During this event, we had several great questions come through our Q&A channel and we wanted to take some time to review and respond to as many as we could with the help from several of our partner teams like Product, Content Strategy, Curation, Policy, etc. These questions take a village to support so thank you for your patience as we worked hard to get this information back to you. Many of the questions that came in were similar in nature, so you’ll notice we grouped questions based on themes below.
Udemy Business Access
- Can we as IP have access to Udemy Business platform (not courses) just to understand the platform better and understand the process students go through? @PouyaEti
- This is an excellent suggestion and one that we've considered - however, the solution would require product resourcing and investment, Customer and legal consent, and more, making this more complex than it seems. As you all know, our product resources are limited (we're working hard on the many efforts that we've shared with you in our Product Roadmap) but we've surfaced this to our Instructor Product team and will also continue to invest in sharing more of the backend at future IPP events. In the meantime, please reference the event recording above for a quick view.
SEO & Learner search filters
- Are the recommended courses on the platform suggested only by Udemy's internal algorithm, or is it the company that chooses the courses to show based on a particular topic? @TuttoDigit
- Our course recommendations are personalized for each user and are based on our internal algorithm. They are not selected or chosen by the company.
- Are the episode descriptions searchable? Currently, you can only see episode descriptions before you buy the course. Once you've bought the course, you can't see the episode descriptions anywhere so I was curious how that metadata is used. @TotalSeminars
- Lecture descriptions are shown on the course landing page within the 'Course content' table, but you have to click the drop down arrow next to the lecture title in order to view it. These lecture descriptions could be helpful for the highly motivated learner who wants to carefully evaluate each course before purchasing. Moreover, search engines can use this additional content on the page to better understand what the course is about so that it can rank it in search results for the right queries
What is the point of filtering by 3.5 & up or 4.0 and up if all UB courses are 4.4+? @MichaelPog
- The Udemy Business platform uses the same search functionality and filtering system as the Marketplace. Therefore, you'll see similar filters including filters for ratings below our thresholds. You'll notice that on occasion, we have courses that fall below our thresholds because, while we require that a course entering the collection is 4.4+, it's common for them to fluctuate between 4.0--4.4 after being added. In addition, our thresholds may vary slightly for different languages based on market needs and learner behavior. For additional context, if a course remains below a 4.0 for an extended period of time, we will set it for removal. However, we still want to enable learners the ability to search/filter for everything in our collection.
Certification
How to include our courses in the Certification Preparation section? Is it something that Udemy does automatically or we can give inputs? @Rahul  Iyer
- Courses included as options to prepare for a particular certification are not curated by Udemy; these courses are tagged automatically based on course topic. Instructors with relevant courses do not need to take action. The certifications referenced in the platform are those supported by Udemy's partnership with 1Edtech,and the list can be found on Open Badges here.
- What kind of certifications does Udemy provide? I think, Continuing Education (CEUs, CEs), Real Estate, Healing, Healthcare… @LucaMoschini
- Udemy itself is not a certification provider, but does provide training to help people prepare for and achieve a wide range of certifications across technology and business subject areas. Some Udemy courses qualify for CEUs (continuing education units or credit, as determined by certification providers).
- I saw on one course shown earlier in the presentation that it was tagged as being accredited by some organization... what accreditations are recognized by UB, and how do we get them? @FrankKane
- While we're not totally sure which course you saw, there are two ways a course might be associated with an accrediting body on Udemy. One is through the recently launched badging initiative, which creates new discovery paths for courses that focus on preparation for a third-party certification supported by 1EdTech's Open Badges standard. The other is a little more DIY(do-it-yourself) -- instructors who have independently accredited their courses with other bodies may reference that accreditation in the course description, providing they follow our Trust & Safety guidelines for that page.
Q&A and UB Instructor - Learner Interaction
Are there any plans to denote UB students in the Q&A for instructors? Knowing if they are a corporate student or a marketplace student could sway how I answer their question. @Jeremy -TBAG
- This is not currently on the roadmap, but we appreciate the feedback. For us to surface this request to our Product team, we're interested in hearing examples from Instructor Partners of how you would respond differently to a Udemy Business learner vs. a marketplace learner?
- How do you make an announcement or communicate with UFB students? @RamonJansse816
- Udemy Business learners can see educational announcements on the "Announcements" tab of the course-taking experience, and can choose to opt in to receive email alerts about them. But by default, Udemy Business learners don't receive outbound notifications about course announcements. In general, admins at Udemy Business companies have mandates to control what messages their employees receive, and are wary of messages that may be distracting or even at odds with their goals. At the moment, the best way you can connect with your Udemy Business learners is to deliver an outstanding experience in-course and in any interactions that they initiate.
