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💡 Feature Suggestion: Live 1-on-1 Sessions with Instructors

alMohamady

I’d like to suggest a feature that could add a completely new level of interaction between Udemy students and instructors.

YouTube already has features like Super Chat that allow viewers to get more direct interaction with creators. I’m wondering if Udemy could introduce something similar, but designed specifically for learning and education.

🎓 The idea: Book a live session with your instructor

Imagine that a student is taking a course and gets stuck on a specific problem.

Instead of posting a question and waiting for a response, the student could have an option like:

“Book a 1-on-1 Session with this Instructor”

The student could then:

📅 Choose an available date and time
⏱️ Select the session duration (30 minutes, 1 hour, 2 hours, etc.)
💬 Specify the topic or questions they need help with
💰 See the instructor's price for the session
🎥 Join a live video/chat session directly through Udemy

💰 Flexible pricing

Each instructor could decide their own pricing based on:

Session duration
Topic complexity
Type of assistance required
Their experience and demand

For example:

30 minutes → $25
1 hour → $45
2 hours → $80

Of course, these are just examples. The instructor would decide the actual pricing.

🚀 Why could this be valuable?

For students, it could provide:

Personalized explanations
Real-time troubleshooting
Feedback on projects and assignments
Help with difficult topics
A faster way to overcome learning blockers

For instructors, it could create:

An additional source of income
A stronger relationship with students
More opportunities to provide personalized teaching
A way to support students beyond the standard course format

And for Udemy, it could create an entirely new layer of value on top of the existing courses and marketplace.

The important thing is that the course remains self-paced and affordable, while students who need additional personal guidance have the option to pay for it.

Maybe something like:

Learn → Get Stuck → Book a Session → Talk Directly to the Instructor → Keep Learning 🚀

I think this could be especially useful for technical courses such as programming, data science, cloud computing, cybersecurity, Odoo development, etc., where sometimes a student can spend hours trying to solve a problem that an experienced instructor could explain in 20 minutes.

Just an idea from a Udemy learner. 😊

Maybe one day Udemy will say:

“We actually built this.” 😄

What do you think? Would you use a feature like this?

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Comments

ThomasMitchell

Wait, what???

This has been a pilot offering for at least a year already. Maybe 2? It’s being sunsetted, primarily because it sucked from the beginning. Never made any sense to sell expensive 1:1 time to people who couldn’t be arsed to spend $19 on an 80-hour course.

MariusManola

still, out of the big volume of students, I think there would be a lot of interest.. Even at a 0.1% conversion it could still increase revenue substantially.. Considering how poorly has the platform been paying UB instructors since the acquisition…

MariusManola

I did post about it.. but nothing.

https://community.udemy.com/en/discussion/163818/feature-request

ThomasMitchell

There wasn’t. This has already been proven with the pilot.

alMohamady

Oh, really? I’m actually an instructor on Udemy, and I’ve been trying to find out how to enable this 1-on-1 feature for my students.

I honestly couldn’t find an option to activate it on my instructor account.

Do you know how an instructor can join the pilot or enable Connect 1-1 for their courses?

Is it still available to instructors, or was it only offered to selected instructors during the pilot?

I’d really appreciate it if you could point me in the right direction. Thanks!

alMohamady

I completely agree with you.

This is actually the main reason I suggested the idea. With AI making information and content more abundant than ever, I think the real value of an instructor is increasingly going to be in guidance, experience, feedback, and human interaction, rather than simply delivering information through video.

I also think live workshops could be a great addition alongside 1-on-1 sessions.

It's interesting that you already posted about this and didn't get much response from Udemy. Maybe the challenge isn't whether the idea makes sense, but how Udemy could build the right model around it.

Hopefully, if enough instructors bring up similar ideas, someone at Udemy will eventually take notice. 😄

Out of curiosity, did anyone from Udemy ever respond to your original post or provide any feedback.

alMohamady

Exactly! That's what I was thinking.

I don't expect a large percentage of students to use it. Even if only a very small percentage of learners are willing to pay for personalized help, the scale of Udemy could still make it an interesting opportunity.

And I don't think it necessarily has to be positioned as "expensive tutoring." It could simply be an optional premium service for students who are already taking a course and reach a point where they need direct guidance from the instructor.

For instructors, it could also become another way to monetize their expertise beyond the course itself.

The key question for me would be whether Udemy can design the model so that the pricing and experience make sense for both students and instructors.

alMohamady

That's interesting. If the pilot already demonstrated that there wasn't enough demand, I'd actually be very interested in understanding what the pilot looked like.

Do you know how many instructors/students were included, and what the actual adoption or conversion rate was?

Also, was the pilot offered broadly to instructors and students, or only to a limited group?

I'm asking because my original idea was more about exploring the concept, and if Udemy already has real data showing that it doesn't work, I'd definitely be interested in learning from those results rather than assuming the demand is there.

ThomasMitchell

Pilot is over.

Btkrausen

Yep, Udemy ran a pilot for this feature for almost a year with very few students actually using the program. I probably had the most bookings according to other threads on this feature, and only had like 4-5 in total. Others had gotten only 1 or 2 throughout the pilot program. So while it sounds like a great idea, it's already been proven that it's not a service students are actually looking for and willing to pay for, even with frequent pop-ups and reminders about the service.

SivakamiS2017

Yes, why do we still have the pop-up ?