Lynda.com: Saving Grace - The Content

February 5, 2008

I lambasted Lynda.com in my previous post for a clunky navigation scheme that is needlessly annoying for the learner. I hope Lynda.com hears the cries (silent cries?) of its customers and improves this glaring shortcoming in an otherwise stellar service.

With that criticism behind us, allow me to pull a 180 and tell you why every eLearning developer should have a yearly subscription to Lynda.com content.

The inspiration for this blog, as you probably know, is the sad state of visual design in eLearning (generally speaking). Many eLearning developers come from academic backgrounds and lack a basic knowledge of visual design concepts. And this lack of knowledge results in eLearning that lacks impact, fails to effectively educate, and does little to convert learners to this new, unfamiliar and unsettling method of training.

It’s no secret that corporate training departments are perpetually underfunded, and many of us are doing “soup to nuts” eLearning development that requires a wide range of skills; from writing content, to HTML and javascript programming, to graphic design and audio/video production. Some of us are freelance developers with no corporate resources whatsoever.

We are jacks of all trades, masters of none some. Many of us love the variety and challenge of handling all aspects of eLearning development, but doing so effectively requires training. Lots of training. Training that isn’t easy to come by - a sad irony for those of us in the business of training. So we stumble along, learning by trial and error.

Some of us may be lucky enough to have the support of skilled graphic designers and are never compelled to descend into the dirty work of pushing pixels. Nonetheless, a fundamental understanding of basic design concepts is not merely helpful, but in my opinion essential for any eLearning developer who strives to create truly great eLearning experiences.

Lynda.com offers a fantastic catalog of screencast-based courses for software applications used extensively in eLearning development. Photoshop. Illustrator. Flash. Final Cut Pro. PowerPoint.

Lynda.com also offers some excellent courses covering basic design and media fundamentals we should all learn. Color. Typography. Interactive design. Digital audio principles.

And courses that help us understand collaboration tools, like Microsoft Project and SharePoint, that make our team development work more efficient and effective.

Most of these courses span several hours of screencasts, but my favorite aspect of Lynda.com is I can jump in and view a specific topic that I’m struggling with in a project at any given time. Like putting text on paths in Illustrator (why can I never get that right?).

At a mere $250 for a full year of anytime, anywhere access to this vast collection of courses pertinent to eLearning development, a Lynda.com subscription is a no-brainer.

Posted in eLearning Hall of Fame