to the LinkedIn. The main objective of “learning” version is to help everyone learn useful and profitable skills to help them perform better in making it their career paths in the existing job market. The website offers courses on a number of different topics, from technology and business, to the artistic and creative ones.
Surprisingly, the existing content that I saw on the first page of Google was loaded with information about LinkedIn Learning but almost none of those discussed what makes an online course worthy of attending. Some common traits of most of the top-notch online classes include:
- Sense of Community
- Student-Friendly Pacing
- Ease of Navigation
- Natural Learning Content. Mediaphotos/Vetta/Getty Images
- Self-Directed Assignments
- Smart Use of Multimedia
- Appeals to All Learning Styles
- Additional Roads of Exploration
- Reasonable pricing
- Taught by real-world experts
But, I know what most of us are most interested to know, the pricing. So let’s start our discussion with this specific feature.
Pricing
Infact, LinkedIn Learning is suitable for each person who is willing to spend at least 2-3 hours every week, on gaining new skills, or improving the current ones. LinkedIn offers more than 16,000 paid and free of cost courses on more than 170 subjects, and these are part of the LinkedIn Premium Plan, costing $29.99 monthly.
Means, by paying just $29.99 you can avail a large number of features of LinkedIn, including:
- 3 monthly InMails for members external to your network;
- Access to Who has viewed your profile feature;
- Insights about Company such as hires, trends, and changes in leadership;
- Insights about Job Applicant about job skills and competition;
- Insights about Salary to assess opportunities for you;
- Expert content about job preparation along with job interview questions;
- And certainly, nonstop access to all types of content available at LinkedIn Learning.
So, we have discussed that by paying just $29.99, plus taxes or $299.88 as an Annual subscription, you can get a LinkedIn Learning Premium subscription, you can avail a large number of services like getting advice for courses depending upon your interests, take admission in the course and build your skills; and include completed courses to make your LinkedIn profile catch more eyes for better opportunities.
Ease of Navigation
For all of us, Ease of Navigation is a significant aspect of any website, let alone a web-based learning one. By visiting the homepage of a MOOC provider website, you can easily judge the ease of navigation factor for the entire website. It is true, for both the usability and design of the website.
No doubt, the home page of LinkedIn Learning website has a professional outlook and provides sufficient information, which some other websites with the similar concept, don’t do very well. But, it still is not very attractive. Although, the front page of LinkedIn Learning lacks a personal touch, but believe me it works perfectly fine. As it is owned by LinkedIn (which is a well-known and huge name), and the site’s layout follows a standard pattern you would find each option where it is expected to be. The top of the page has learning options, the middle of the page contains course recommendations and bottom of the page contains details of company policies and some self-promo.
Hence, we established that it is easy to use LinkedIn Learning website because of its predictable outlook. It’s great news! But, the actual success of a MOOC-providing platform lies in its content quality.
Quality of Content
There is a well-known saying “content is king”. This saying becomes more applicable for the online course providers. Education is the only reason for many people to visit online learning websites. The users expect that each course must contain the similar standard of quality; irrespective of what subject is taught- arts, writing, Python, programming or something else.
I would say, the content at LinkedIn Learning is quite simple and easy to understand. According to the students, the website mostly contains beginner-oriented courses and lacks more advanced courses with accredited certification. Some say that it is better to study from a free online course provider as there are many platforms offering courses of similar quality for free. But, most of the reviews about LinkedIn Learning say that the courses offered by the website can’t be called the best online courses available for the users. On top of many other concerns that students face, it is claimed that the quality of courses offered by the platform is average.
Hence, the above discussion shows that LinkedIn Learning offers an average quality online courses which wouldn’t have been a major issue if the courses were offered without any charges.
Professional Online Networking
Professional online networking plays a crucial role in making introductions, recommendations, referrals, and valuable corporate connections. And who can provide a significant professional networking like LinkedIn, a social media website which is business-oriented and can be quite a resourceful tool for management, employees and professionals — at the same time.
LinkedIn acquired the online education portal for $1.5 billion in 2015. For LinkedIn’s CEO Jeff Weiner, learning and development is the top priority. The eLearning portal provides help in identifying skills that necessitate mastery and offer the needed resources to help them achieve that. Workforce can select courses of their interest and top management can ask to take admission in a course and improve skills that need sharpening
Features of LinkedIn Learning
There are some very popular features of LinkedIn Learning, that not many other platforms with online education offer:
- LinkedIn Learning enable users to set weekly objectives that keeps the users on track;
- One can simultaneously check progress in a variety of courses and begin a new class from where he stopped by in the last class;
- Learners can get the complete transcript of each video of the course, which is specifically helpful for individuals who are not native speakers;
- Each course is interactive, and contains a section for Questions and Answers;
- There is a section in each course where learners can write their own notes while watching the videos.
The above features show that LinkedIn Learning has features which are very helpful, and organized in an intuitive and very user-friendly interface. Everything, from the process of selecting an online course to viewing the videos, is effortless and users can easily switch from one course to a different course.
30-day Free trial
Are you one of those who want to try out everything by themselves? Don’t worry you can use a 30-day Free trial of LinkedIn Learning online education and then decide if its worth spending $29.99 for one month subscription or not. I admit that sometimes it gets very upsetting to receive too many emails on we-miss-you- get-back-to-premium. Don’t think that the free trial is a scam because they take the credit card details. In fact, you can cancel your subscription any time you want. Main purpose of taking credit card details is to avoid unnecessary subscriptions made from fake profiles.
Learning Experience
To sum up all reviews of the LinkedIn Learning covered in this article, it can be said that its worth taking admission in the LinkedIn Learning website. Generally, some students say that they really enjoyed learning at the website; whereas others say that they are disappointed. But, the majority of students mentioned that LinkedIn Learning is one of the decent options for online learning.
Still, whether it is the variety of course offered or the pricing- there’s room for improvement at all times!
Conclusion
LinkedIn is still on a journey to establish itself as a forerunner in the industry. LinkedIn Learning’s main aim is to offer a platform where job seekers can build, maintain and enhance their professional profiles by means of education and corporate training. I hope that you have gained significant insights on LinkedIn Learning in this review and now you must feel more competent to decide whether you would use LinkedIn Learning as a way to gain new knowledge, and professional skills.
If you’re looking for a more suitable platform for yourself, read our article about top online education platforms and see if there is a better fit than LinkedIn Learning.