Education for the Internet: Lynda.com

A friend of a friend has a project and needs a specialist to oversee its implementation. You haven’t worked on the exact type of project before. Are you going to turn it down this opportunity to make some extra cash? Of course not! You’ll say “Hell yea I can do it,” and then teach yourself what needs to be done.

So, now you’ve got the job and need to figure it out. You jump on the net and go to Lynda.com, a subscription based infomediary site, offering learning tools for software and design topics.



Lynda.com offers online courses and video tutorials on software, such as Indesign, Photoshop, search engine optimization, animation, HTML and a large number of others. These products are taught with over 35,000 videos and 544 online classes, according to Lynda.com.

Video tutorials
The tutorials has several chapters the user can choose from, each similar to a classroom lesson plan. Also, they can be watched in any order the user wants. After making a selection, the video pops up in a separate window. The videos uses a short power-point style intro, then segues into the main lesson, using a visual of the software in-use (if learning software) and a voice over explaining the process.

Authors
“you'll find some of the preeminent experts and authors in the fields covered,” said Michael Castelluccio of Strategic Finance magazine.

Myriad authors are hired by Lynda.com to design the learning modules, giving the users the chance to build author preferences. The site's search engine allows the user to search the author's bios, learning about their history, connection to Lynda.com, and past projects.

Some of Authors included on the site are Maria Giudice and Nigel French. Giudice is CEO/founder of Hot Studio, a graphic design company for interactive and print design. Her bio on Lynda.com’s site mentions her accomplishments as a writer and consultation work. Furthermore, French’s bio points out several of his accomplishments as a writer, graphic designer and fifteen year history as a graphic design professor.

Packages
Several Package are available for the online training and tutorials for different customers with different needs. Each having 24/7 access, allowing clients to sign on and off whenever they like. The monthly package offers the least amount of commitment, costing 25 dollars per month. Next, is the Annual package which offers the same amount of access to site resources, with a longer time and larger price commitment. With the additional commitment comes, as with most packages, a decrease in price, costing 250 dollars for the entire year. With this plan the customer saves 50 dollars for the year. A Premium package, priced at 375 dollars per year, includes exercises with each lesson for an incentive to upgrade.

A business package is also available, obviously with a several differences in pricing and features from the end-user version, called the Multi-User Program. This is similar to the Premium package for end-users; however, the pricing decreases with bulk purchases. With the purchase of twenty licenses there’s a price break, 300 dollars per license for the year. And with 30, the price drops to 290 dollars per license. A license is necessary for each user in the school or business. The next feature is convenient for business or educators, tracking results. It tracks employee or student progress, titles used and a few more options. All of this gets reported on a graphing system.

The site employs a mix of Dynamic and Fixed pricing strategies. The upgrade from the monthly to the year package and the decrease in price for business/school’s bulk purchases are Volume-based, giving a quantity discounts (Fixed pricing). The Dynamic pricing facet is the different offers for businesses and end-user accounts.