LinkedIn Learning, the social network’s professional online course platform, now has a feature called Office Hours. It allows teachers to arrange live events. Users may post questions, comments, and responses in real-time to connect with professionals and fellow learners, allowing them to participate in previously asynchronous classes.
Online learning platforms grew dramatically throughout the epidemic. After introducing free live lessons on its applications, BYJU’S, an education technology business located in Bangalore, India, reported a 200 percent surge in new students. Between mid-March 2020 and the end of July 2020, Coursera added 35 million new students. Upskilling has also been a priority for firms like Amazon. During the health crisis, 68 percent of firms engaged in education and reskilling, reacting to developments such as remote and hybrid work arrangements, according to McKinsey.
According to LinkedIn product director Jonathan Rochelle, Office Hours is aimed to make it easy for teachers to participate in the booming “creative economy.” Experts can use it to interact with learners in a way that encourages engagement and, perhaps, greater distribution of their work, resulting in the development of a “relevant professional context” audience.
“When it comes to employment, so many of us are thinking about what’s next. The fact is that we are in the midst of an extraordinary period of transition… when individuals are reconsidering how and why they work. As a result, people are taking charge of their careers in new ways, leveraging their networks and honing their skills,” Rochelle explained. “In fact, our members watched 53 percent more hours of learning content this year than they did last year.”
LinkedIn- Office Hours – A growing library:
LinkedIn Learning began in 2016, when the company merged the content of Lynda.com, which it had purchased for $1.5 billion in 2015, into its larger e-learning platform. Subjects include writing, accounting, programming, and other business, technology, and creative topics that can be chosen by users or recommended by employers.
LinkedIn Learning, like other online learning platforms, has seen significant growth as a result of the pandemic. According to LinkedIn, users viewed 1.7 million hours of learning content on LinkedIn Learning in the first week of April 2020, up from 560,000 hours in the first week of January – a threefold increase.
The debut of Office Hours follows LinkedIn’s announcement that it will extend its free LinkedIn Learning and Microsoft Learn courses and trial Abilities Path, a tool that attempts to provide job hopefuls a method to show their skills through exams. LinkedIn has just launched Career Coach, a Microsoft Teams tool designed to assist pre-and post-graduate college students to discover new objectives, interests, and skills.
LinkedIn’s expanding learning tools are an essential component of Viva Learning, a component of Microsoft’s recently disclosed digital Viva platform for large-scale enterprises. Learning integrates a company’s communications, knowledge, learning, resources, and insights into a single dashboard, allowing workers to explore, share, assign, and learn from content libraries from LinkedIn Learning, Microsoft Learn, third-party content providers, and custom content.
“Throughout the epidemic, we’ve seen learners appreciate social learning features like Q&A, where they can ask the LinkedIn Learning community a question and get responses from instructors, their network, or coworkers,” Rochelle said. “Our members frequently tell us that they desire innovative methods to remain up to date on current events”. The workplace is developing at such a rapid pace, with new difficulties surfacing every week, that professionals are eager to discuss them with one another.”