How come we are seen as enemy on Udemy?

[Jorge Guera Pires, PhD]

I do understand reviews have their place on course, what bothers me is the "aggressivity" of some students on reviews. See my essay: 

I believe the review-based system is excellent for e-learning, but not the final story

Okay, you did not like the course, get a refund and life goes on!

Stack Overflow did not lose to chatGPT just because it is better, but also because chatGPT will not attack you for asking. Humans are losing more about their aggressivity than really intelligence.

It is hurtful how nicely you handle your teaching, and how much bad reviews you get. My experience shows that bad review are detailed (full of wrong information about the course, assertions without any base), not the same about good ones that tend to be silent.

Napoleon Bonaparte famous quote, “The world suffers a lot, not because of the violence of bad people but because of the silence of good people”.

[MarinaT]

Hi @JorgeGuerra798, 

I hope you are doing well.

I'm sorry to hear you experienced some bad or even aggressive reviews from a student. Getting such reviews can be devastating and challenging to deal with, but please don't let those reviews pull you down.

Whenever you feel a review is against our Trust & Safety Guidelines, please contact our policy team at policy@udemy.com. The team will look then further into that. 

Please let me know if you have additional questions. 

[V-Toad]

Dr. Pires,

While it's true that a student might (under some conditions) be able to obtain a refund on their money, you cannot refund their time. If a student cared enough to leave detailed feedback, and you believe that they missed the mark, consider why that might be.

For example, if a contextual example you gave lead the student to misunderstand the concept, consider how you might change that so future students don't make the same mistake or come to the wrong conclusions.

I doubt very much the majority of negative feedback you're likely to encounter on uDemy is going to be from trolls with nothing better to do. They are paying customers, and should be treated as such. Try not to see this negative feedback as adversarial and instead, try and determine what (if any of it) can be used to improve your coursework.

[Alexia]

Are you saying people complain online and if they are happy, they won’t give a review? Complaining gives us a sense of power. It’s good Udemy gives the option for getting their money back. Yes it took up their time, but they have a refund coming and this keeps the customer on the platform. I do see people giving 5/5 because they got a lot out of the course….it helped them. I read reviews to make decisions as a consumer, and can often see through a complainer verses real feedback ….mostly with restaurants though.

[Jorge Guera Pires, PhD]

Keep in mind that the rules will attract or take away good instructors. You may feel that the rule will "select", in fact, they exclude.  

I was attracted by Udemy since the course are cheap, and it seems so many people will have access, and I love teaching.  

Would you like to have a low-cost course by an expert? Do you believe that an expert will risk his/her career on Udemy? 

See that Udemy should not just think about the student, the instructor also should be protected, and considered on the overall rules. The environment should be also friendly to instructors, if they want to retain talents. Not all topics are easy to teach, and be friendly.

"Are you saying people complain online and if they are happy, they won’t give a review? " more or less that. It is a curious fact, I must say. No reason why, if there is any scientific study. I would love to hear also from people that give me good evaluations, I am not perfect, even when I am well-evaluated. On the other hand, I am not that bad, as the negative reviews tend to point to. At least for me, those negative reviews are useless, and I have created a ChatGPT app to read them, and give me back just the facts.

[Jorge Guera Pires, PhD]

Dear Rookie, thanks for your feedback.

After reading several replies here, and other discussions and more, I have the feeling my educations I was tough.

During my school time, I have learnt that the student is responsible for their learning path; the professor does its best. I had several bad professors, and I had learnt to overcome that; in my case, there were no possibilities to complain. For instance, now I am reading a book, the book is outdated 6 years, in coding it is a lot. I am reading the book anyway, and adapting the codes.  I could go do Amazon and complain, and remain crying about the author’s flaw, how he should update the book, and codes. 

For me, you either want to learn or complain, you brain cannot do both. When you are too much concerned about finding flaws on your instructor, which you will for sure find, you are not learning. Our brain is expert at finding flaws.  

The first lesson I have learnt: the learning process is 70% or more the student's work, not the instructor.

Thanks for the feedback, I still hold my position as instructor, and believe Udemy should handle better the reviews.

Yours Sincerely,

Jorge,
Independent researcher and Writer

[KevinBurns301]

When people are happy, they tend not to post.  They tend to go on with their lives.  When people are unhappy and not necessarily even about your course, but about the divorce they just experienced, or will experience soon, or some other loss in the life.  They come to your course in that mood.  I try to not take it too seriously when I get a good review or a bad one.  I used to perform comedy on stage, and sometimes the same joke would get a totally opposite reaction depending on who the audience was.

I think you do your best and keep on going. And eventually you will get mostly good reviews as you improve and attract an audience.   I hope this helps!

[Jorge Guera Pires, PhD]

Sounds like a great piece of advice!  😁

[LawrenceMMiller]

The title of this thread "How come we are seen as enemy on Udemy?" sounds very paranoid. Instructors are  not seen as the enemy by students or by Udemy.  Maybe it is a language problem, but to even have this idea is ....