Founded in 2010, Udemy is one of the larger online education offerings available to the aspiring coder. Within our review, we found that they allows instructors to create material specific to the subject matter they are experts in and upload it, charging a fee for use. Anyone who is an expert in a topic can create a series of instructional material and upload it, often times in chapters.
This means you get an extremely wide variety of topics from which to choose from development and coding to business, law, and even music lessons. Udemy has tens of thousands of courses and 6 million students currently enrolled in coursework. For the purposes of our review, we will stick with the coding and programming track, focusing on hard programming and web and mobile development.
The biggest difference between Udemy and any of the other course offerings online is its structure. Other online education facilities use a guided structure and courses to lead you through their paths. Udemy takes an entirely different tack. Their structure is one of a marketplace of learning, not unlike shopping at an e-commerce site.
A prospective student will go to Udemy wanting to study something, and be offered an array of choices on what to study as opposed to one course of study with a linear path. Instead of a singular instructor, a marketplace of instructors is there to meet your needs, and they are ever-changing. The entire model is consumer driven, and is more akin to buying a book from an online retailer such as Amazon than a traditional model of online education. Even a star rating system and consumer reviews flank the course descriptions.
Udemy covers nearly any topic you can think of. From beginner to advanced, their coursework runs the gamut in all topics. There are approximately 35,000 courses available to be had, with the average course price running from $19 to $99.
No formal certifications are offered, but the coursework can be learned at the students’ pace and not a formal classroom setting with regular sessions. Coursework is typically delivered via video and written instruction. Multiple forms of media are used to deliver the lectures and practical material to the student.
About Udemy
Anyone who fancies themselves an expert in subject matter may become an instructor at Udemy, provided they are willing to put in the time and effort to create the coursework. Therefore, it is essential that you look at the ratings and reviews posted by other students of the coursework being offered. Some courses may not fit the bill for you, or may not cover the topic in the way that you want.
As with an on-ground college, the teaching style varies from teacher to teacher, so each learning experience may vary widely from teacher to teacher. When you search for a course, you will be given multiple options to choose from delivered by multiple instructors.
Unlike some online schools, your progress is tracked, and you can leave notes for the instructors, most of which are responsive to their student base.You can take notes through Udemy and review them at any time. Teachers can upload video, PowerPoint, and various other documents for such things as notes, handouts, practical material, and exercises.
What will be delivered depends on the teaching style of the instructor and how they choose to deliver the course. Not all teachers will use the same materials or offer certain things. Your own learning curve will determine the usefulness of the course material and offerings.
Udemy employs a robust search engine that helps you find the coursework you would like to study. Searching for a given topic is easy, and returns the most popular topics first so you will find the courses that people are taking right away instead of having to search through a mixture. You can sort or filter the results even further by choosing to sort by:
- Spoken language
- Age of course
- Student reviews
- Academic level
- Price
- Closed captioning
- Quizzes
- Course Exercises
In addition to the search filters, students can rate the course on a scale from one to five stars, and what they feel is the appropriate knowledge level for attempting the course. These filters make it easy for you to find the course you are looking for, and know that it is a good value and will be worth an attempt before you buy the course. Whether you get a good education from Udemy will depend in part on how much you research the courses and their appropriateness before you commit to them.
You are free to take any course you are willing to pay for, but there is little usefulness in taking a course that is advanced beyond your capabilities. Also, taking a course with more practical work than you have time for can be a recipe for failure as well. The instructor may not be one that you care for. These are all things you can get a feel for from the student reviews and ratings as well as the detailed notes.