See what's new with the instructor insider!
We’re starting off this edition with big news: We crossed the 1-billion-course-enrollment milestone! That’s a lot of learning since we first started as a company, with our mission of improving lives through learning. And we do mean “we” — it couldn’t have happened without your passion and dedication to the mission.
We’re also incredibly pleased that our founder Eren Bali has rejoined Udemy as Chief Technology Officer. He created the Udemy marketplace and was there when we had our first enrollment (just 999,999,999 enrollments to go!), and we’re really thrilled to have him bring not just his immense experience, but his passion for online learning — and I’m sure he’s excited as we journey towards that two billion milestone.
Consider this edition of the Insider our next steps in that direction. It starts with making it easier for you to do what you do best.
Tool improvements
Here are some recent improvements we’ve made to make your life easier.
Coding exercises – To keep your exercises up to date, we’ve added the long-awaited Typescript for web development coding exercises. Speaking of web development, we’re updating HTML, CSS, and Javascript libraries. And we’ll keep updating languages, so stay tuned.
Payout report – There’s a new payouts report out now, so you can easily stay on top of your payments and check your earnings.
Udemy Business Content Opportunities – We’re continuing to work on this important tool for finding the most-needed topics for Udemy Business learners. If you’re qualified for Udemy Business Content Opportunities,* you’ll see an updated list (as of July) — with another update and more improvements coming soon.
*The Udemy Business Content Opportunities tool is limited to instructors with 4.2 star rating and 25+ ratings for English or 10+ for nonEnglish. Creating a course in the topic list does not guarantee inclusion in Udemy Business.
All things GenAI
We’re using generative AI to improve the learning experience for everyone who comes to Udemy. Some of these advances are specifically for you. There are others that will be seen by learners or Udemy Business customers — but they can still benefit you by taking care of some of your day-to-day workload, enhancing the coursetaking experience, or driving more enrollments:
AI tools for you – We’ve already built GenAI into practice test explanations and coding exercise solutions, plus there’s Q&A in limited beta. Our goal is to reduce time-intensive tasks, so you can focus more on sharing your expertise. This is just the beginning, and we have more features in store for 2025 and beyond.
AI Assistant (coming soon) – Think of our AI assistant as a virtual companion for learners that can answer their questions and provide relevant content through dynamic conversation while they take your course. And it can help your Udemy Business course be discovered, as it answers learning and career-related questions in real time (like, “how do I learn to use SQL to….”). These new features were created to reduce your Q&A workload, while making for more satisfied learners who can get answers the moment they need them.
AI-powered learning paths (coming soon) – If your course is in Udemy Business there’s a chance it already appears in a learning path. Learning paths are used by Udemy Business admins to define critical skills for their workforce — a process of content curation that usually takes them over 20 hours. Gen-AI streamlines this process for them. And it can increase your Udemy Business course consumption and revenue when your course is found to be a good match for what admins need.
In short, we believe GenAI has the potential to lighten your load and increase visibility for your course. We’re excited about what these advancements mean for the teaching and learning journey.
You’ll automatically be included in the GenAI program to take advantage of these benefits, but if you feel it’s not for you, you can update your preference to opt out now through September 12, 2024. You can read more on managing your participation in our GenAI programs on our Support Page.
You can also read up on these tools in greater depth, look into our AI policy, and check our GenAI FAQ.
Business updates
With 1B enrollments under our belt, Udemy We ended the second quarter with 70 million learners worldwide and added new learners each month. We also gained over a thousand business customers this year, and our traffic to Udemy Business continues to grow.
Earlier this summer, Ventana Research published their Buyers Guide for Learning Content. We were placed among the leading vendors in the Exemplary quadrant. In addition, we placed in the top three in every one of the seven evaluation categories. We are proud of this third-party acknowledgment of our success and momentum.
Still, even as we grow Udemy Business, we’re hard at work on the marketplace. Our traffic to the marketplace was up 21% YOY, as we experimented with new channels and strategies. While that didn’t always translate to more enrollments, we’re working on several new projects to entice more visitors into becoming buyers. One example is experimenting with revamped abandoned-cart emails and mobile push notifications to get learners back to purchase the courses that interested them.
Partnerships
Our partnership with 1EdTech is continuing to grow as we shape the future of badging and certifications. We’ve added badging for courses offered in the marketplace as well as those in our subscription plans. So, courses that offer certification preparation in the marketplace are even more appealing to learners. This partnership, as well as those we have with AWS and ServiceNow, are investments in our brand and can have positive effects on your courses.
Learner engagement
We’ve been focusing on ways to engage both new and current learners with content that supports their learning journeys. We want to create more holistic and engaging content like our “What Type of Learner Are You?” quiz, which helps learners to find their learning style — so they can improve their learning habits.
We also recently updated how we collect learner’s learning, certification, and career goals across the marketplace and subscriptions learners. This helps us recommend more relevant courses, and build long term learner engagement. Ultimately, this leads to learners developing new skills and achieving better outcomes which brings them back to the platform to learn and consume your content.
Subscriptions
New Udemy Business language collection – Vietnamese is the latest language to join Udemy Business — the 15th international language collection to be added.
Team Plan – The popular subscription for groups is now officially available for purchase in 25 additional countries and 9 unique currencies. Getting more of your courses in more places is one of our big goals.
Things to do
Guidelines – We have brand new guidelines for downloadable course content. We know that offering downloadable content is important for many of you. After all, it can increase the value of your course for learners. These new guidelines clarify our policy, so they’re worth a look.
Community – Are you part of the instructor community? If not, you should really sign up. It’s a vibrant place full of discussion, encouragement, suggestions, and stories. Plus, it’s now on a new platform, with better functionality and a nicer look and feel. There are plenty of events happening in the community (and recordings of past ones, in case you missed anything).
Rounding up
We’re incredibly excited for the rest of the year as we continue our long term goal of becoming the number one place for online learning. Together, all of us have the opportunity to transform lives through learning. And it’s not just the lives of learners we’re talking about. It’s everyone who comes to Udemy, whether to learn new skills, to build learning programs for their employees, or to teach what they’re passionate about.