Hey there instructor community,

It’s the month of June and that means we have a new theme for you, Learning Design! This subject is dedicated to helping you all discuss your methods of creating your courses while engaging your students.

So if you’re looking to improve your teaching methods for your online courses, this is the month for you!

To kick things off we have a question for you:

How did you start organizing your content when teaching online?

Post your answer in the comments below! 👇

Hey instructor community!

We’re excited to announce that we have created a new space in the community for those who are working on the New Instructor Challenge. This is a space for those going through the 45-day challenge to create their first course. In this board, you can discuss topics specifically related to the New Instructor Challenge such as questions, success stories, feedback for the program, etc.

Creating your first course can be difficult, especially if you are doing it alone. This space will bring people together to collaborate towards the goal of becoming a Udemy instructor! 

Hey there instructor community!

You came to Udemy to share your passion and knowledge — but maybe you don’t know where to start with audio, video, or topic selection. Or maybe you've already published a course or two, but want to hone your craft when it comes to promoting and managing your course, or creating practical activities and assessments to engage with your learners.

That’s why we created our official course, on, well, how to create an online course.  

Until recently, we were only able to offer the course in English, but today we’re excited to announce we are now able to offer the course with subtitles in Chinese Traditional, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, Turkish, and Russian.

You can enroll now for free here. 

About the course

In 90 minutes, we’ll guide you through the recommended course creation process and share best practices in teaching and instructional design, as well as resources you can use to help you plan, produce, and publish your own course.

Here are some of the specifics we cover:

• How to create a well-structured course outline according to learning design principles
• How to produce your course content by following best practices for recording and editing videos
• How to compose a compelling course landing page (CLP) that attracts the right learners to your course
• How to launch your course successfully
• How to use your instructor dashboard to manage your course and grow your audience on Udemy

We also have great templates and checklists to help you plan your course content, manage and track your video production and editing process, ready your course for publication, and more. We've made those resources available in all 12 languages, too. 

Creating a course is a journey, but you don’t have to go it alone!

Ready to learn more? Here’s a link where you can enroll. We look forward to reading your feedback in the course reviews.

Hi Instructors!

We’ve made some major improvements to Udemy’s coding exercises to provide a better experience for you and your learners. Here's an overview of the key improvements:

• It’s never been easier to create a coding exercise with our new step-by-step creation flow and example pool. 
• We integrated AI into the coding exercise builder for Python, C++, and Java coding exercises. You can now generate solution code, test cases, and evaluation logic for exercises in these languages and then customize as needed. This is initially only available to English instructors, but we will be expanding our language options in the upcoming weeks.

• In the course engagement section of the performance report, you can now see coding exercise insights, including how many times an exercise has been viewed, dropped, and completed. This provides deeper understanding into your course performance and opportunities to strengthen your exercises. Additionally, in June we'll release a new “Practice Insights” page with more performance details on individual coding exercises.

You can learn more about these changes as well as the progress we’ve made over the past 9 months in the following Teaching Center article. We encourage you to try the new experience and share your feedback! We're always looking to improve based on input from instructors like you.

Code on.

Hi instructors, 

We are performing routine site maintenance between the hours of
6am - 10am Pacific Standard Time, Wednesday, May 31st.

During this time, you may experience reduced performance or functionality on the site.
This maintenance is being done to ensure the long-term stability and uptime of our platform.

We apologize for the inconvenience, and thank you for your patience and understanding.

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact our support team.

Hey, instructors,

We’ve heard your requests for transparency, for more of a look into what’s happening at Udemy. That’s why we’re launching a semi-regular series looking at all things instructor at Udemy.

In this inaugural edition, we‘re introducing our new CEO, Greg Brown, and talking about new investments, recent successes, areas for improvement, and our plans to make a more cohesive, learner-centric Udemy.

So, take a look at Greg’s welcome video below and then head over to the Teaching Center for a deeper look.

Update: As of 12:00 EST on Tuesday, May 16th, test video reviews are back online. 

We want to make you aware that we are currently experiencing a delay in reviewing test video submissions due to an issue on the Udemy side.

Hey there instructors,

On May 5th, we had the pleasure of having an AMA-style webinar with one of the top instructors @Chris_Haroun.

Here’s a small background of Chris and his experience with teaching on Udemy.

