I’ve been a subscriber of Lynda.com for years. A while ago the company was acquired by LinkedIn and now they’ve added all the courses to their social network. A few months ago they gave Lynda.com subscribers the option to switch to LinkedIn Learning for a free month in exchange. I decided to take the leap.
Here is what was my experience:
The bad
- Your Lynda.com account is immediately canceled and you don’t have the option to resume your Lynda membership. The Lynda.com website is closed for new members. If you decide to switch to LinkedIn Learning know that there is no way back.
- No Apple TV app - Lynda.com has an Apple TV app and I used it all the time. LinkedIn Learning does not offer one. You lose your access to Lynda.com after you switch and the option to use the Apple TV app.
- There’s an increase in price - They offered me a free month if I switch but after the trial period I had to pay more. Now I have the ability to download files, I didn’t have this one before. I guess the cheapest Lynda.com plan is now gone.
- I had to create LinkedIn account - You get a premium LinkedIn account. I wasn’t a registered user before so I had to create an account.
- The desktop user interface - I’m used to splitting my screen in half or using the picture-in picture feature while using a different app. The picture-in-picture feature is not available and you can’t hide the contents of the course when the screen on your Mac is split in half.
- You can’t see the newly added content daily - I can’t see the Recently added section on the new LinkedIn Learning website. There’s a new article on the LinkedIn learning blog every Monday with the new courses, but you need to wait a whole week.
- Adding courses to collections is kind of buggy - When you want to add a course to a collection you can usually see only 4–5 collections. I guess they will fix this feature in the future.
The good
- Q&A section - Asking questions wasn’t an option before. The instructors are lovely and often give their social media accounts. They can answer your questions there. Now you can officially ask questions and check out other peoples’ questions and answers.
- Great mobile apps - I really enjoyed the mobile app experience. It’s easy to connect your phone to Apple TV. The user interface of the apps is great too.
- The content is still great - After LinkedIn bought Lynda.com they started adding more courses daily. You can still use your lynda.com to watch everything, but they try to make you switch.
- You still get features like learning paths and quizzes
- The social aspect - You can now use LinkedIn to publish your certificates of completion and advance in your career.