Hello Instructor Community!

August is here and before you know it, we’ll all be drinking Pumpkin Spice Lattes and planning our Q4 promotions, but for now, let’s take a trip down memory lane and look at some of the top discussions we saw in the community last month.

• The biggest question in the community last month was, Is Udemy Dying? 

• Instructor Prateek Narang purchased a new home!
• There were some great tips on How to deal with too many student questions?
• Instructor LizBrown brought an accessibility issue to our attention and our team was quickly able to resolve it
• Udemy made an announcement regarding Piloting the Select collection

This month we are recognizing some major accomplishments in the community! You may have noticed that in each of your profiles, you have the ability to earn community badges depending on your participation. Some of these badges are easier to earn, while others demonstrate a true dedication to the community. 

Congratulations to the following instructors for earning these esteemed badges! Your contribution to the community is appreciated.

25 Discussions Started

• @KarolyNyisztor 
• @PhillipBurton 

25 Replies Given

• @PrateekNarang 
• @PraveenK 
• @ToddMcLeod 
• @RameshG54 
• @j0pewd 
• @RogerKayAllen 
• @ThaMilan 

50 Replies Given

• @ardit 
• @AHardin 

Fun fact: there are only 25 community members who have ever achieved the 50 Discussions Started badge, could you be the next one?

Hello Instructors! 

It’s time to get to know your fellow instructors! We’ll be hosting a virtual coffee chat on Friday, August 19th at 9:00 AM PST*, and you are invited! 

What is a virtual coffee chat? 

The community virtual coffee chats are hour-long informal networking sessions held via Zoom. During these sessions, you’ll have the opportunity to network with and get to know other Udemy instructors worldwide.

How does it work?

This month we are discussing all things course creation, so we will spend the first 30 minutes sharing best practices for creating your courses. Then you’ll be broken up into smaller groups so that you may get to know your fellow instructors better.

How do I sign up?

Glad you asked! You can sign up right here.

We look forward to seeing you on Friday, August 19th at 9:00am PST !

*We understand that this time may not be ideal for all time zones, however, we will change the times of the coffee chat each month to accommodate different locations.

Based on learner and instructor feedback from the initial rollout of these updates, we wanted to highlight the following changes:

• We are extending the deadline from August 15 to August 25 for re-enabling subtitles. You will also no longer be able to turn off native-language subtitles and captions for Udemy Business courses beginning August 25. If you’re affected by these changes you should receive a reminder email this week. 
• We will be requiring subtitles or captions for all English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and Italian courses in the Udemy Business content collection. This excludes Japanese, German, and language-learning courses with subtitles or captions.
• We will no longer be creating auto-generated subtitles for Mandarin courses due to accuracy issues reported by learners. We will also be unpublishing the subtitles already generated for these courses, but you are free to edit and republish them if you think they are sufficient.

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As we move into H2, we’re planning on making changes to the way we manage subtitles and captions on the platform to align closer with our accessibility goals. Historically, we’ve created auto-generated subtitles for all English, Spanish, and Portuguese courses on Udemy. This is because we believe subtitles and captions can make courses easier to comprehend with a larger audience, including learners who speak another language and hearing-impaired learners.

At a high level we are building upon what we’re doing today by making the following changes by the end of the year:

• We plan to expand our auto-generated subtitles to all eligible courses in German, French, Italian, Japanese, and Mandarin by the end of the year.
• We are investing in an improved auto-generation model to increase the accuracy of transcriptions.
• We will provide auto-generated subtitles for courses once they reach 20 enrollments in order to prioritize courses with learner engagement.
• We are requiring subtitles or captions for all courses in the Udemy Business content collection starting August 15th.

These changes are intended to help instructors cater to learners of all backgrounds and to move toward a high standard of accessibility for a growing global audience. To learn more about these updates, read on in the Teaching Center.