Chris Haroun is an award-winning business professor and has been teaching business and finance courses on Udemy since 2015. He has more than 1.3 million students and 70 courses. Chris has work experience at Goldman Sachs, in the venture capital and hedge fund sector where he worked at Citadel, and in the consulting sector at Accenture where he was a programmer. He has started many companies and has sat on many boards in venture capital. He has managed more than $1 billion dollars in his career and has an MBA in finance from Columbia University.

Hello Instructors! 

It’s now May and we have a new theme for you all, AV! Each instructor has their own setup for recording their content and we want to hear about your experiences. We’d love for you to stop by our coffee chat and network with fellow instructors while sharing your experience your audio/video setups!

Hello there, 

I am Marina, the new Community Lead at Udemy. I am super excited to be part of this amazing community! 

Hey Instructor Community! The month of April has ended and we wanted to showcase the highlights of what we covered!

Hi all,

Over the last few weeks and months, we've seen a lot of discussion among instructors about how artificial intelligence might affect the way people teach and learn on Udemy. From questions about what's allowed, to speculation about how AI might affect what learners need, to ideas for AI-driven platform improvements, you've brought your curiosity to the table—and we've been taking notes. 

Hi everyone,

As you know, learners come to Udemy to improve their lives by gaining new skills – and your great content helps them do just that. Many have specific career goals such as breaking into a new field or advancing in their current role. For these career-motivated learners, industry-recognized certifications can help them demonstrate what they've learned and achieve these goals.

Hey there instructor community,

It’s the month of May and that means we have a new theme for you, AV! Each instructor has their own ways of recording their content and we want to dive into improving your setup! 

So if you want to improve your home studio or recording quality for your online courses, this is the month for you!

Hey there instructor community! 

You as instructors fuel this community and make it the wonderful place it is today. That said, we wanted to celebrate you all with a giveaway!  

For the giveaway, we are giving away Udemy t-shirts to 10 instructors who answer the question in this post from April 28th to May 12th. During the giveaway time frame. 10 instructors who respond to the prompt will be chosen at random to get a t-shirt (unless you've already received one this period). Limit one person. Offer valid while supplies last.

Here is the question we’d like for you to answer:

What are 3 tips you have to help improve your online marketing for your courses?

Comment for a chance to win one of the 10 t-shirts! Winners will be randomly selected. 18 or older to enter. Entry period closes 11:59pm Pacific time on 5/12/23. Winners will be contacted through DM.

Good luck!

Hello Instructor Community,

It is with mixed emotions that I announce my departure as the team lead and moderator of this wonderful community.

For the past two years, I have had the privilege of working with all of you and supporting you in your journey as Udemy instructors. During my time here, I have witnessed countless success stories, heard inspiring feedback from instructors, and had the pleasure of getting to know many of you on a personal level. I am grateful for each and every one of you and the impact you have made on the lives of your students, each other, and my own life. 

As I move on to new opportunities, I want to express my deepest gratitude to Udemy and this community for allowing me to be a part of something so special. I will miss our interactions, coffee chats, and your ''@Bella'' mentions, but I know that the community is in good hands with the amazing team we have at Udemy.

Please continue to support and inspire one another. Keep pushing boundaries and striving for excellence in your courses. The world needs your knowledge and expertise.

Thank you for everything.

Sincerely,

Bella

Hello Instructor Community!

We are excited to bring you another live community event! On May 5th from 11:00am to 12:00pm PST we’ll be sitting down with @Chris_Haroun, in a webinar focusing on Marketing your courses.

Hi everyone,

Last month, we were excited to announce a suite of upgrades to the Performance dashboard, including device usage reporting, load time improvements, and of course–Udemy Business insights. We mentioned then that there were still a few items coming, and today, those items are here!

• Course engagement historical reporting: We know how important it is for you to understand your learner engagement in context. With only a year's worth of engagement data available, it can be difficult to figure out what's a seasonal trend vs. a real change in performance. You asked many times for us to provide more historical data to help you make sense of your course engagement trends. Good news: it's finally arrived.
  
  To help you understand your course performance in context, we're now providing course engagement data as far back as October 2020. If you select the "12+ months" dropdown, you'll be able to see all the available historical performance of your course engagement. So, if your course welcomed learners before October 2020, the data will start there; if your course was published after that point, you'll be able to see all historical data for it.

• Engagement data for Practice Test-only courses: Previously, if you had a Practice Test-only course, you were unable to select it within the Course Engagement page, and you couldn't view learner time spent on it over time. Now, we've enabled reporting for these types of courses, so you can see how much time learners are spending on them week over week, month over month, and now year over year.

