Research Tools and Services Discovery

Look at any product in your home or office; you can thank a supply chain manager for getting it there. What is supply chain management (SCM)? It's the system that connects and integrates the links of sourcing, procurement, conversion, and logistics management. In this course, professor Eddie Davila provides a detailed overview of all of the links in the typical supply chain. He explains what is involved in purchasing inventory and setting up supplier relationships, what you need to consider when deciding how to manufacture and design your product, and, lastly, how to address the logistics of distribution and delivery. Plus, get a glimpse into the world of the supply chain manager by discussing some of the hottest issues in SCM today: how to go global, the role of ethics and sustainability, and how SCM can help with disaster relief.

Discover how to facilitate your creative communication with the aid of the top social media platforms. In this course, Von Glitschka breaks down how to use key features on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other platforms to showcase your work, share your creative workflow, and generally grow your online presence. He talks about writing posts to extend your reach on Facebook, finding clients on Twitter, using geo-tagging and video on Instagram, and sharing your work on Behance. This course provides you with a solid introduction to these key platforms so that you can start building a social strategy designed to increase your brand awareness, and help you build a larger client base.

While social media provides you with a wealth of information about who your customers are and what they want, determining the most effective way to harness this information can be tricky. In this course, social media strategist Megan Adams explains how to incorporate customer relationship management (CRM) analytics into your social media marketing strategy to grow your online presence and your business.

To begin, Megan explains what social CRM is and how to select and implement the best CRM platform for your organization. Next, she shows you how to develop your social CRM strategy so you can define and maintain your brand, develop social media best practices, and launch targeted and segmented marketing campaigns. She also explains how to connect with online influencers who can enthusiastically and effectively spread the good word about your brand, engage with prospects, and handle challenging customer service interactions. She wraps up with how to document your processes and use customized analytics.

CAD software like SOLIDWORKS makes sheet metal design quick and cost effective. This course gets you up to speed with the sheet metal tools in SOLIDWORKS (versions 2013 through 2017) for designing parts and assemblies, and then takes you on a trip to the factory floor to see the final manufactured results. First, you'll learn to create base features, flanges, and bends that add strength and connections. Then find out how to flatten parts and add holes, cuts, and corners that are manufacturing ready, and use the Convert to Sheet Metal command to convert imported geometry into native sheet metal parts. Author Gabriel Corbett also shows you how to create assemblies from multiple parts, use the Pattern and Mirrors tools to effortlessly duplicate existing work, and then document and export your designs. Finally, take a tour of a sheet metal fabrication company and learn about the machinery and processes that occur during manufacturing.

Instructional designers seek to make effective learning materials. Having an application that both facilitates document creation and centralizes all of your designs as templates makes that goal all the more achievable. This course explores just such an application—Sketch. With Sketch, you can easily design handouts, worksheets, infographics, and more.

In this course, John-Paul Ballard shows you how Sketch fits into your curriculum design workflow. He demonstrates how to use the design features to make icons, shapes, and tables. Then, he takes you right into practical uses, showing you how to make a rubric, a syllabus, a handout, and how to save these as reusable templates. He also discusses how layout and intuitive design improves the user experience for your learners and is complementary to an instructional systems design workflow.

Learn how to start drawing, designing, and animating your ideas with SketchUp, the 3D modeling toolkit used for everything from architectural rendering to game design. In this course, George Maestri leads viewers through the essentials of SketchUp: navigating around the interface, manipulating objects, drawing in 2D and 3D space, working with materials, and applying textures. He'll even show how to create simple animations and export your artwork in 2D and 3D formats.

These tutorials work with both SketchUp Make, the free version of the program, and SketchUp Pro.

The SketchUp for Architecture series offers architects the information they need to get the most from SketchUp, the intuitive CAD alternative. This installment kicks off with an overview of the SketchUp interface and workflow, and dives into a typical residential building project, taking students from creating the site plan to building the walls, floor, and roof of a house. Series author Paul J. Smith also shows how to add detail elements like stairs and ceiling trim, and make models more realistic with materials. Plus, learn how to take advantage of the organizational features that make drafting in SketchUp so much easier—but that most designers never think to use.

V-Ray is a very popular and high-quality third-party renderer for SketchUp. With V-Ray, you can add naturalistic lighting, cameras, reflections, and diffuse materials to your SketchUp models and scenes. This course will use a single arch viz scene (an architectural visualization with interior and exterior elements) to demonstrate all of these options. Author Brian Bradley covers all of the V-Ray light types (from Sun and Sky to Sphere), irradiance mapping, physical cameras, materials, and V-Ray quality controls. By the end of the course, you'll know how to use V-Ray features to make your SketchUp models look their very best.

