LinkedIn Learning (Lynda.com)

Score9.1 out of 10

200 Reviews and Ratings

What is LinkedIn Learning (Lynda.com)?

Lynda.com (now offered as part of LinkedIn Learning) is an elearning course library acquired and now supported by LinkedIn in May 2015.

Categories & Use Cases

Course catalog or library
Learning content is organized into a course catalog or browsable library.
Category average: 8.7
Progress tracking & certifications
The system tracks individuals’ progress on courses, scores, transcripts, certificates, etc.
Category average: 8.6
Learning content
The vendor offers high quality pre-made courses or assets. These may be specific to certain industries or technologies.
Category average: 8.7

Automation & Integration
The platform integrates with various other systems to allow for automation features such as adding or removing users from courses and auto-enrollment in courses.
Category average: 7.8
Historical Metrics
Centralized learning history where users can track their progress and learning goals.
Category average: 8.1
Gamification
Presents course material in a game-like format to increase engagement and enjoyment.
Category average: 7.6

Most Frequent Users

Top 3 industries using LinkedIn Learning (Lynda.com).

Based on HG Insights installation data

View all Reviews

#1 most frequent

Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services

14.5%

1,256 installations of 8,642

#2 most frequent

Manufacturing

10.9%

943 installations of 8,642

#3 most frequent

Information

9.4%

810 installations of 8,642

Ash Shenker

General Manager in Corporate at Australian Fitness Academy (11-50 employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

LinkedIn Learning is used a professional development tool to upskill team members across the business, including both entry-level roles right through to Senior Management. The learning is tailored to each individual to upskill in particular development areas that aim to enhance knowledge, skills and productivity in our workplace.

Pros

Easy-to-use platform
Ability to generate custom learning journeys
Accessible content, including visual, audible and written
Opportunities to consume both bite-sized and longer-form content

Cons

Divide longer videos into sectiosn to consume in parts
Better search features to filter/sort

Return on Investment

Improved skillsets across the business
More productive and efficient workforce
Enhanced leadership/management capabilities

Usability

Verified User

Administrator in Human Resources (201-500 employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use LinkedIn Learning (Lynda.com) daily in our organisation to address micro-learning needs. As they have so many courses available on such a wide range of topics, it enables us to recommend courses to people who need development in a particular area. We also use it for our onboarding training and cyber security training.

Pros

Variety of courses available
Ability to assign courses to different groups
AI coach

Cons

More Australian content
Ability to create own content

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Litmos and Go1

Other Software Used

Litmos, Culture Amp, Performance Leader

Verified User

Contributor in Engineering (201-500 employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

LinkedIn Learning is used to learn emerging and used technologies in detail. It helps business by providing this platform to the resources so that they can learn the things directly and improve themself.

Pros

Course content is good
Short , Medium and long courses are available to learn
Certification on course completion which can be shared to showcase your skills

Cons

Topic or course based discussions
FAQ sections and way to get answers quickly from course creator
Adding more courses from other domains

Return on Investment

Resources becomes skillful
Productivity has increased as weakness of resources are getting fulfilled through this platform
No separate server or website maintenance is needed to provide learning resource to employees which increases business focus.

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Pluralsight Skills

Other Software Used

Azure Service Bus, Azure Portal, Microsoft Edge, ChatGPT

Andréa Sousa

Senior Manager Digital and Social Media in Customer Service at SKY (501-1000 employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

In my work we use Linkedin Learning for training, with shorter and faster courses.The subjects are current and the courses are easy to be done and with simple language.In our case I think we received many indications of courses which does not allow us to access all, but we have the advantage of being able to do them anywhere even on public transport for example.

Pros

Simple and didactic content
Easy access
Serves multiple people at the same time

Cons

the search for specific subjects could be expanded, facilitating access

Most Important Features

dinamic
easy access
several contents

Return on Investment

I use this software for encourage the training of my team
currently my team has increased the average annual training due to ease of access to the tool
I can present current issues in a short time for the team

Other Software Used

LinkedIn Jobs, Jira Service Management, Jira Work Management

Arthur Kegerreis View profile

Multimedia Web Design Consultant and Contractor at Destiny Manifestation Design Multimedia (1-10 employees)

Pros

They have progressively updated the interface for the video lessons, adding a transcript, and for some time they had several video window options. These were important because you frequently have to refer back and forth between the lesson segments, transcript, and video, which is an extra usability headache when you have to scroll constantly.
Their introductory "essential training" videos are generally quite good at getting an overview of software tools, functionality, and work flow.
Lynda.com specialized initially in DESIGN. She was the first person to author web design books oriented towards graphic designers instead of programmers. She often included videos with groundbreaking artists in their field.
Transcripts are an essential tool in the lessons. Once you've watched everything, there are bound to be things you need to refer to again, and the transcripts help because you don't have to watch each video again.

