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5:00pm usually signifies the end of the workday, but for dozens of Emory faculty, staff, and students, the early evening has become an opportunity to squeeze in some much-needed supplemental software training.
During the month of October, 40 people from across the university gathered in DiSC weekly for the first ever Lynda.com working group.
Lynda.com is a video learning site stocked with tutorials on hundreds of websites, software applications, and computing functions. Emory has maintained a paid subscription to Lynda.com for some time, but only a handful of people have become regular users.
For the inaugural goup, we chose to focus on Microsoft Excel, an application useful in areas ranging from humanities and social science research to human resources and administration. Though dozens of hours worth of Excel training are available on Lynda.com, the sessions focused on broadly applicable functions like sorting, filtering, pivot tables, and database management.
"I've known that Lynda is availabe since I started working at Emory," notes one attendee, "but I never got around to using it until I signed up for the scheduled sessions. It's easier to stick to a training schedule this way."
Emory is currently transisioning to a workstation-based subscription to Lynda.com. Beginning later this month, anyone with an Emory ID will be able to access the site through designated workstations in the Woodruff Library (in ECIT and the Research Commons) and at the Health Sciences Library.
We're currently accepting suggestions for our next training series. If you'd like focused training on a particular piece of software, let us know.
