I have a problem....Flesch-Kincaid (reading level score)

[Justin-A]

I heard from a couple places that you want to use about a 7th grade reading level in your courses (Flesch-Kincaid test). The test basically measures length of sentences & number of syllables in words.  I believe a 7th grade level makes listening easier on the brain.  My question is how important is this?  Because...

I'm building my first course.  I'm almost complete.  The 8 hours of lecture content has taken me about 400 hours of effort to complete.  I just learned about the reading level thing and I put several of my lectures into the test (Microsoft Word will show you).  My average lecture is about 12th grade.  I have some in the 9th grade range and some in the 15th grade (collegiate) range.

I thought I was within hours of finally being able to publish my course.  If I have to reassess, rephrase, rerecord, modify the edit, etc. for 85 lectures - that's another 50-100 hours of work.

I would love as much input as possible from experienced instructors or Udemy staff or people who have gotten feedback (good or bad) via reviews... How important is that?  Do I need to back up and fix these?

Thanks, Justin

[MarinaT]

Hi @Justin-A, 

Jumping in here to bump up your post, hoping that other experienced instructors will share their advice.

Good luck for your course! 

[Justin-A]

Any experienced instructors out there pay attention to reading levels?  Thanks

[AHardin · Accepted solution]

@Justin-A, with around a decade of teaching experience and over eight years on Udemy, I've never analyzed my course material with a reading level score. With that said, you do have to tailor your content to a global audience on Udemy, expecting that a fair amount of students will be ESL.  For me, that means breaking down things so they're easily understandable, not using any overly complex vocabulary, explicitly defining terms, as needed, and adding edited close caption subtitles. 

My advice to you is to not re-record your course. After you publish it, look at the student ratings and reviews, and use that as feedback to tweak and improve your course over time.