Today@Dal

Looking for help managing tasks? Improving your writing or project management skills? Mastering Outlook email?

Thanks to a new arrangement with Skillsoft, an online learning provider, Dal staff and faculty will have thousands of new opportunities to learn this fall.

Through a partnership between Human Resources and Information Technology Services, Dal employees will have access to more than 3,000 of Skillsoft’s online courses in business topics, desktop software and IT. The arrangement is a one-year trial, allowing staff and faculty to take courses as part of their ongoing professional development — at no charge to units or individuals.

“Skillsoft’s offerings allow us to increase the accessibility, flexibility and variety of our PD offerings in a cost-effective way,” explains Katherine Sheehan, assistant vice-president of Human Resources.

“The trial runs until June, so this is really an opportunity for everyone who works at Dal to see how online learning can fit into their own professional development goals.”

Watch: Skillsoft 3-minute demo

How it works

Skillsoft accounts are now available, on a first-come first-serve basis, to anyone who works at the university: any staff or faculty member, whether you’re full-time, part-time or grant-paid. Simply go to the EOD calendar and select “Skillsoft (e-learning): Sign me Up!" to receive your Skillsoft user ID.

Once you’ve logged in to the portal (called “Skillport,” which you can access at, dal.skillport.com), you can search through thousands of courses by keyword or browse the catalogue by category.

You can choose to start a course right away or file it into your “My Plan” personal folder to tackle in the future. Each course can be started and completed at your own pace: if you need to take a break, you can return right where you left off.

Staff who are interested in using Skillsoft for professional development related to their job at Dal should discuss course opportunities with their supervisor.

Making PD more accessible at Dal

Sheehan says one of the driving factors behind the Skillsoft trial is working to meet growing demand for training and professional development across an increasingly dispersed and diverse community.

“We have staff and faculty across the Maritimes and, of course, now an entire Dal campus in Truro,” she says. “But we also have staff and faculty with varied work schedules, who may find it challenging or impossible to make it to an in-person session that we can only offer once or twice a year.”

“So one of our big goals with this Skillsoft trial is accessibility: allowing our community to gain new knowledge and skills where and when it works for them,” she adds.

Skillsoft is designed to enhance and complement, not replace, the in-person professional development programming that Human Resources hosts each year. The hope, though, is that should Skillsoft prove relevant and useful to Dal staff and faculty, Dal’s HR team could focus its resources on PD opportunities that benefit most from in-person interaction.

Throughout the next several months, Today@Dal will be posting course recommendations and other tips to help make the most of Skillsoft.

“We want our staff and faculty to give these courses a try and share your feedback with us: which ones are most relevant or useful, which ones aren’t and whether you think Skillsoft should be part of our offerings going forward,” says Sheehan. “Your feedback will help us determine if these online offerings should continue to be part of our PD series in the future.”

Note for Banner users: Skillsoft runs on Java (minimum version 1.6.0_31) and may ask you to upgrade your software to version 7. If you have administrative access to the Banner system, you are probably aware that Banner is incompatible with Java 7 so please remember not to upgrade to version 7.