Multi-stage course publication

I've started to develop a course here and it's taken a lot longer than I anticipated. I'm 3 months in already at full-time effort. I estimate another 3 months at least and the whole thing is looking like a bit of an edifice and I'm worried I'll never get it finished.

What's the deal with say, completing perhaps 75% of the course which is a solid entity on its own, and publishing that just to get it out of the door and draw some feedback? Then completing the remaining 25% after having a bit of a break to recover energy, and publishing the remainder perhaps 3 months after the initial publication? Thus completing the course and adding in the extended content that wasn't required first time around.

Will udemy be annoyed with me with them having to review the course twice? Or do their systems show them only the lectures which have been added or modified so they only review the new lectures the second time around and avoid having them duplicate work?

Is this common or am I wanting too much here? Any advice would be welcome.

Find more posts tagged with

Comments

IsabelH

Hi @StrayCodeMonkey

Welcome to the community!

I would recommend reaching out our support team who can clarify what are the best practices for Udemy course publications at instructorsupport@udemy.com

Isabel Handal

Community Moderator

ba0708

It depends on which material you leave out. You mentioned that the first 75% of the course is a "solid entity on its own," so I assume that the last 25% are not strictly necessary? For instance, if a student can complete the first 75% just fine without missing key pieces of information, you should be fine. An example could be that your first 75% covers fundamentals and the last 25% cover advanced topics that are not strictly necessary. In that case you would be fine doing two releases. It's a quite common strategy actually, especially for those with small audiences, because they can then verify that there is an audience for their course before proceeding.

Since you have been working on the course for three months full time, I suppose you have at least a couple of hours of material already, so that should be good as well. Based on what you wrote, you should be fine doing a first release and then releasing additional lectures afterwards.

On a side note, Udemy won't have to review your course for the second release; you can simply edit your curriculum and the lectures will be published immediately.

Best of luck, and I hope you get your course out there sooner than later! 🙂

Mahomed939

Greetings - We were faced with a similar issue as our program has over 30 topics. We submitted the 5 topics for review - but marked as PRIVATE. We then developed the remaining Topics but in the interim, offered the available topics ('published as PRIVATE' )to people who gave us constructive feedback)

Their feedback was valued.

Once all topcs were ready, we went PUBLIC but that naturally, invokes another Course Review

Just sharing our approach

( we are now live and are focussing on marketing)

Cheers

Mahoned and Hawa

StrayCodeMonkey

Yeah, the first 75% will be a complete course on its own. It's just the extra 25% or more (because you know it's going to be more when you get to it) would be more advanced or additional content not strictly required to understand the subject well enough. I'll have produced more than enough in the initial publication so that no student would feel short-changed.

I've around 10 hours of video content so far, I imagine another 10 before it's released, and perhaps another 5 - 10 after that in the second release.

Good to know it only gets reviewed once. This was my main concern, not hacking off the poor reviewers at Udemy having to watch twenty or more hours of content, twice. So big thanks for the advice there.

tallojuuday

Appreciate your efforts towards building the course, my suggestion if its time taking to complete the course I would recommend, split into parts..

So that your first course can be released...

Just a suggestion