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Our Monthly Topics Are Back!

RyanJaress

Hey everyone!

After a few months away, we’re excited to bring back our monthly topics!

Each month, we’ll pick a different topic and invite you to share your experiences, ideas, and things you’ve learned along the way. We’re looking forward to getting these conversations going again and hearing from instructors across the community.

For our first topic, let’s start with something a little more personal:

What’s something about being an instructor that surprised you when you first started?

Maybe it was something about creating your first course, recording your content, interacting with learners, or just figuring out how to make everything work together.

We’d love to hear your stories! 😊

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Comments

ToddMcLeod

What surprised me most when I started teaching was realizing just how much traditional "ivory tower" education gates knowledge behind unnecessary complexity. All too often experts use dense jargon almost as a shield for their ego; to sound impressive rather than to actually help someone learn.

Stepping into the role of an instructor showed me the power of doing the exact opposite: demystifying complex topics and making them approachable.

Watching students grasp difficult concepts explained in plain, consumable language is the best feeling. It taught me that true expertise isn't about proving how much you know; it’s about how effectively you can help someone learn it.

FrankKane

Yes! It's amazing how simple some of this stuff really is when you strip away all the pretentious language and notation. Most learners really value that.

DiegoHernán333

Luego de perder a mi Familia en un accidente aéreo y entrar en un pozo depresivo, lo perdí todo y terminé viviendo en la calle cuando confeccioné el primero de mis 24 Cursos aquí en mi Querida casa de UDEMY hace ya casi 8 años atrás (de hecho, lo cree con lo único electrónico que me quedaba encima, que era un viejo teléfono celular con Android), literalmente UDEMY me devolvió las ganas de seguir viviendo y sobre todo mi Dignidad… luego de la publicación del primer Curso y cuando los Estudiantes comenzaron a valorar mi esfuerzo y el tener la posibilidad de Compartir mi Conocimiento con el mundo, dejé de sentir lástima de mi mismo y esto me hizo dejar de ser la sombra del hombre que alguna vez fui, para convertirme en la mejor versión de mi mismo y en un referente en el tema de la Ciberseguridad de habla hispana, eternamente agradecido estaré por siempre con las Almas de UDEMY…

Un Abrazo, espero que lo comentado líneas arriba, le sirva de inspiración a personas que estén transitando por situaciones aparentemente sin salida…

¡BUENA VIDA A LAS MENTES INQUIETAS!,

AlexGenadinik

100% … some of the art of being an instructor is boiling difficult things into simple ones, but then I find myself scratching my head like… if it's so simple, I must be forgetting something…OMG what am I forgetting? :))))

Or another classic…

OMG I was such a slow learner of this when I learned it :)))

GauravSingh194

Hi ryan..i am very exicted.

RyanJaress

So glad to hear that you're excited. We're going to continue to provide content for you all to network and connect about!

RyanJaress

That's so cool to hear @ToddMcLeod! We appreciate how you make your content so approachable and understandable for the masses!

Something truly special that comes with instructing on Udemy.

Mohamed scientist

What surprised me most when I first started teaching was discovering that knowing a subject deeply and teaching it effectively are two very different skills.

With a scientific and veterinary background, I initially thought that having strong subject knowledge would be the hardest part. I soon realized that the real challenge was deciding what the learner actually needs to know, what can be left out, and how to turn complex scientific information into something practical and understandable.

Over time, I also learned that creating a course is not simply recording lectures. It is a process of organizing knowledge, anticipating learners’ questions, creating realistic examples, explaining the reasoning behind the answer, and constantly asking myself: “If I were the learner, would this really help me?”

Perhaps the biggest surprise has been that teaching changes the instructor too. Every time I try to explain something clearly, I discover something new about the subject myself.

For me, that has become one of the most rewarding parts of being an instructor.

Mike Pritula

What surprised me most was who actually showed up.

I built my very first online course for HR specialists as a beginner-to-intermediate program. I expected people with roughly my level of experience. Then the registrations came in, and several of them were HR directors. Some had more years in the profession than I did.

My first thought was: how do I earn their trust? So I changed how I started. I looked up my first students on LinkedIn, asked each of them what they expected, and opened the course with a few serious models and tools right away, so they could see they had not signed up for nothing.

I still do this. You never fully choose your audience, so find out who is in the room and give them something useful in the first minutes.