Rating

[AmerTaha]

Hello great instructors

I have a question 

I have two courses but one of them its rating is going down alone with out any bad rewiews 

What is the problem

[Abbie · Accepted solution]

Hey @AmerTaha, the recent rating tracks course reviews over the last 90 days. So any reviews that you received 91 days ago will drop out of the number. If you received a 5-star review more than 90 days ago, then the recent rating number would go down.

If you had a 1-star review 91 days ago, then the number would go up, as soon as the review stops counting again. This is expected behavior for this metric to be dynamic, reflecting the last 90 days of student reviews.

If you need any details specific to your account, you can email instructorsupport@udemy.com and the team will be happy to help!

[Daniel]

Hi Abbie - is this information still valid?

My course rating recently dropped significantly to 4.17 (used to be rated very highly). There's always some fluctuation in student ratings and I'm okay to accept that.

However I don't understand how the calculation gives such a low rating!

My reviews in the last 90 days are:

4* (watched 20%)

4* (watched 100%)

4* (watched 32%)

5* (watched 100%)

4.5* (watched 100%)

----

[+ more ratings older than 90 days]

Please can you let me know the current way that ratings are determined - thanks! If it helps, my course is: https://www.udemy.com/course/mental-math-secrets-for-real-world-number-mastery/

[Abbie]

Hey @Daniel, there are a number of factors we’re using to help weight ratings; however, three of the most significant are:

-Amount of the course the student consumed before leaving the rating

-How recently the rating was left

-How valuable the student’s feedback was to instructors and students

With this in mind, your course rating is not a pure average of all reviews, but each individual review may be weighted differently based on all the factors Udemy considers.

Feel free to reach out to instructorsupport@udemy.com if you need more info.

[Daniel]

Thanks for the reply Abbie - actually just before I saw the notification of your reply, I posted a message elsewhere on a thread with more instructors asking the same thing.

There's more detail in that post so I won't paste everything across and complicate the work you're doing here responding to reviews 🙂 But the short story is that the rating dropped significantly without anything happening that should affect it (as far as I can tell!)

May I ask two specific questions to clarify your post?

1. You mention "how valuable the student's feedback was to instructors" - what does this mean?
2. You mention that student engagement is important - does this mean that students' ratings are weighted more if they watch more of the course, or does it mean that if students don't watch much of the course then Udemy (understandably) considers the course lower quality?

Thanks for your help!

[NerminElgrawany]

Hi @Daniel 

Did you fix the problem? If Yes, please let me know how because I face the same problem.

Thank you

[Daniel]

Hi Nermin,

It turns out that Udemy doesn't actually know how their own ratings are calculated. The information shared by the moderators above is incorrect. I don't blame them, but for sure it's incorrect.

What I'm sure actually happens is that the last 10 reviews are averaged, with some extra modifications (as described by Abbie above).

So if you have 20 reviews, it's an average of reviews 11-20.

And if you get a 21st review, which is worse than the 11th one, then your rating will go down. Perhaps your rating is 4.47, the 11th was a 5* review from someone who watched the whole course, and the 21st is a 5* review from someone who only watched 20%. Then the course rating might drop to e.g. 4.44.

Once I figured out how Udemy actually calculates ratings, the behaviour of my ratings made sense.

[NerminElgrawany]

Thank you @Daniel 

that was very helpful 👍🏻

[MostafaKhor531]

Hi Abbie,

What you mentioned is not totally correct as I got one single 1start review from a student who just watched 17% of my course and my course dropped from 4.7 to 4.6. No comment or additional information was provided. The way Udemy is handling reviews needs revision, like your recent revenue calculation. The low rates have such high impact and its not fair. somebody can do that on purpose and destroys all your efforts despite the fact above 90% of the students are leaving a 5 star review.

[Humberto]

Hello Amer, did you solve the problem with your course rating going down alone without any bad reviews ?. Please let me know.