CyberSkeptic has
covered free online academic course sites before (notably Academic Earth, www.academicearth.org in September
2009). Udemy (www.udemy.com) is different;
it offers both free and fee-based courses, and in addition to hosting courses
through which you can learn, it provides a platform through which you can create
a course and make money. Founded in February 2010, Udemy now claims 10 million
users and garners 70,000 lecture views each month. Courses are offered in a
wide variety of technology, academic, and lifestyle categories; While the majority
are free, many charge a fee. A quick browse through the front page courses
showed "Anatomy & Physiology for Beginners," by Natalie Fox, as
the least expensive course at $6 (for a 29-lecture course) and "Self
Publish Weekend," by Andrew Pyle, as the most expensive, at $220 (for 43
lectures).
Find a Course
There are several ways to browse what's available. Clicking
Browse from the front page presents a page (www.udemy.com/courses) highlighting a
Course of the Week, which in late June was "Learn C The Hard Way";
three New and Noteworthy courses; three Trending Paid courses; and three
Trending Free courses. Scrolling down highlights three courses in each of the
subject categories:
Technology
Business
Design
Social Sciences
Math and Science
Humanities
Arts
Lifestyle
Crafts and Hobbies
Health and Fitness
Education
Music
Languages
Sports
Games
Other Courses
A search box at the top allows keyword searching. When I
typed in Spanish
I found several courses--and here there were charges as low as $2. While a
number of courses taught the language, an intriguing free one was called "Portal
en Espanol," from the University of Michigan. Promising 15 lectures, it
seems to be a series of interviews with Spanish speakers (www.udemy.com/campus-i-portal-en-espanol/).
Before I knew it, I was engaged in listening to a 30-minute interview with
Theresa Satterfield, who came to Louisiana from Panama as a child, learned English
the hard way, and now is professor of languages at Michigan. I have returned to
this course many times since that first lecture; for me it is an opportunity to
hear correct and understandable Spanish
about subjects that interest me.
The Faculty Project
Two special strands of "curated" course lists are
of particular interest. The first is The Faculty Project (http://facultyproject.org/), where "The
best professors from the world's leading universities are coming together to
teach online," for free. They haven't all arrived, yet--there were only 14
courses listed in this endeavor when I checked--but those that are there are
substantive efforts in a variety of fields. I was drawn to "The United
States Constitution: A Biography," taught by Robert J. Allison, Suffolk
University; "Brazil for Beginners," with Marshall C. Eakin, Vanderbilt
University; "Foundations of Business Strategy," by Michael Lenox, University
of Virginia; and "Is U.S. Democracy Broken?: Perspectives and
Debates," with Jeb Barnes, University of Southern California. But I signed
up for "Math is Everywhere: Applications of Finite Math," taught by
Tim Chartie of Davidson
College. I don't want to
admit how many years it has been since I took a real math course, but what do I
have to lose? It's free.
I clicked the Enroll button and joined 322 other students in
the math course. Actually, I was taken first to a course page with more information
about the instructor and the course itself. The description promised over 20
lectures and 5.5 hours of content relating math to everyday factors such as computer
fonts, Angry Birds, March Madness, and Google. A lecture-by-lecture syllabus
was provided, with separate links for slides.
University Courses
A second curated list, Online Courses from Top Universities
(www.udemy.com/academic-courses),
presents over 500 college-level courses from 14 universities. Udemy does not
yet have the depth or breadth in this section that Academic Earth has. Though
it does have some of the same contributing schools, I did not notice
duplication between the two sites. Top contributors to Udemy so far are heavy in
the areas of technology and entrepreneurship: Stanford offers 200; MIT, 56; and
the Indian Institute of Technology provides 114. The Stanford selections are particularly
attractive, as many appear to be guest lectures from Silicon Valley names that
you will recognize. Other universities represented include Cambridge, Columbia,
Harvard, Michigan, Virginia, Yale, and several University of California
campuses. The left column on the page displaying the most popular courses shows
links to the providing school and numbers of courses offered by that
organization; there is also a linked subject list indicating numbers of courses
in each of 26 subjects. Again, it is clear that entrepreneurship is a top
component.
Creating Courses
The aspect that really puts the "you" in Udemy,
however, is the platform to create your own course. Step-by-step instructions
are given at www.udemy.com/teach
(though they are deceptively simple). To get started, click on Create a Course
(you must be registered and logged in). Write a title (60 characters) and
headline (120 characters), and select a category from the drop-down list of
subjects. Then enter three or more keywords or tags, and select the language of
the course from a drop-down list. You can also write a summary, using a text
box with simple formatting tools (italic and boldface, bullets and numbered
lists). Or you can select the HTML or code interface if you know how to use
those tools to get more direct access to the appearance of your course summary.
Quick course construction assumes that you already have
content lying around on your computer or the internet. You can upload content
in various formats (PPT, PDF, MP3, MP4, MOV, AVI , MPG, and ZIP, as well as documents,
articles, and pictures) and import it from several sites (YouTube, Vimeo,
SlideShare, Flickr, Ustream) by typing in the URL. Udemy promises creators that
they own their own course. It is unclear to me, however, whether there is any
oversight over materials that are assembled to make sure that the course creator
has rights to use them, though the Terms of Service (http://support.udemy.com/tos) requires
that content submitted represents the user's own original work.
Organizing the course into chapters and lectures is promised
to be as easy as dragging and dropping. There
are more options, though. You can host a live session, and there is a place for
asynchronous discussion with students. A mashup tool promises easy integration
of video and slides, and the use of HTML5 means mobile access to courses via
"any device."
I wanted to test the tools for creating a course, but I
couldn't think of a thing I was ready to teach. Still, I clicked Create a
Course and made up a title and subject; I was relieved to see a notice saying
that anything I wrote and assembled would stay invisible until I
"published" it. I am impressed with the tools and technical help
offered by Udemy in the course assembly process. If you already have offline
course work available to you, or if you have courses on another online
platform, you will be able to put together a course on Udemy fairly quickly.
Udemy urges but, for the most part, does not help with course planning and good
design, however. Anyone who contemplates publishing a course should first study
the presentation of several existing courses by various instructors and also enroll
in the "How to Create a Udemy Course" (www.udemy.com/official-udemy-instructor-course/)
by Alex Mozes, which is free. I'm taking that now and also thinking beyond the
bare bones of the course that I started to write. A nice feature of Udemy is
that you can keep a course private and
only invite a select group, so it is easy to experiment.
The Bottom Line
If you set a price for the course, you get to keep 70% of
the revenue generated with each enrollment. Students pay using a credit card or
PayPal. Udemy promises help in using social media (Facebook, Twitter, Reddit,
blogs, and more) to promote the course, and even provides coupon codes that can
be distributed. You can embed the entire course or a small part of it via a
widget on your website or blog. The course creation aspect of Udemy is ideal
for independent professionals and entrepreneurs who want to sell an educational
product or promote themselves. It should also be considered by librarians doing
instruction, professional instructors in academia or training, and aficionados
who simply want to share a passion.
Note: A new interface was introduced in July, though the old
continues to be available for awhile. This review refers to the old interface.
Susanne Bjørner
provides editorial services to publishers, librarians, authors, and researchers
from a base in Spain.
Contact her at bjorner@earthlink.net or www.bjorner.info.
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