Lynda.com Courses

Campus has subscribed to lynda.com to provide video-on-demand courses on technical topics. Following is detail on subscribing to lynda and details about courses we've tried out.

Subscribing to Lynda

University of Waterloo faculty, staff, graduate students, and undergraduate students can now access web-based training from Lynda.com using their WatIAM credentials. There are over 3000 online courses to help you learn software, creative, and business skills, there is also a new IT training category. This training is available 24x7, and available wherever you have access to the Internet. Lynda.com provides just-in-time training, as in-class courses may not be offered when you need it.

This resource is not new to the University of Waterloo, for the first 5 years, limited accounts were available on a 2-week loan and there was always a wait list. Now University of Waterloo faculty, staff and students can access Lynda.com online training whenever they need it.

Feedback from clients using the training has been excellent.

The Lynda.com training complements our Skills for the Electronic Workplace (SEW) program. For example, you may want to learn Microsoft Excel in a lab setting through the SEW program and then learn more advanced features as you need them through the website. It is also an excellent resource to learn about the new features in an application (e.g. Office 2013). There are courses for all levels that cover technical skills, creative techniques, business strategies, and more.

Faculty, staff, and students (including co-op students on a work term at the University of Waterloo) can access this resource by:

1. Go to http://www.lynda.com/ and select ‘Log in’.
2. Type ‘uwaterloo.ca’ in the ‘Log in through your organization or school’ window, and click ‘Go’. (Returning users, just click ‘Go’ in this window.)
3. Enter your WatIAM userid and password. (If you want to join a previous Lynda.com account choose “I’ve had an account”, if not choose “No, I’ve never had an account.)

Subscribers will receive email notices from time to time to inform them about new courses.

Support for this service is available from the IST Service Desk (CHIP).

Specific Courses

Following is detail on specific courses, sorted by possible target audiences.

Beginning programmers / co-ops:

• PHP with MySQL Essentials - 11 hours. By Kevin Skoglund. Very good for beginners without higher-level CS courses. Includes chapter exercises and a final project that takes perhaps a few days to finish.
• PHP with OOP - 10.5 hours. By Kevin Skoglund. Covers OO programming.
• Unix for Mac OSX Users - 6.5 hours. By Kevin Skoglund. Covers command-line essentials. Seems generic enough that it would be useful for a video intro to linux, not just OSX Unix.
• Git Essentials - 6h 25m, Git Essential Training, by Kevin Skoglund. Covers basics of local repository management, branching, remote repository setup and access, with an example project to practice.

Customer Service

• Customer Service over the Phone - 51 minutes. By Jeff Toister. Good video to teach courtesy and communication over the phone which will result in happier customers. Phone communication skills are important and can be applied to face-to-face communication as well. Lots of best practices for keeping customers happy and feeling relevant.
• How to Manage Customer Expectations for Frontline Employees - 22 minutes. By Jeff Toister. Suggestions on how to deal with managing timelines and how to go above and beyond the expectations your clients have. Useful tips for staying calm with unhappy/unreasonable customers and viewing their perspective.

General software tools

• Twitter - Essential Training - 1 hour 28 min

Project Management

Supervisory skills

Unix tools