We hope these improvements continue to help you understand and improve your course performance. We now look ahead toward new insights to enable you to teach more effectively, including visibility into learner engagement with on-site practice activities.

As always, we welcome your thoughts and questions here in the Community.

Teach on,

Bella

Hey Instructor Community! The month of February has ended and we wanted to showcase the highlights of what we covered!

Hello Instructors! 

It’s now April and we have a new theme for you all, Marketing! Marketing is one of the most important ways to bring in new students and inform current students about the content you create. We’d love for you to stop by our coffee chat and network with fellow instructors while sharing your experience with marketing!

Hey there instructor community,

It’s the month of April and that means we have a new theme for you, Marketing! This is easily one of the most discussed topics in the community and we wanted to have a whole month dedicated subject!

So if you’re looking to improve your marketing efforts for your online courses, this is the month for you!

To kick things off we have a question for you:

What is the most effective marketing tool that you are utilizing right now and why?

Post your answer in the comments below! 👇

Hi Instructors,

It's been a month since we launched the improved coding exercise experience and we're thrilled with how many of you and your learners are using it! To spread the word, we ran a marketing campaign that included:

• A new product video that showcases the tool and experience
• A dedicated homepage banner that directs to courses with coding exercises
• A homepage pop-up notification for Udemy Business learners
• Social media posts on Instagram, Twitter, Linkedin, and Facebook
• An email to learners in courses with coding exercises

You can learn more about these announcements at this Teaching Center article. Interested in adding a coding exercise to your course? We have a guide to help you build effective and engaging coding exercises. 

Plus, we've got more product updates and guidance materials coming soon, so stay tuned and code on. 💻

Hello Instructor Community!

We are excited to bring you another webinar that focuses on Course Quality! On March 28th from 2:00pm - 3:00pm ET we’ll be sitting down with Community Champion @MarkLassoff, Josh Cavelier, and Matt Pierce to discuss the science, the stats, and the structure for your courses.

Hey Instructor Community! The month of February has ended and we wanted to showcase the highlights of what we covered!

Hello Instructor Community!

Today, March 8th, marks International Women's Day, a global celebration of women's achievements, progress, and resilience. As we honor this day, we recognize the contributions and impact of women in our lives and in society.

We are fortunate to have a community of incredible women instructors on Udemy, who are sharing their expertise, passion, and knowledge with learners around the world. Their contributions make a significant difference in helping people achieve their goals and improve their lives through learning.

Thank you to all the amazing women instructors who make Udemy a better place, and who inspire us every day!

Happy International Women's Day! 💐

Hi everyone,

If you have content in the Udemy Business collection, we've got good news for you! Today, we launched new views for the Performance Dashboard to let you check out data specifically about your Udemy Business performance. From ratings to learner interests to course engagement and more, you can now track how your content is performing in Udemy Business and plan your next move with confidence.

This update also includes a few items that should help all instructors, regardless of Udemy Business participation -- for example, we've provided more data on the devices learners are using to take your courses, and we've improved load times for those of you with a lot of data to display.

We want to give a special thank you to the instructors who volunteered their time in our closed beta --  @Gustavo, @MichaelPog, @SamuelLenk, @Andrew_Pach, @Rahul Iyer, and many others. Your feedback over the last several months was invaluable as we developed these new features.

Check out the full update in the Teaching Center or jump straight into the new tools in your Performance dashboard. And don't forget to let us know what you think!

Teach on,

Bella & the Udemy Instructor Team

It’s now March and we have a new theme for you all, Course Quality! Creating a quality course experience is paramount to both maintaining and gaining learners. We’d love for you to stop by our coffee chat and network with fellow instructors and share with each other what makes a quality course!

Hey there!

It’s officially March and our next topic to discuss is course quality. Throughout the month, we will have discussions about how you can improve your course’s quality and provide a better experience for your learners.

So if you want to hear more about what makes a quality course on Udemy, you won’t want to miss the content to come!

To kick things off, we’d love to hear from you.

What strategies do you use to engage students in your online courses?

Share your comments below 👇.

We're excited to announce that our improved coding exercises are now live! There’s a fresh new look, new guidance features, and an expanded language library. Here's a summary of the key improvements:

Today, Udemy reported fourth quarter and full year 2022 earnings, posting strong results and closing out our first year as a public company with a 22% year-over-year increase in annual revenue.