LinkedIn Learning: Excel

✶ Reflection ✶

1. Was this my first exposure to LinkedIn and how difficult was it to get started with LinkedIn Learning?  

No, I've been encouraged to use LinkedIn to keep in touch with my high school teachers and peers. The rest of the setting up was alright; quick and easy since they have to set up simple tutorials for millions of users everyday. It was efficient and professional and easy to navigate.

2. Do you think you’ll use it on your own? How might other DPU students (or faculty or staff) use it?  

When I have more free time, I'll definitely go and explore other fields to expand my tech skills and gain more knowledge. I see that they have some design courses that I might check out. Other DPU students, faculty and staff can also use it enhance their learning/teaching, which I think is pretty neat and wouldn't take up a lot of time. It just really depends on what their needs are at the moment; the more you know your goals, the easier it'll be for you to narrow what to watch... 

3. What was your prior experience level with Excel? In what ways did the Excel Essential Training course help? 

I had to use excel when I was studying chemistry, biology and math, so most of my data were just numbers and I mainly played with the graphs functions. Excel Essential Training course just allowed me to remember some information that I forgot or never bothered to check out... I think something that changed the most in my experience is that now I'm more interested to explore the navigation bar instead of just switching between 'Home' and 'Insert'. It was also good to know that I can use excel on a browser now instead of having to download the application, I'm not sure why I never tried doing this when I was in high school.

4. Do you find these kinds of real-world problems engaging, and are they a good way to learn a technology and/or to practice/hone your skills? Is it helpful to expose you to real-world problems and situations? 

These real-world problems are good ways to see how you can apply technology to communicate ideas visually and quickly to your audience, which is super engaging when it comes to presenting ideas to your clients or collaborators. Thus, I think it's always good to hone these skills so when you're exposed to these types of problems in real life, you know what to do (and if not, you'll know what you have to do to learn a the skills to solve this problem, rather than just sitting there and be confused). 

5. Which challenge did you choose and why?

I chose the challenge insert a happy or sad face into a color-coded temperature spreadsheet, since lately, the temperature has been on my mind. I watched the Insert a Happy or Sad Face challenge and also read an exterior tutorial (I knew this skill beforehand) to create my heat map of the temperatures across different cities that me and some of my friends live in during this week. This tutorial is actually kind of similar to another challenge that I tried, Too Hot or Too Cold, but the exterior tutorial allowed me to use a wider range of colors, so I went with that instead of just only using the LinkedIn Learning Challenge.