Udemy Versus Shaw Academy

How Does Udemy Work?

To start using Udemy, simply sign up using your name and email and by providing a password. Once you have signed up, you can start taking and/or teaching courses anywhere, anytime. You can immediately start browsing courses and sign up for one as soon as you find the one you want. Alternatively, you can click the “Become an Instructor” button at the top of the home page and it will bring you to a page where you can start creating a course.

What Makes Udemy Stand Out?

While other online portals tout respected professors as their instructors, what makes Udemy unique is that anyone can be a teacher on this platform. If you believe you have a skill you would like to share with the world, you can easily become an instructor and offer a course for free or for a fee. This is why Udemy has so many courses; they are able to reach out to all kinds of instructors and experts across all disciplines and interests to take part in Udemy and earn extra income.

Common Reviews of Udemy

Out of 300 reviews on TrustPilot.com, Udemy scored 4 out of 5 stars or 8.7 out of a total score of 10. Most customers were thrilled with their instructor, citing him or her as knowledgeable, passionate and responsive. One customer said,

“Most instructors respond to inquiries quickly, and are easy to communicate with. There are no subscriptions, so once you’re in a class, you can refer to it for as long as it is there. You also have 30-day refund policy. Plenty of time to engage with the course to see how you might like it. I’ve been taking classes just over a year, and have found that the technology classes are updated, depending on the topic and instructor. I’m sure experiences may vary, but mine has been very positive. I’d easily recommend it to anyone wanting to learn something new. The classes are also reviewed, and I’ve found those to be fairly accurate too.”

The following positive review also tends to sum up how most customers feel about Udemy.

“I have completed many courses on Udemy. I am impressed by the high quality of the presentations and of the instructors. The instructors often bring with them their real-world experience gained from working with the material they are presenting. The structure of the courses — audio, video and downloads — gives an amazing level of detail to help the student understand the material and use it to create their own projects. A major feature is that you have lifetime access to the courses and many instructors ensure that their courses are constantly updated. This gives you the ability to take them at your own pace and review them as many times as you need to cover the new material. Great learning site!”

As for negative reviews, one customer complained about getting too may promotional emails flooding their inbox. An instructor complained about having a hard time getting help with his uploaded video. For some reason, Udemy wouldn’t recognize it as the instructor’s video and, therefore, wouldn’t allow it to be used. Still, other negative reviews focused on payment not going through or paid for courses not appearing in their dashboard.

Is Udemy for me?

When trying to decide if an online learning portal is for you, the best way is to give it a try. Since many of Udemy’s courses are offered for free or at a discount during promotional sales, there is nothing to lose by taking a course or two to get a feel of the quality of the courses. Since they are all self-paced, there should be a motivating factor to complete the course within a reasonable time. For example, choose a class you are passionate about and try to set up your own flexible schedule for completing the course.

Because Udemy courses can be taught by anyone and do not carry the same weight, say, as courses taught by Ivy League professors, the people who seem to most benefit from Udemy’s educational platform are those seeking to gain or improve skills, whether they be professional or personal.

For example, there are a plethora of courses for the category “Personal Development.” You can take a courses such as “Body Language Interpretation,” “Life Coaching for Beginners”, “Double Your Productivity and Get Important Things Done,” or “Unleash Your Creative Mind.” And it gets better. For the category “Personal Transformation,” you can take courses such as “Activate the Law of Attraction,” “Power of the Mind in Health and Healing” and “The Habit Mastery Formula.”

On the other hand, if you are looking to gain or hone a new skill, Udemy is an excellent resource in which to access this information. For example, under the category “Career Development,” the featured course is “Dominate the Hidden Job Market of the Future”. Other courses you could take include, “How to Negotiate a Higher Salary” and “Redesign Your Career with a New Personal Business Model.”

Another interesting category that anyone can benefit from is “Lifestyle Courses.” In this category, you can take many courses that involve dog training, courses that teach you how to properly apply make-up just in time for prom, and courses that teach you how to get paid to travel the world.

For people who love to travel but need help finding the best deals and hacks, Udemy offers courses that deal with mastering airline points in order to fly free, how to become a travel writer and how to master Airbnb.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

In truth, Udemy is for anyone with a desire to learn and some extra money to pay for the courses one at a time.