What is Udemy?
Online learning tools are incredibly popular in the modern world due to the constant development of technology, but today many people wish to share their knowledge and experience through the Internet and look for a perfect environment for this purpose. Udemy has been created exactly with the following objective: to make education more democratic and allow everyone either to teach or to learn online. It is a completely new approach to education as it allows people with no teaching experience and education share their exclusive knowledge with others completely Udemy courses free or receiving money for that.
Udemy online courses are available on the Web for every Internet user. It can be also viewed with the help of a Flash player or iPhone. The customers can register on the site both as an instructor, who teaches courses, or a student, who wishes to learn.
It is incredibly easy to make up an online course using this site as it offers a variety of means and useful tools that can be used by instructors. They can use:
- Video and audio materials;
- PowerPoint presentations;
- Live Udemy classes;
- PDF and Zip files etc.
That makes the learning process simpler and more efficient and comfortable. Every student chooses what suits personally for him as all people memorize information in various ways.
A range of courses categories is also rather vast, so each person can find something suitable especially for him. You can opt for such categories as:
- Business and entrepreneurship;
- Health and fitness;
- Arts;
- Photography;
- Science;
- Math;
- Music;
- Languages;
- Technology etc.
The age of learners is very different. Mainly these are young people between 14 and late twentieth. The prices for courses vary greatly as well. There is a big list of free courses but paid ones are also present. You can find various prices between $5 and $250. If a course has not satisfied a student, he may ask for a full refund within 30 days of signing for it.
Mobility in learning offered by Udemy has been appreciated by numerous people, so today it can boast impressive statistical figures: more than 15 million students have an opportunity to learn over 45 thousand courses from 20 thousand instructors. The course enrollments have reached the number of 72 million, while the number of languages is also significant – 81.
It is very easy to become an instructor on Udemy. The website offers everyone to create their own course with its own unique design. Moreover, there is much information how to promote your course to masses and make it successful. There is a course creation checklist, examples of the most effective practices, information about the ways how to promote it using affiliate links and social media etc. You can also subscribe to the newsletter function and receive messages with the latest and most effective methods and approaches in teaching.
Each submitted course undergoes a quality check before being published. If an instructor wishes to charge money for the course, he sets the price and receives 70% of the total earnings. At the same time, each course is protected by the intellectual property law so the only instructor has all the rights for it.
There are four main steps for an instructor to make to become successful on the website:
- Build up your course.
- Access millions of students from various corners of the world.
- Sell it or offer it for free.
- Leave a legacy.
The course creation is rather simple due to a user-friendly interface of the website. All courses are divided into chapters and lectures that can be accompanied by any videos, images, audio or files. In addition, it takes only a few clicks to make up a title, edit or re-arrange the lessons.
According to Udemy support, all the instructors get the following benefits if they publish courses there:
- Hosting for all instructor’s media files.
- His students have a technical support.
- Quick and reliable processing of payment and refund guarantee.
- Optimized landing pages for courses.
- Mobile app access to the courses (Udemy app).
- The comfortable and well-developed environment for students’ learning.
- Regular promotional e-mails and course announcements.
- A good potential to earn money.
Many famous people use Udemy for their classes including Mark Zuckerburg, Phil Libin, Aaron Patzer, Russ Fradin, Zed Shaw, Auren Hoffman and many others.
There is a special corporate learning platform offered by Udemy too. It is used by such renowned companies as PayPal, Booking.com, Volkswagen etc. and is considered to be a good solution for team learning. Businesses get an instant access to business-relevant content, they can measure the engagement of users, their behavior and learning patterns as well as each company can make up its exclusive and customized content for training (udemy training) its employees.
The website offers a free demo version of the platform, so each user can evaluate its benefits and functionality.
Udemy’s benefits
The popularity of this service makes it apparent that it has many benefits appreciated by users:
- A variety of courses in numerous fields.
- A great choice of instructors to meet each student’s users.
- The presence of exclusive classes of the most renowned and knowledgeable professors.
- Corporate training opportunities.
- Round the clock accessibility to all courses.
- Competitive prices.
- Fast help and support.
- Refund guarantee.
- Possibility to learn at your own pace.
- A discussion board allows interacting with instructors etc.
All these and many other benefits attract hundreds of new visitors on a daily basis and it helps to contribute to the career, develop personal passions or change professions for thousands of people.
Drawbacks of Udemy
Most of Udemy’s drawbacks can be figured out from users’ Udemy com reviews and mainly they are connected with the courses or their creators, but not the service itself. People focus on the instructors, who repeat the same information in different videos, speak too slowly or quickly to realize the content, mention that provided content is not informative and comprehensive etc.
Reviews play an important role for students to understand what courses are worth watching. Though nobody is insured from invaluable feedbacks, the website pays much attention to the Udemy review policy and reflects only authentic opinions that are really useful, respectful and honest. The website submits only those reviews that:
- Do not violate the site Terms of Use;
- Have no rude or hateful language;
- Are related to the courses;
- Do not look like misleading and offensive etc.
Instructors are also not allowed to exchange positive reviews for any products, specify what should be written in it, trade them etc.
Unfortunately, not all the feedbacks are still truthful as the number of viewpoints is as big as the number of people. Consequently, it is the main drawback of the website that can be figured out.
Another drawback of the website mentioned is the fact that purchased for a lifetime best udemy courses can be deleted in some time. That means that a customer loses access to them and this promise is not truthful.
The third disadvantage is a difficulty to find a necessary course in the abundance of other courses on the website.
Udemy is a platform that gathers experts from around the world for them to build valuable skills of other people. Udemy’s goal is to make learning available to everyone and mobile. Millions of people have received an opportunity to learn new skills without leaving their home. It is a completely new way of learning that is appreciated all around the world.
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