MCC Continues to be a Leader of Promoting Life-Long Learning

Learning is a life-long endeavor. At Middlesex Community College, students of any age can take credit and noncredit classes to start or continue their educational paths. In order to provide more professional development opportunities, Middlesex has added LinkedIn Learning as a resource for students, faculty and staff.

MCC is committed to supporting students and employees with the knowledge and tools they need to succeed. According to Peter Shea, MCC’s Director of Professional Instructional Development, LinkedIn Learning is an especially effective resource for workplace and classroom learning, and can help students adjust to online education.

“LinkedIn Learning helps bridge the gap between academic education and workplace learning,” he said. “We will be using LinkedIn Learning to curate specific courses related to important college initiatives such as building an equity-minded culture and increasing data literacy.”

With over 5,000 short, self-paced courses, LinkedIn Learning allows users to select their own course path or choose recommendations made by the system. MCC users can access LinkedIn Learning by signing into their MyMCC portal. Students and employees do not need to have a LinkedIn account or link the system to their account.

The system will ask questions based on a user’s interest and skills and what they would like to learn. Users can search for a specific topic or use the browse feature to view a number of topics.

Karen James, MCC’s Assistant Director of Career Planning and Placement, believes LinkedIn Learning can be a valuable resource for career planning and job searching. Students can take courses to strengthen their resume and add completed courses to the Licenses & Certifications section of their LinkedIn profile.

“Career development requires lots of dedicated time that most students are challenged to fit into their busy schedules,” she said. “During this unusual disruption of plans and routines, LinkedIn Learning is an opportunity to improve your career knowledge and navigation tools to develop an achievable action plan, build your network, learn new skills to make you competitive for jobs, hear from professionals in the workplace, and manage your job search.”

Some sample classes James highlights for enhancing career searching skills include Planning your career, Digital networking strategies and building professional relationships, Creating achievable goals, Mastering interviewing skills and virtual tips, and Managing your job search.

LinkedIn Learning breaks topics down into three major categories – Business, Creative and Technology. Users can choose to participate in courses by Subject, Software or Learning Paths. Under Business, Subjects include leadership and management, marketing, human resources and sales. Creative Subjects include animation and illustration, user experience and motion graphics. For Technology, the available Subjects are data science, security, software development and network and system administration.

Users can also learn specific software based on their category of interest. Software learning options include Excel, Microsoft Office and Zoom for Business; HTML, Illustrator, InDesign and Photoshop for Creative; and JavaScript, Python, Wordpress and Tableau for Technology.

Learning Paths help users learn the information needed for a specific job title, such as a manager, business owner or digital marketing specialist in Business; a graphic designer, photographer or video editor in Creative; or a data scientist or web developer in Technology.

As a leader of helping students transition into and excel in the workforce for 50 years, Middlesex continues to add resources that will help students and their employees be successful.

For more information on MCC’s access to LinkedIn Learning, contact Peter Shea at sheap@middlesex.mass.edu or Karen James at jamesk@middlesex.mass.edu.

Register for MCC’s Mini-mester II – an accelerated, eight-week session that starts November 2. Visit www.middlesex.mass.edu/registration/ or call 1-800-818-3434 for more information.

Discover your path at Middlesex Community College. As one of the largest, most comprehensive community colleges in Massachusetts, MCC has been a proven leader in online education for more than 20 years. We educate, engage and empower a diverse community of learners, offering more than 80 degree and certificate programs – plus hundreds of noncredit courses. Middlesex Community College: Student success starts here!