Have you heard the word about Lynda?

Lynda.com is a video-content platform full of skills tutorials for business, design, software development, photography and career development. Essentially, it’s the YouTube of professional tutorials.

Unlike other video tutorial platforms like Udemy, where the courses are developed mostly by freelancers, Lynda’s courses are developed by industry experts. Course instructors include Lynda Weinman, founder of the site and a special effects animator, and Arianna Huffington, founder of the news site the Huffington Post.

On Lynda.com, Metro State students get free access to more than 144,000 video tutorials.

Students can learn new skills, improve existing skills and stay competitive in their chosen career field. Lynda provides easy-to-digest videos on lots of topics. The tutorials are organized as either standalone topics or as a collection called a playlist.

Users can also take learning paths that guide them through skills that build upon each other. Some popular paths cover how to become a leader, music producer, network engineer, photojournalist, or developer in Python, a computer programming language.

When you complete a tutorial or path, Lynda will give you a certificate that you can list on your resume or LinkedIn profile.  

Computer science students, like me, can use these tutorials to help with Python problem sets and get better grades on programming assignments.

I used Lynda to learn Android software development. It helped me to create an Android app from scratch with classmates in ICS 372, Object-Oriented Design and Implementation.

Metro State’s new website has made it easier to access Lynda. Go to the “Current Students” menu. The link for Lynda.com is on the right side grouped with D2L Brightspace and student email.

Lynda was bought by the career networking website LinkedIn in 2015. LinkedIn has been pushing their learning platform “LinkedIn Learning.” So, you may be wondering if Lynda and LinkedIn Learning are the same thing.

Content-wise they are the same. The major difference is the interface with which they present the content.

LinkedIn Learning does have an edge as you can use your LinkedIn profile to generate more content customized to you.

In Lynda, you may need to dig a little for what you want from the playlists.

LinkedIn Learning will cost you $29.99 monthly. Whereas, Lynda is free for Metro State students.

And, on a student budget, you can’t beat free.