Sean Keenan '20 sat down for an interview with Linden Wright '22 to hear about her experience using LinkedIn Learning, an online training library that allows users to learn a variety of different skill sets at their own pace.
Sean: Hi, Linden! Glad you could do this interview. Feel free to introduce yourself.
Linden: Sounds good! I am Linden Chamlee Wright. I am a member of the Bryn Mawr Class of 2022... [and] a Literatures in English and Sociology Major.
S: Great! So, Linden, I know you got a chance to look around LinkedIn Learning before you picked out a course. What was your first impression of LinkedIn Learning?
L: My first impression was seeing a huge variety of courses.They seemed to just have about anything related to professional skills that you could be interested in. If it existed, there was a course for it. I was impressed by how many courses there were that were not just business analytics or marketing skills. For HR professionals and others in similar fields, they had “Team Management” skills and “Leadership” skills courses. They also had soft skills in relationship to communicating with employees and coworkers and potentially customers. There was such a big range, it was really impressive.
S: I'm glad you liked the range of content! So, I heard you picked out an Excel course to take?
L: Yeah, so the course I took was “Excel Essentials Training for Office 365/Microsoft 365” and it went over everything from basic uses of Excel to data entry and data management to creating charts, and making the most of Excel and Office 365. I was drawn to it because spreadsheets are something I make almost daily but I wasn’t well-versed in any of its advanced uses. I could add up cells, but I couldn’t do anything more complicated than that. It seemed like a really useful skill for a wide variety of job positions – and potentially even classes – because I’m still on the job hunt for the summer. I’m looking at a huge variety of internships and positions and just having actual proficiency in Excel seemed like it will be a really useful skill in any place I land.
S: It seems very relevant to what you want to do in the future so it's good to hear you got a lot out of it! What would you say your favorite thing you learned from this course?
L: I would say my favorite thing is a new Excel feature that’s been updated a few times over the past few years. Depending on which version of Excel you have, it's either called “Ideas” or “Analyze Data." It’s a tool that will suggest charts and tables and data visualizations for you based on what you’ve put in the spreadsheet. You can look at it and it will analyze the data you’ve put in without you having to decide “Oh, I know exactly what I want to do.” So if you don't know the best way to visualize the data you've got, it will make suggestions for you. I found really cool that it’s not only storing your information, but it’s figuring out what might be good for you. It’s a very handy shortcut.
S: That sounds very technical!
L: Yeah, I don’t quite understand how it works and I imagine quite a lot of software programming went into it… I had no idea it existed, but the course was like: “Use this thing! Have fun with it! It’s really helpful!” And it seems like it absolutely can be.
S: So you would say that you liked LinkedIn Learning’s teaching style and the way it was formatted?
L: I did. There’s a few things that I liked. It was easy to track my progress and I didn’t have to do it all in one sitting. The course I took was a few hours and I did it over a few days. There were times when I reached the end of a chapter, took a quiz, and did not remember exactly what the answer to a question would be. I was able to go back to the three-minute video the quiz was referencing and quickly refresh myself on that topic. I could then make a note to myself and say “Oh, that topic might be one that I want to return to and watch a few times to really take it in and understand it.” So, I like that there are so many divisions and clear categories [in regard to the course's format]. You don’t have to watch 30 minutes of content to find the two minutes of information you need. It’s all really clear about where to find things, so it was really easy to use, really easy to understand. I felt like it definitely matched my learning style.
S: That’s good to hear! I’m glad you got a lot of use out of it. Would you say you would want to use this software again? And, if so, what kind of courses do you think you would take?
L: I definitely would like to use LinkedIn Learning again. I think it’s really cool that we can access to it through Bryn Mawr. I use LinkedIn quite a lot to network and to connect with peers, mentors, and coworkers, but I wasn’t familiar with LinkedIn Learning at all before this. Now I definitely want to continue using it, so I’ve started looking at new courses to save. I just started a new course called “Persuasive Sales,” which is very different than “Essentials of Excel” but which I’m really interested in. I'm trying to get an internship in development and fundraising for non-profits, and it seems that the course is about persuasive selling and sales, and being a good communicator. That format might be really useful in persuading people to donate money to a nonprofit cause, so I’m hoping to use that course to build a transferable skill.
S: That’s really great. Thank you so much for coming, and thank you so much for being willing to talk with me about your experience using LinkedIn Learning.
L: Of course. I really enjoyed using it and I'm excited to keep doing so.
If you want to learn more about LinkedIn Learning, make sure to check out our Intro to LinkedIn Learning week (April 19–23, 2021) on LITS' social media.
Want to explore LinkedIn Learning ahead of time? Check out this TechDoc on how to access the platform using your Bryn Mawr College email.
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