- Is there a way for instructors to view the notes students add to videos? Could be a great opportunity to understand what students are taking notes on or if they are struggling in a certain topic @Btkrausen
- You can view where notes were left in your course with the "bookmarks" section of your Course Engagement report, but you can't view the contents. Unlike Q&A or reviews, where learners expect their responses to be viewed by others, learners expect their personal notes to remain private, so we don't surface them to any other party.
UB Topics & Categories
- What is exactly meant with the topic tag? @HenryLegge
- A "topic tag" is the topic or topics you indicate as the primary focus of your course on the "Course Landing Page" section of the course builder. They're part of the overall course taxonomy (categorization). Every course has a category (e.g. Business), a subcategory (e.g. Management), and at least one topic (e.g. Mentoring). Selecting a precise and accurate course topic can help your course appear in relevant searches.
- Are UB Categories broad, like Databases, or more focused, like SQL Server? @PhillipBurton
- ​​UB Categories are designed to be fairly broad, however our subcategories are more focused, and the topic is the most granular. Our Udemy Business Curation team determines and manages the UB category and subcategory structure, and if necessary (there are small differences in categories/subcategories between Marketplace and Udemy Business), the team will re-assign courses to the most appropriate ones when your course is added into the UB Collection. However, we still rely on our Instructors to manage the topics and the Curation team does not change these.
Learning Paths
- What is the criteria used by whoever is creating the learning path in picking a course? If someone wants to learn a specific topic, do those learning paths mostly then show certification courses? Or are those certification courses only preferred for learning paths that are supposed to lead to a specific certification? @Salil  Dhawan
- For example, Udemy’s content team are generally designing preset Learning Paths that are commonly used by Company’s (e.g., Udemy as a Company has Learning Paths built by our content team such as “Leadership Fundamentals”, “iOS or Android Developer”, “Remote & Hybrid Work”, etc.) and use criteria such as course rating, course engagement metrics. If that path is related to a skill or badge that a certification is associated with, the Content Team will look at the alignment of the course/lecture content and certification requirements.
- For Admins or Learners, they have their own independent set of criteria based on their company goals or individual career goals that are used to select which courses/lectures should be part of their learning path.
- Udemy Learning Paths are NOT specific to certification oriented topics
- Will section or lecture description help students to target the right learning part when they create a path?
- Yes, any specific topic level details you can tag or emphasize in your lecture descriptions are read by our search algorithms. Our algorithms are designed to surface the best content that meets the needs of the learner’s search - so for example, if a learner searches for “Topic X” but no course descriptions meet this search criteria, but a lecture or section of your course does, the lecture/section of your course will be surfaced at the top.
- Since admins can add specific course section to a path, does it mean sections should be completely independent from other sections, basically function as an independent course? @MemiLavi
- For both Udemy Paths and Learning Paths - This depends on whether the learning path builder inserted the entire course into the learning path or broke out sections / lectures of that course into the learning path. If the former (inserted an entire course) then there is no change in the learner/admin’s UX experience. If the latter (section/lecture is inserted) then when the Instructor makes a change, the lecture/section is adjusted (e.g., added / removed) in their learning path and there is a notification to the learner/Admin. This is a known pain point, though, for UB learners and Admins, due to the fact that in both cases this often causes frustration because the content may no longer align to the original intentions/goals of the Learning Path.
- When learners are consuming a learning path that only contains curated lectures from multiple courses, is that learner auto-enrolled into the full course behind the scenes when they watch that curated lecture in the path, or do they not get enrolled in the course? @BryanLamb
- Yes, the learner is auto-enrolled in the full course even if they’ve just added a lecture to their Learning Path.
International Learner/Customer Experience
- What do international customers / learners see? Do international customers see the same courses as English Customers? @Coach .Hector
- The UX experience changes when a learner selects a language other than English (e.g., Spanish, Mandarin, Turkish, etc.). Available UB courses taught in the selected language are surfaced under the Recommendation Section to be more relevant to the learner’s potential interests. In addition, similar to our marketplace experience, if you use the search for content in other languages, the home page will also continue to recommend content in those languages.
UB Pro
- Do instructors get a separate notification when their course makes it to "Udemy Pro"? @rasu84
- Udemy Pro is an invite only program at this time. We work individually with a small population of instructors who have topic areas that are the current focus - therefore, they are already aware of the courses that are or will be included. More details on this page.