Hi @Bella , I am also struggling with Udemy's rating algorithm, and I agree with @AhmedMagdyMohamed that negative ratings seem to be disproportionately weighted over positive ratings and reviews. Speaking from my own experience, one of my UFB courses is quite popular with business clients (most of my students are from UFB), and I updated it around November 2022. I have received several excellent ratings. Most of my ratings over the past month have been 4+. Indeed I have a few 5+ ratings too. Users have provided comments describing what they liked about the course for many of these positive ratings. I also have two ratings of 1 star (in 1 of them, the user provided no comments). In my specific case, I got that 1-star review more than 15 days ago. Since then, I have gotten a couple of 4 and 5-star reviews, including those from people who completed more than 90% of the course and gave comments. Yet my ratings are declining. I pursued your Course Reviews FAQ, which clearly stated, "Rather than using a simple mathematical average of all ratings, the course rating calculation gives more weight to reviews from its most engaged students. When assessing a student’s engagement, we consider things like course consumption, the recency of their rating, and the length of their written review". Since the start of this year, this has not been the experience of many of us instructors, myself included. I don't think the algorithms are considering the 4+ reviews at all. Even @FrankKane opined that the lack of reflection of the relatively recent ratings is rather strange. @AhmedMagdyMohamed has mathematically identified that negative ratings have a much more significant impact than positive ratings. Many instructors have noted and commented on such a phenomenon over the years, and @AhmedMagdyMohamed very kindly looked at the matter quantitatively. So what you state about your rating calculation system seems to be misleading at best. The issue of how Udemy generally handles its reviews and ratings has been raised several times by us instructors. But as @DamianMcKinnon pointed out, Udemy admins continue to ignore our concerns about the rating issue. Now while no one expects Udemy to make its review algorithm public, it is high time Udemy clears the record and tells us if negative ratings are given extra weightage over positive ratings. Setting the record straight on this specific matter will (and acting on individual concerns as needed) will go a long way in reaffirming Udemy's commitments to "positive impact on employees, learners, instructor Udemy is now a publicly-traded company listed in the USA. I am a researcher in the ESG/SDM domain (MPhil from Oxford University and PhD from Cambridge University). It was most gratifying for me that in 2022, Sustainalytics, a subsidiary of Morningstar(a renowned ESG (environmental, social, and governance) research, ratings, and data organisation), ranked the Udemy first in the Internet Software and Services sub-industry for the second consecutive year (https://about.udemy.com/press-releases/udemy-ranked-first-in-internet-software-and-services-sub-industry-by-sustainalytics/). The press release further noted Udemy's commitment to a positive impact on instructors. The current rating system, the lack of transparency around it and the fact that negative ratings may be disproportionately weighted over positive ratings (which arguably flies in the face of what you state on your own Course reviews page) are doing the exact opposite. There is no such thing as a perfect algorithm. If the actual computations of your rating algorithms weigh negative ratings more than positive ones (thus running contrary to your stated policy), then both instructors and students are being misled. This is not only unethical but could potentially be a case of ESG-washing. At the end of the day, it is not about one course or one instructor. The fundamental issue of instructor welfare hearing us out and ensuring that ESG commitments are met transparently and meaningfully. From now on, I sincerely this will be borne in mind and instructor concerns acted upon.
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