Writing for the Web with LinkedIn Learning

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By Eimear Kelly, USM Rollout Team

Inspired by the talk given by Joyce McLoughlin, Licia Carlesi and Sara Jones on LinkedIn Learning at the March Work Smarter Together Event, training was arranged on the topic of Writing for the Web to take place over four weeks in June and July. Here’s what we learned!

 We asked for volunteers from the Remote Working Group to take part in this training. In total, 18 people took part from various areas in the university. The training consisted of a seven part online course and it was decided that this would be spread out over four weeks, with around two sections to complete per week.

High angle view of video conference with teacher on laptop at home. College student learning maths while watching online webinar, listening audio course. Top view of girl in video call with personal tutor on computer, distance and e-learning education concept.

Given these 18 staff members came from various teams across different parts of the university, a Google Room was set up to coordinate the training. While everyone was free to watch the training videos and do the related exercises at any time during the week that suited them, we agreed on a deadline to submit our work through the Google Room every week. In a world where Zoom fatigue is so common, this was a helpful tool. It had the added benefit of not needing a schedule – if anyone missed a conversation that happened in the chat, they could catch up on it in their own time, as with the training itself.

There was as much to learn through others in the community as there was through the course itself. While the course gave a general overview on how best to write for websites, there were some UCD specific tips and tricks which we could only have learnt from each other. Over the four weeks, as well as our newfound writing and editing skills, we walked away with knowledge on things such as how to add LinkedIn Learning Badges to the Personal Development page in InfoHub, and how to add expiration dates to web pages in Terminal Four.

At the end of the four weeks, I held a Feedback Session using Zoom and Mural to find out how the course had gone. Positive feedback included the ease of using Google Rooms; having the ability to both share one’s own work and see how others tackled the exercises; and the content and structure of the LinkedIn Learning course. Something to consider going forward would be giving more structured guidelines on the expected time commitments. Some members of the group shared their experiences on how they used tools such as Google Calendar to schedule time for themselves during the week to complete the training. Finally, several people in the group asked if there would be a more advanced course to further expand this skill! You can see the feedback Mural here.

Finally, it was decided to keep the Google Room open in order to share our work on live UCD websites based on the skills we learned in the course. This room is open to any web administrator who would like to join to share their work on updating UCD websites. Just email eimear.kelly1@ucd.ie to be added in.

LinkedIn Learning

If you are interested in taking the course we followed, you can find it here through LinkedIn Learning.

You can find courses on a wide variety of topics through the main LinkedIn Learning page – just log in using your UCD Connect details.

If there are any hourly paid staff on your team, they can sign up for a one month trial for full access, and also can freely avail of any of the below courses:

Want to know more?

If you would like any ideas on how you could make training like this work for your team please feel free to contact eimear.kelly1@ucd.ie.

If you want further information about getting involved as a champion of LinkedIn learning for your School/Unit or Team, you can contact peopledevelopment@ucd.ie.