Got a room with a view? Make the most of it: set up your camera to shoot a time-lapse movie. It's a great way to capture the unfolding of time when you're on a vacation or business trip, or to capture the drama of passing storms on a rainy day.

In this course, Richard Harrington details the steps behind shooting great time-lapses from a window, including how to avoid window reflections and glare. The course also includes gear and file-format advice as well as tips for assembling the shots into a finished movie.

This course was created by RHED Pixel. We're honored to host this training in our library

While Gulp, Grunt, and Bower are great tools, Node.js offers an alternative for implementing build processes: npm and your package.json file. npm (node package manager) is all about creating custom scripts for common development and production tasks. You can write npm scripts to process and compress code, create services, minify images, and automate all sorts of build tasks. This course shows you how. Join Ray Villalobos as he walks through the advantages—and few disadvantages—of working with npm scripts and the steps for scripting different development and build tasks. Even if you don't use npm for your own processes, many Node.js packages come with npm scripts built in. This is a great course to help you understand how they work.

The tintype was one of the earliest forms of photography—but it's alive and well today. A passionate group of photographers has embraced tintypes and other historical processes for their unique look and for the sheer pleasure of engaging in handmade photography.

Photographer and educator Tim Grey visits with Geoffrey Berliner, a master of analog photography and the owner of what might be the world's largest collection of vintage lenses. Berlinger is the executive director of the Penumbra Foundation, a New York–based nonprofit that conducts workshops on numerous historical photo processes. Learn how modern tintype portraits are made at Penumbra Studios, using vintage cameras and lenses, fresh plates, and raw chemicals.

Are you interested in taking your productions to the next level? In this course, join instructor Evan Sutton as he shares tips, workarounds, and time-saving techniques that can help music producers work smarter in the studio and enhance their final productions. Evan dives into drum programming and processing, and discusses synth programming, including how to get from MIDI to audio. Plus, he shares practical tips that can help audio engineers as they work with vocals and get their mixes ready for mastering.

Photoshop turns 25 in 2015. In honor of the occasion, movie poster designer Tomasz Opasinski creates a unique 3D birthday card for Photoshop. He uses an amazing piece of 3D graffiti he created in CINEMA 4D and uses Photoshop to reimagine it: changing the lighting and shadows, introducing some storytelling elements, wrapping type onto the balloon, and making the whole look more organic with filters. Follow along as Tomasz explains how he took his poster-size love letter to Photoshop from start to finish.

Marketing is tricky business. Relationships need to be managed with clients, salespeople, and customers. Prices and contracts must be negotiated. The business must grow. Drew Boyd has been in marketing for over 30 years, and he has worked with the best marketing minds in the world. In this course, he covers the 10 most challenging situations you might face in a marketing role, and offers solutions for overcoming them. These tips are under 5 minutes each—even the busiest marketing professional can watch them, and reap the rewards down the line.

Get the top tips for improving your reading speed and comprehension, whether you read for school, work, or fun. Author Paul Nowak introduces five strategies for getting the most value from what you read, and freeing up more time to apply and practice your knowledge.

"What's in a name?" The truth is, the name you choose for your brand impacts the way your product or service is perceived. With these five simple tips from marketing expert Drew Boyd, you can learn how to choose a name that reflects your brand's core values, distinguishes you from the competition, and is both simple and memorable.

As brands, studios, and performers look to make a statement in a media-saturated world, a range of multi-faceted design firms are creating fascinating work beyond the constraints of traditional screens and linear timelines. In this course, learn how to fuse multiple disciplines using real-time graphics software to create engaging content for deployment beyond the traditional screen.

This course focuses on using interactive hardware controllers to drive real-time 3D scenes in TouchDesigner and Unreal Engine. In TouchDesigner, look at a MIDI controller with sliders that you can use to drive the creation of effects in a real-time rendering system. Next, learn about using TouchOSC to build a custom UI that you can transfer to an iPad that sends OSC messages to TouchDesigner. Then, learn how to use those messages to move particles and objects around on screen. To wrap up, learn how to get data off of a Kinect sensor into TouchDesigner so you can control that same particle and object movement. The course also covers MIDI, OSC, and Kinect as they apply to Unreal Engine.

Whether you're a corporate trainer or a teacher, Chris Mattia can help you make enhancements to your instructional materials, and connect with your learners in a more meaningful way. Each week, Chris offers a new and actionable tip for creating high-quality instructional materials on any budget. He discusses designing effective lessons, creating assets for those lessons, leveraging mobile devices for instructional design, tackling instructional video production, and more. Tune in every Monday for a new tip.

