Survey shows YouTube used for learning professional skills
A recent social media discussion started by LINE Communications has found 52% of respondees confirmed they had used the YouTube platform to learn skills which can be transferred to a professional environment.
LINE posted the question “Have you ever used YouTube to teach yourself something?” on the eLearning Guild’s LinkedIn discussion forum and received nearly 200 responses, with over half the respondents indicating that they have used it to learn professional skills. These findings challenge the decision of 12% of global businesses who chose to block their employees from using YouTube, with only Facebook (23%) and MySpace (13%) featuring higher, according to a report by OpenDNS.
The responses have been analysed in a report by LINE, one of Europe’s leading providers of learning and communications. It shows that nearly all respondents (96%) have used YouTube to teach themselves something. Nearly one fifth indicated that they had used YouTube to assist them with editing software and 7.2% said they used it to brush up on IT skills. Photo editing, video editing and word and spreadsheet processing were also regularly listed.
Ed Lines, Marketing Executive at LINE, who started the discussion on the eLearning Guild Linkedin group, said, “I’ve used YouTube for help with writing Excel formulas, for learning new tricks in Photoshop and for learning new skills in countless other areas but I wanted to know what other people were using it to learn. To get nearly 200 responses, with such a high percentage of professional skills being learned was really encouraging.”
Steve Ash, Sales and Marketing Director said, “LINE has a very active social media presence and LinkedIn is just one avenue where we like to create debate and discussion. As well as our other areas of service LINE has been creating video based learning solutions for our clients for many years and these findings highlight the popularity of short video nuggets as learning aids.”