Cons

LinkedIn Learning has already made much of Lynda.com's content unusable. Where software lessons were once clearly indexed by company and title, now searches lead to every video segment that mentions a topic among all related software products. Meanwhile, it's often impossible to find courses when you know they exist. For example, Google and G-Suite courses were nearly impossible to find for some time.
LinkedIn's interface is already confusing and counter-intuitive. They've wrapped LinkedIn Learning into the existing over-cluttered interface, making it even harder to use effectively. As a company, they've also proven to be untrustworthy; when I first signed up for Linked In, they spammed everyone in my contact list, and there are lots of reports of them billing customers without their consent. I'm being forced to migrate to LinkedIn Learning, but the account migration doesn't work, and their tech support was clueless why.
Lynda.com was never terribly great for learning coding. Even if you buy the upper tier subscription with the exercise files, it can often be difficult to debug a problem when you're following an instructor onscreen. If there's something you're confused by, there's no way to ask a question for clarification. LinkedIn is even worse because it's trying to include every IT subject that certifications are available for, and they're weak on design software.
The class certificates are basically a joke. All you have to do to "earn one" is let all the videos in a course play through to the end. I think there may be comprehension questions thrown in for good measure, but I never found them to help comprehension or retention.
Just like the present site, LinkedIn targets everything towards corporate clients. A large majority of design professionals and creatives in general are contract workers and resent pop-up menus that don't even mention design among the potential departments or any related job titles. LinkedIn Learning is targeted towards IT support personnel, not creative software users.
Lynda.com was initially a family business. Together with Bruce Heavin, she offered easily accessible training for people without technical backgrounds. Now she's on the Forbes top 100 women list, valuing her at $310 million. Lynda.com went through a growth spurt that moved them from Ojai to Ventura, and in the process they became less and less personal. Support staff was still friendly, helpful, and responsive though. Few other businesses offered the ability to start and stop a subscription without any penalty. Now LinkedIn's purchase seems to be putting nails in the coffin. No longer is there phone support - only a chat window with uninformed people puzzled why they can't migrate [your] account.

Most Important Features

Well, they have a team of people debugging each class, so they don't have many typos like, "What are LinkedIn Learning (Lynda.com)'s most important features for your or your organization." Their production standards were very high.
Lynda.com was initiated for individual learning. That's what it excels at. They have added a bunch of features to try to add sale-ability to your learning efforts, like the "certificates." If you need more time to review something, you can play the video again and read the transcript. That's often harder in an in-person classroom environment. It would be possible to have a team of people viewing the online classes together, but I'd be surprised if that worked well unless the participants liked to help each other out.
Lynda.com was set up for you to learn software. LinkedIn Learning is set up to sell you more classes, buy their other products, and lock you in to a purchase contract. My impression is that they could care less whether you actually learn anything.

Return on Investment

Lynda.com's Macromedia and Adobe software classes gave me a foundation to work professionally as a web designer, helping scores of clients build their businesses, increase their revenue, create passive income streams, and bolster their professional credibility.
Lynda.com's G-Suite Administration course, and related Google courses, enabled me and our team to set up and implement our G-Suite software, which became fundamental to our team meetings, role-based email account roll-out, and registration for our events. Some people had mentioned Google's help features as being exceptional, but I found the Lynda.com classes much more succinct and they got me and our team up to speed efficiently.
LinkedIn's takeover of Lynda.com is leaving me ready to jump ship. The poor handling of the account migration seems likely to foreshadow more problems with a big corporation that cares nothing about its customers.

Alternatives Considered

Coursera and Udemy for Business

Other Software Used

Adobe PhotoShop, Salesforce CMS, WordPress

LinkedIn Learning (Lynda.com)

What is LinkedIn Learning (Lynda.com)?

Categories & Use Cases