If your organization is looking to realize the time, quality, and cost benefits of agile project management, this course is for you. Agile expert Kelley O'Connell helps those interested in experimenting with agile understand the difference between traditional waterfall and agile methodologies and what is required for a successful transition between the two. She provides advice on garnering support for a pilot project: by identifying supporters early on and keeping them engaged, while also responding to detractors. She then leads you through the process of choosing the pilot project, selecting the right team, and setting the vision, and provides a short overview of agile basics to you get started. Finally, learn how to perform a retrospective review of the pilot and identify the drivers to continue an agile rollout.

Lynda.com is a PMI Registered Education Provider. This course qualifies for professional development units (PDUs). To view the activity and PDU details for this course, click here.

The PMI Registered Education Provider logo is a registered mark of the Project Management Institute, Inc.

Transitioning from being a sales professional to managing other sales professionals involves developing a whole new set of competencies. You need to learn how to coach others, effectively communicate your expectations, and anticipate market changes so you can set up your salespeople for success. In this course, sales trainer and coach Lisa Earle McLeod explains why many salespeople find this transition difficult, and shows how to overcome the challenges that come with tackling this new role. She outlines the basics of sales management, focusing specifically on issues where new sales managers can get stuck, such as sales pipeline management, sales skills coaching, helping direct reports with their accounts, and attracting and retaining talent. Lisa provides guidance on how to hold effective sales meetings and work with other departments—such as marketing, accounting, and product—who are critical to your success. She also shares how to deal with failure and grapple with a challenging market.

Programming is a great way to teach a child problem-solving skills and introduce them to technology's inner workings. PHP is a great language to carry this out. In this course, developer Mark Niemann-Ross focuses on helping adults who are experienced with PHP pass their coding skills on to a child or student. Each inquiry-oriented chapter consists of seven parts:

• Teacher's Guide: Introduces the concepts in the chapter and preps the adult on places where the student might get stuck
• Try It: Immediately engages the student, showing working code in action
• Check It Out: Encourages the adult and student to engage with and edit some existing code
• The Facts: A lecture for the student to watch
• Extend It: An exploration of expanded and extended concepts
• Challenge: A hands-on coding challenge for the student
• Solution: A step-by-step solution presented by the author

This course, in essence, acts as a lesson plan to help you teach PHP to a beginner. Its structured curriculum supports those who have a solid understanding of PHP, but don't necessarily know how to teach PHP effectively to kids.

Teaching is more than just delivering content; it's about making complex ideas understandable and guiding learners to higher-order thinking. A successful approach to teaching complex topics involves three phases: systematically unpacking the material, turning it into engaging and effective lessons, and then providing extra assistance to students who are struggling. Combined with Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles for making learning accessible, you can maximize student engagement and achievement—with even the most complex subjects.

Karin Hutchinson is an experienced teacher who now helps other educators find new ways to teach. She starts off this course with a quick overview of learning theory, focusing on how students gain new knowledge. These theories set the stage for Karin's framework for making learning accessible to a variety of learning styles (visual, auditory, and kinesthetic), making lessons engaging with gamification and choice, and scaffolding instruction to help guide learners who need extra help. Watch to explore strategies for planning instruction, how to respond to learners, and get resources you can put into action in the classroom today.

Use data to point your classroom in the right direction. Learn how to collect and analyze student data and truly measure learning. Riyaz Gayasaddin explores setting class goals and tracking the results with tools such as the Excel Mastery Tracker, included for free with this course. He then walks through gathering and analyzing the data, and using it to strategically plan reteaching and remediation efforts. Plus, learn how to get buy-in and share your plan with students and their parents.

Get your SAT prep off to a great start with these study and test-taking strategies from Vince Kotchian, a test prep coach who has been helping prepare students for the SAT for the last eight years. In this course, he'll walk you through the best practices, as well as tips and tricks, for acing the SAT. He'll review the format and scoring of the test, show you how to write a great essay, review questions from the Math and Writing sections, and introduce strategies for tackling the Critical Reading section of the SAT.

Lynda.com is a powerful tool in the classroom. It can supplement teaching and allow students to explore concepts at their own pace. In corporate environments, it integrates seamlessly with many learning management systems. And with over 12,000 courses to choose from, you'll never run out of high-quality, up-to-date training material. In this course, Aaron Quigley and Matt Fishbach, members of Lynda.com's Education + Elearning team, cover the best practices for teaching with Lynda.com. Topics include maximizing teaching time by integrating Lynda.com with a flipped classroom, creating a culture of learning, and even holding students accountable. Plus, learn how to use playlists to organize and assign training, and integrate Lynda.com with the most popular AICC-compliant learning management systems.

Use the knowledge checks and Lynda.com's built-in note-taking tool to practice what you've learned and remember ideas for your own teaching practice.