Can your PLN be used to help professional development post-course?

I think that it absolutely can, or at least it will have the potential to do so by the time I need it to. Currently, many of those in my PLN are also students, but there are a lot of students that are further along the road than I am, i.e. those in upper years or graduate studies, and I think that by the time I am out of classes and want to further my education without the structure of the university to rely on, or the professor to ask questions of, they will be able to guide me in the right direction. Even now, I have had experiences where I have spoken to people I know about how I could go beyond the material the class covers in certain topics that I was interested in, and they showed me many resources, ranging from books to online freely available lectures to interactive websites with coding challenges that I was able to explore and work on. For example, I have been delving into quantum computing thanks to a very good resource recommended to me by someone in my PLN, which can be found here.

Can your PLN be relied on to open professional opportunities?

As mentioned, my current PLN does not have that many opportunities related directly to my career, but as those in my PLN finish their schooling and enter employment I am confident that I will be able to make use of my connections with them to gain access to some opportunities in the professional world. However, I think that this is something that I should be a little more proactive in pursuing, rather than simply waiting for those already in my PLN to graduate and enter the workforce. I am planning on doing co-op during my degree, so I am hoping to expand my PLN with some of the connections that I’ll make at the places that I do my co-op terms so that I have more people who I can reach out to for professional opportunities, as well as professional development.