Udemy
Udemy’s goal is to become an online learning platform where you can learn almost anything.
There are more than 100,000 courses. Some teach professional skills, while others are about different hobbies (like learning to play video games).
Employers can access Udemy’s most popular courses to motivate their employees to learn.
It turns out that even giant companies like Adidas, Pinterest and Eventbrite have taken advantage of the platform’s offerings.
To cover such a huge number of topics, on the platform Udemy gives any user the opportunity to publish their course. That’s why there are courses here on topics like “plant care” that you won’t find on other platforms.
The fact that anyone can try their hand as a teacher is both a good idea and a bad idea. The idea is good in that it gives people a chance to share their expertise, even if they don’t have a credential. A lot of course authors on Udemy are graduate students at universities or just professionals.
What’s wrong with that idea? Because Udemy is an open platform, there are no big name professors or university professors here. They prefer to teach on more prestigious platforms like Coursera.
In addition, the quality of some courses leaves a lot to be desired. So if tomorrow I want to publish a course which I made on my knees in a couple of hours, no one will bother me.
Of course there is a high probability that this course will get bad ratings from all those who take it, so you should choose courses with high ratings so that you do not lose your money and time. But even the grading system on the Udemy platform is far from perfect, to say the least, and I’ll talk about that later too.
Types of courses on the Udemy platform
You can search for courses by keyword or by category.
udemy course categories
Each of the main categories (e.g. design, finance, photography, health and sports, etc.) has several subcategories to choose from.
Each category page has both trending and popular courses.
Most courses range in price from $25 to $200 if you buy them at full price. That said, you can often get a discount or even a course for free if you have a promo code.