Pros & Cons
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- Excellent for learning specific hard skills, such as software development
- A wide range of courses
- High production quality
- May be available for free through libraries and employers
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- Expensive when you pay out of pocket
- Overly corporate tone at times
- Marginally relevant course suggestions
- Occasionally confusing page navigation
LinkedIn Learning Specs
| Free Trial | |
| Quizzes | |
| Some Celebrity Instructors | |
| Video Tutorials |
LinkedIn Learning, as the name implies, is an online learning service from the famous job site. The education platform includes video-based classes on everything from people management to graphic design software. The business-focused content is useful, but you'll occasionally encounter courses that cater to the latest flash-in-the-pan tech fad or offend your ears with corporate jargon. Should you pay out of pocket for LinkedIn Learning? Probably not, but if it's included with your library account or employment benefits, then it's worth exploring. Otherwise, you can get equally good video lessons from YouTube, academic business basics from Editors' Choice winner Khan Academy, and much more inspiring ideas from MasterClass, another Editors' Choice winner.
How Much Does LinkedIn Learning Cost?
All LinkedIn Premium accounts include LinkedIn Learning. The pricey baseline Career subscription costs $39.99 per month, $89.97 every three months, or $239.88 per year. It comes with other benefits, such as letting you message people even if you're not connected to them and seeing who has viewed your LinkedIn profile.
(Credit: LinkedIn Learning)You can also access LinkedIn Learning for free from some public libraries or if you have a LinkedIn Premium account through your employer. However, you cannot buy access to a single course or pay for only LinkedIn Learning without the other Premium stuff, which used to be an option.
The cost of an online learning course varies dramatically. MasterClass sells annual, all-access subscriptions, starting at $120 per year. Skillshare's pricing has jumped around over the years, but it's settled at $167.88 per year. Khan Academy, a nonprofit organization that accepts donations, is 100% free. Other sites that provide more practical skills training, such as Coursera, Udacity, and Udemy, offer some courses for free, while others cost anywhere from $40 to $400 per month.
Learning Materials and Courses
Once you have a Premium account (or authenticated your library card), you can log into LinkedIn and click For Business in the upper-right corner. At the page's bottom, you'll see Learning—unless you're on the My Network page, where the link to Learning is missing. The navigation is a bit confusing. The first time you visit LinkedIn Learning, a few short surveys appear that ask about the content you want to learn. Then, LinkedIn Learning suggests material it thinks you need.
You can browse whatever LinkedIn Learning recommends, but a better and more targeted path is to use the search bar to find what you need. Otherwise, you could get lost in LinkedIn Learning's course suggestions that are only marginally relevant.
Once you start a course, it appears under My Library, though sometimes you have to force-refresh the page for it to show up. You can also manually save courses of interest.
What Are the Classes Like?
LinkedIn Learning's material largely comes across as a glorified slideshow presentation, and this is especially true for the business content. The videos have about as much personality as any boardroom slide deck. The videos cut between a presenter (who is very obviously reading from a script) and slides. Some slides are animated, others have text. Occasionally, you'll get a video b-roll or photo stills.
(Credit: LinkedIn Learning)The content can still be worthwhile, however. A course on plain language writing, for example, has clear explanations for why people should write using simple and understandable words, as well as tips on how to do it.
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Another course on banishing your inner critic has compelling ideas, but suffers from being overproduced. The presenter looks at the camera and says her rehearsed lines with enthusiasm, but it feels staged. She gets her points across, certainly, but nothing about it creates a lasting memory. Compare this to a MasterClass course starring Christina Aguilera. Even if you know nothing about professional singers, it's easy to recall her vivid stories, like how she lubricates her throat during performances by eating honey. It leaves you with something memorable.
Or consider a Skillshare course with Mary Karr on memoir writing. She may say "um" and "you know" once or twice, or look away from the camera as she pulls words together, but her authenticity leaves an impression. You don't get that from LinkedIn Learning's teleprompter.
Some of LinkedIn Learning's older courses are more vibrant. Ben Long, in his 2015 course on portrait photography, may read his notes when he's outdoors talking about composition and light, but he's noticeably more present than someone following a script word for word. EJ Hassenfratz's class called Mograph Techniques (2015) is scripted, but he breaks in from time to time to whisper, "let me zoom in here," while showing you a detail in how he uses his software. You get the sense that he's with you, despite the script.
(Credit: LinkedIn Learning)LinkedIn Learning still provides excellent coding instruction. The courses are plentiful and cater to beginners and experts alike, with classes in basic HTML and advanced C++. You can find lessons on the foundations of programming as well as specialized lessons on user interface, responsive design, and mobile app development. Teachers will be pleased to know that many tutorials, including some free ones, are specifically targeted at children.
With such a broad range of topics, not just coding, it's no surprise LinkedIn Learning doesn't include dedicated forums or live phone chat for all specific courses. The best you can do is leave questions under a video and hope they get answered in the comments. As a social network, though, LinkedIn already has an entire career-hungry community to tap into for help and support.
LinkedIn Learning's coding lessons lack the helpful interactivity of services like Codecademy or Treehouse, our Editors' Choice winners for free and paid learn-to-code courses, respectively. However, they make up for it with a much greater breadth and depth of content beyond coding for a similar monthly price.
(Credit: LinkedIn Learning)Learning Goals and Completion Certificates
You can set a goal in LinkedIn Learning for how many minutes per week you want to spend watching videos, and you can view your weekly progress in your account. The account also saves your progress in each course you've started, making it easy to pause Ariana Huffington when she goes on and on about meditation, and resume after you've had a break.
Many LinkedIn Learning courses give you a certificate upon completion, which you can download as a PDF or add to your LinkedIn profile. Certificates don't necessarily bear any weight in the real world. However, they may come in handy if your employer sponsors your Premium account and wants proof that you're doing something with it.