Draft:Integrating Lynda into the curriculum

About this article

This article introduces lynda online learning courses to faculty who are looking to integrate this tool into their courses. This article is intended for faculty.

What's lynda?

Lynda is a library of thousands of online courses taught by industry experts covering a wide variety of topics, including technology, personal productivity, communication, project management, and many others. Lynda courses include high-quality, accessible video demonstrations and supplemental materials, available 24-7 from your laptop, tablet, or phone. New courses are added regularly. Information Technology Services covers the cost of lynda.com access for the entire campus. All students, faculty, and staff with working winona.edu email addresses can create a lynda account and access the entire course library. To get started, you will need a lynda account.

How can Lynda be used in your curriculum?

To answer this we have three scenarios for you to consider below as you think about the possibilities of incorporating these resources into your own curriculum.

Scenario 1: Learning Technical Software or Specific Business or Soft skills

Faculty often are looking for ways to provide technical training on specific software or skills relating to the goals of the course, but don't have time to cover within classes. Or want to start flipping a series of classes in a course so class time can be spent using specific tools or skills. Lynda can be used to help you start flipping a course or build a series of videos to help a student who need more support on a specific skill or software covered in a previous course, but needs supplementing to reach the level of proficiency needed in your course. With the help of TLT and our Digital Learning Center (DLC) we can help you build custom support playlists or assignments for your unique assignments. To begin building your own playlist go to Creating Lynda Playlists.

Scenario 2: Hybrid playlists

Programming often is a combination of resources found within Lynda along with other multimedia resources provided by your book publisher, programming found in a Ted episode, YouTube video, or content your create. Lynda can be used to aggregate content so that students have one channel where they can go to find all of the resources you are looking to have them use in your classes. Hybrid playlists can be used to pull web-based media into one space so students can access, learn, and apply knowledge. To create your own hybrid playlist go to the Creating Lynda Hybrid Playlist article.

Scenario 3: Advanced Learning Paths

Upper level students or groups want to work at deeper levels on a project than is in the scope of the course. However, providing advanced training on unique tools outside the course goals is time consuming. A learning path is designed to provide a deeper dive into the professional thinking behind a given area of study. The advanced learning paths found in Lynda allow faculty to provide these deep dives into content, give them perspective into what a professional thinking in this area, and skills needed to advance in specific learning paths students might take. Many of our examples come from Winona State University internships or field experiences where a need a Become a web developer arises, Becoming an agile project manager, or a need to apply deeper analytical tools found in Become a data scientist, or SPSS. Providing timely access to a students in the field could be the very knowledge they need to stand out and distinguish themselves in the competitive work environment.

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